Catseye & Jean-Paul, Monday Evening

[x-quebecois.livejournal.com]

Catseye stops by to ask some questions about ancient mythology, but the conversation takes a slightly different turn.

Jean-Paul had left his windows open in his suite after he got in from his flight, wanting the fresh air to circulate a bit before he closed them. He was just finishing Othello when he heard a quiet noise outside. Considering that he was on the third floor, the possibilities for who that could be were limited.

Glancing up, he said, "Bonjour?"

Catseye's purple form poked its head in the window from where she was balancing on the sill, having made a game of jumping from sill to sill from her own suite to his window. "Mrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt?" she questioned, asking to be invited in.

"Come in, chaton," he said, marking his page and putting the book down. "How are you?"

Catseye jumped into the suite and shifted, transferring the book she'd brought from her tail to her hand. "I am well yesyesyes it is good to be able to heal superfast or else I would still be sore from the bad guy hurting me at the camp in Pakistan but I am not hurt because I heal fast and that is a verygood thing. How are you did you get hurt fighting bad guys?"

"Oui," Jean-Paul said, smiling a little. "A bit." He showed her the healing burns on his right arm, visible since he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. "I am glad that you heal very fast, though." Nodding toward the book, he asked, "What have you there?"

Catseye held out her copy of The Battle of the Labyrinth for Jean-Paul to see. "It is a book about a boy who has powers like a mutant because his dad is an Olympian named Paw-sigh-den and he has to fight monsters that are made out of bits of different animals! There are five books and this is number four and they are all very interesting even though I do not know much about the Olympians and the monsters."

Quirking a smile, Jean-Paul nodded and held out his hand to look at the book. "The Olympians are part of Greek Mythology. It is older than Roman Mythology, but they are similar. The Romans borrowed many things, you see. It was easier, I think, to rename Greek gods and goddesses than to create their own." He tipped his head to the side and asked, "Would you like to know about the Olympians? There is a great deal of mythology to go with them. It would be a lot of reading, I think."

"I love reading!" Catseye answered, as if that weren't already blatantly obvious, since Jean-Paul was the one who'd gotten her so interested in reading in the first place. She handed over the book eagerly. "I think I would like to know more about the Olympians and Greek Mythology and Roman Mythology too! And I would like to know how come the Romans needed to create gods," she added. Religion had always been a cause of great confusion to her.

"They renamed them," Jean-Paul said, considering the book she'd handed him. "They conquered people, like the Greeks, oui? And I think that it was easier to say to the conquered people that they had the same gods, they just had different names... it was better to say they were the same instead of trying to change the conquered people's religion." History had never been his strong suit, though. "Zeus is the king of the Greek gods. Jupiter is the king of the Roman gods, but they do the same things, for the most part. Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom, Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom. It is an interesting back and forth."

He didn't have any books on mythology, which was unfortunate. "We could go to the library to see what books they have, oui? Once you are finished with your series, of course."

"But why did the Romans want the Greek gods to be their gods? Why did they need gods for?" Cayseye inquired. "Did they not know gods are not real and what the Greeks and Romans and everybody think they do is really done by science?"

"They wanted to explain why things happened. Why there was thunder, why crops failed, why some were smarter than others, why people died. They were not so advanced as we are today. When the Romans conquered the Greeks, it was easy for them, then, to say that their god of war had favoured the Romans rather than the Greeks." Jean-Paul shrugged. Religion in general wasn't really his strong suit, either, what with him being an atheist and all. He didn't have many strong suits. "They explained the seasons of the year by saying the daughter of the harvest goddess was kidnapped by the god of the underworld. So while she was gone, her mother mourned her loss. It is interesting, is it not? I think the tales themselves very clever."

Catseye thought this over long and hard, tail lashing, bare toes flexing on Jean-Paul's carpet. "They are good stories to explain things, yes," she admitted finally. "I like good stories. But I think saying gods did things is lazy! I think it is not fair to say that they lost a war because the god liked the other team better! Because really they lost the war because they were not as strong or not as smart! So they should have been smarter and stronger! And maybe if they were smarter they would know that seasons change because the earth goes around the sun," she grumbled. "But yes they are good stories," she acquiesced after a moment. "What is your favourite story about the gods?"

"If I was to be a proper literature teacher," Jean-Paul said, smiling, "I would tell you it was The Odyssey. It is not, though. Which is good, because I am not teaching officially. I like the smaller myths. The explanation stories, oui? Like how Athena gave the olive tree to the people of Greece and so the city of Athens bears her name. I like, also, the origin stories. About how the gods were born. It is interesting, I think, that even gods and goddesses must struggle in their childhoods."

"They must?" Catseye inquired, curiosity piqued. "Just like mutants when they get their powers? I do not know those stories. I know you are not a proper lit-rat-oor teacher anymore," she added, parroting his words back to him, "but can you teach me?" Hopefully, she perched on the arm of his couch, giving him her best wide-eyed head tilt, a move she'd learned from Nick. She wasn't a dog, but it was worth a shot.

