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Eros, more popularly known by his Roman name, Cupid, is the
son of Aphrodite and the archer of love; he pierced the hearts of humans
with his magical arrows. Thos pierced with a golden arrow would fall madly
in love with whomever Eros designated, those pierced with a lead arrow
would have profound distast for whomever he designated. He served Aphrodite
faithfull and with great skill and she used him to grant reward or deal
reprise; he only once disobeyed her and this is his story. Psyche was the
youngest of a king's three daughters and was so beautiful as to make Aphrodite
jealous; Aphrodite told her son to peirce her in the heart with one of
his arrows and make her fall in love with her father's swineherd or maybe
even a swine, for that was all that one who dared be as beautiful as she,
deserved. As Eros approached the sleeping Psyche, he scratched himself
on accident with his arrow and fell deeply in love with her. Despite Aphrodite's
protests, he bore her away as his bride, for a god may marry a mortal on
one condition, that the mortal never see the god, for the sight of a god
in their true form will consume a mortal with the divine fire. Psyche never
saw her husband or any of his servants, but was served by invisible hands;
at night when all th lights were out he would come to her and she would
recieve him happily, but when morning came he as gone. One day she invited
her sisters to come see her in her happiness and when they came they imidiately
began to fill her mind with poisonous suspicions; what if he was a monster,
or a dissilute prince with a castle every ten miles and a bride in each
one. These thoughts stayed with her long after her sisters had left and
festered there until one night, she could stand it no longer and when her
husband was asleep, she took a candle and bent to look at him. There she
saw the most beautiful youth she had ever seen; with marble skin, hair
like a pale flame and a pair of large, white smoothly feathered wings.
A drop of hot wax fell on his shoulder and he awakened and looked at her
with a mixture of grief and pity; she fainted and when she awoke everything
was gone and she was lying in the weeds. Here the story tends to differ;
some say she still wonders the woods, forever searching, some that Aphrodite
turned her into an owl that sees best in dark places and cries "who?",
some that Eros forgave her and took her back up to Olympus and that she
was given the special taks of undoing bride's talk, and to whisper to young
brides when the family is saying this and that and that seeing is believing,
that none but love knows the secret of love and that love believing is
seeing, still some say that she went right up to Aphrodite's front door
and told her to bring Eros back and that she was given three impossible
tasks, which she completed with the help of the animals and that in the
process she matured form a young mortal maid to a full grown goddess in
the process and she and Eros lived happily ever after.
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