“c7″>Aphrodite watched for the opportunity to help the village
girl. In the meantime, she practiced her love spells on other
mortals. She began to listen to their prayers. Sure enough, they
had grown less over the years, but mortals never ceased to amaze
Aphrodite with their capacity for hope and faith, and the prayers
still came. She ignored the frivolous, vain prayers of maidens to
be made more beautiful in the hope of capturing this youth or that
– or several. Instead, Aphrodite focused on matching soulmates to
one another – it so irked the other gods that it gave the goddess a
perverse pleasure. As always, Zeus smiled indulgently at his
favourite daughter – when his attention could be torn from the war,
that is.

“c7″>"I have got to do something about that war – Daddy never
has any time for me anymore," Aphrodite
pouted.

“c7″>One day, Aphrodite watched as the village girl was taking some
wash to the stream with a group of other girls, She was chattering
away and the goddess was amazed that the other girls could ignore
such a great story – it was about her, of course, so it captured
the goddess's interest right away. So engrossed was she in the
story of herself and her magic girdle that made any god or mortal
enamoured of her …

“c7″>"Like I need a magic girdle," Aphrodite snorted
delicately, but she listened for more, loving the sound of her name
on the girl's lips …

“c7″>…that she almost missed the approaching danger from two
sides. Quickly, the goddess backed away to get a look at the threat
to her now-favourite mortal.

“c7″>On one side, slavers approached, ready to pounce on the girls.
On the other, a dark warrior – the one the goddess recognised as
her brother's favourite – approached, though strangely, the
warrior-woman was stripped of all her armour and weapons. Although
Aphrodite sensed the danger the woman posed to the village girl, it
was not as immediate as the slavers who were starting to attack the
girls taking the wash to the stream.

“c7″>Aphrodite acted quickly. She magically "shoved" the
warrior-woman towards the melee, only to be surprised once again as
the dark soul of this warrior and the brightly lit soul of the Bard
came together as one. The village girl was fighting back against
the slavers with all her might as the warrior woman stepped in. At
that point, Aphrodite lost interest; she had no desire to watch
some dumb fight – especially since she already knew the outcome.
Her work was done, though the goddess resolved to linger and listen
and to keep her eye out for the inherent danger she had seen from
the Warrior to the Bard. That was for another day, perhaps years
away.

“c7″>From that day on, revelling in the satisfaction of having
brought the soul-mates together (it completely escaped her that
they had been gravitating towards one another before she came
along, as soul-mates often do when mortals listen to their hearts),
Aphrodite began listening to the prayers of mortals again (though
she might ignore them if they gave her stinky fish) and love once
again began to grow among mortals. She even found a way to stop her
brother's distracting war with the help of the Warrior Woman
and the Bard – but that is another story
altogether.