"Oui, they must," Jean-Paul said, nodding even as he smiled again. "Zeus, the king of the gods, had to rescue his brothers and sisters, who had been eaten whole by their father. Prometheus brought man fire so they would not freeze and was punished for eternity by having an eagle eat his liver each day - he is immortal, oui? And so he cannot die, no matter how much he suffers. Dionysus was not even a god, truly. He nearly died before he was born, but his father saved him. There are many stories, chaton. Is there one you would like particularly to know?"

Catseye pondered this for a moment, sliding off the arm of Jean-Paul's couch and onto the couch proper, since he seemed to have accepted her request to teach her and wasn't asking her to leave because he felt like Danger. "In one of these books," she began, motioning to the paperback she held, "they talk a lot about someone called Herk-ooo-lees and they said that he killed a lion with his hands and wore its coat and that he held up the world and that he cleaned a stable that had fire-breathing horses in it! Mister Beaubier, I know that these are just stories and that they are supposed to teach stupid Greek people how the world works but I would like to know the stories about this man! I want to know how can a man kill a lion with his hands? Was the lion sick? Why did he do all these things? Was it his job, was he like an X-Man who had to protect people by beating bad guys like fire-breathing horses and sick lions?"

"Heracles," Jean-Paul said, careful of the pronunciation. He smiled a little, then said, "He was an interesting hero. Zeus was his father, oui? His mother was a mortal woman. Zeus' wife, Hera - she was very jealous. She tried to kill him when he was very young by sending snakes to his crib, but he survived and killed them instead. He was very good at wrestling and archery and many other things, also. But later, once he was married and had children... she drove him mad. Crazy, oui? And he killed his children. So to make up for this, he had to complete twelve tasks. One of them was to kill the Nemean Lion."

Quirking a smile as he paused, Jean-Paul said, "The lion, he was not sick. He was very strong, in fact. Nothing could get through his coat - no knives, no spears, no arrows. It was impenetrable. So he had to be very smart. He waited until the lion was in its cave, then blocked the entrance and strangled it, since he could have no other way to kill it. Afterward, he wore its coat as a cape, as the story tells you." He nodded toward the book in her hand. "This was not his job, I think, but a way for him to atone for killing his family. He was able to do it because he was very strong, like some X-Men. And very smart, like others."

"Herk-ooo-lees, not Hair-ah-klees," Catseye corrected, correcting Jean-Paul's pronounciation and spelling out the name as it appeared in the series with a claw on the back of her book. "Are they different? Did Herk-ooo-lees do the same things as Hair-ah-klees? And what does atone mean?"

"They are the same, oui, simply a different way to say the name, I think," Jean-Paul answered. Then he paused before continuing, "It means... to make up for. If you do something that is wrong, you have to make up for it, oui? There are consequences for the things that we do. Going to jail if you rob a bank or apologising if you hurt someone's feelings. You are atoning for the thing that you have done that was wrong."

"I think atone is good," Catseye mused. "Everybody should make up for things that they do that are wrong. But I think sometimes people atone too much and that is bad. Nick atones too much. So do you," she pointed out, smiling up at him. "There should be a book that has all the Rules for how much people have to atone for things so that silly boys do not atone too much and make themselves feel too too too bad and then their friends feel bad for them. What is ambrosia? The people eat it in the books but only the god-people."

"Ambrosia?" Jean-Paul considered that for a moment, then said, "It is the food of the gods, oui? What sustains them. And nectar is their drink. But it is not good for normal humans to eat and drink, their systems cannot process it. I believe this is the story, anyway." Nodding toward her book, he asked, "Only the god-people eat it, oui? What makes them god-people? Zeus and his family? Or others?"

"Oui," she nodded, "only the god-people. The regular-people are not allowed to eat it. They are god-people because one of their parents is a god like Paw-sigh-den or Athena or Zeus and the other parent is a regular person," the catgirl answered. "But what is ambrosia? Is it meat? In these stories it tastes like whatever the boy thinks is tasty and it changes but that cannot be real because food cannot change how it tastes! So is ambrosia just a story too or is it really real and the stories just make up the part about it changing how it tastes when a god-person eats it?"

"I do not believe it is real, like meat or eggs or things like this," Jean-Paul said, frowning a little. "And I do not think the nectar that they drink is real, either. Not like flower nectar." Then he smiled and shrugged. "It is the food of the gods - I think that it could be whatever they would like it to be, oui?"

"If I was a god, I would want to eat deer burgers and pastrami ice cream every day!" Catseye informed him with a matter-of-fact nod. "And never any green things even though they are good for me!"

"Pastrami ice cream?" Jean-Paul asked, brows rising. Deer burgers were a little more plausible, he felt. But not the pastrami ice cream. Then he laughed and shook his head. "Chaton, that is a strange combination, I think."

Catseye's eyes widened. "You have never tried pastrami ice cream?!" she asked incredulously, all thoughts of Greek myths and reading forgotten. Immediately she jumped off the couch and took Jean-Paul's forearm. "You have to try it! Bobby makes it for me! I have some in the freezer! Can we go to the kitchen so you can try it? Pleasepleaseplease?"

"If you would like," Jean-Paul said, tone somewhat bemused. "I will certainly try it."