Aphrodite

When Aphrodite hears these words, she mourns for a world she helped create. She remembers everything she had ever done in the name of love, she recalls every piece of love advice she had ever given. She hates how everyone blames love for the cruelty of man, how they say love in only a thing to break your heart into a million pieces. They are wrong. Love isn't cruel, or unkind, or hard to find.

Love is everywhere.

Aphrodite remembers her husband, Hephaestus. He isn't beautiful, or kind, or funny, or modest. But she knows she loves him with all her heart. It breaks her down when she can hear the whispers at night, how he mutters about hating his family, hating her. He claims love is cruel. That it holds no bounds on who it latches onto, and leaves scars so deep that they can never be filled. She remembers how his own mother had thrown him from Olympus, so afraid of his imperfections to abandon him on sight. She recalls how she was forced into a marriage with him, but she is not resentful. Though she can tell Hephaestus does not think so, she loves him.

She can remember her love affairs with other Gods.

Most of them had been flings. It was her spreading her love, teaching the others how to love, and backing off to let them discover the rest on their own. But there had been one God that had stood out from the rest: Ares. Aphrodite had known the stories when they first met, that love and war are not so different. At first, she believed them. She saw how cruel war was, and looked upon herself to see how unkind love was. But love isn't cruel, just as war isn't unkind. Every war is fought in the sake of keeping peace, just as every lover is broken hearted in the sake of bettering oneself.

Aphrodite can't expect her husband to understand this, nor can she expect the other Olympians to. They don't understand her, don't understand her children, or why she mourned every morning and every night. But she knows Ares understands her, and knows why she must take so many breaks from the day. Sometimes he's there for her on her bad days, but she recalls many a time where war and love mourn the same.