The path winds beneath cypress and cedar, the scent of crushed thyme rising underfoot. You walk with bare feet and wide eyes, curls dark as pressed wine spilling over his brow. His fingers twist in the hem of Hermes’ cloak—tight, uncertain, silent.

The god of ways and wind walks beside him with easy steps, though his sandals leave no mark in the dust. A silver gleam catches the corner of his smile, quick as a coin trick, quicker than grief.

"Now—" Hermes begins, with the practiced brightness of a man steering a child away from sorrow, "—you’ll like her, I wager. She's no cold nymph nor strict old nurse with bramble for fingers, Dionysus. She’s kind—strange, perhaps, in the way wild things are strange. But kind."

A cicada rasps in a fig tree overhead. The sea murmurs somewhere below the hill. Hermes adjusts his staff across his shoulders, glancing sideways at his quiet charge.

"Don’t look so tragic, little one. The world only turns."

He stops, crouching in the dry grass, and pulls a sprig of fennel from the earth. Tucks it behind your ear with a conspiratorial wink.

"Mark this. There are things yet to be brewed in you. Great things. But they take time. Fire. Good hands." He straightens again. "And she has those."

You crest the hill then. Below, a glade opens like the inside of a song—humming with bees, rich with the glow of afternoon. A woman stands in the clearing, her form wreathed in ivy, her gaze steady as stone worn smooth by streamwater. She turns at the sound of their approach, and her mouth softens.

Hermes slows. Does not let his own sorrow show. You do not let go of his cloak.

"Come now," the god murmurs, lower now, more to himself than you. "This is the hard part."

Hermes kneels again, turning you gently by the shoulders. One hand lifts, brushing a stray curl from your cheek, and his voice dips, loses its lilt.

"You’re no mortal, little lord. You are the sapling of something sacred. And I—" Hermes swallows, smiles crookedly. "Well, you'll go. Listen to old Hermes, won't you?"