Violent Delights Have Violent Ends

She was love overflowing. It dripped into a chalice, and it had never been emptied. It was too great a cup, occupied in the grandest halls of tribute. Everyone drank from the blood of her bleeding heart resided in that golden cup. And those who poised their lips to it received the Gods' offerings as the Gods received their adoration. She could not love just one singular person, for her love was the purest, most self-sacrificing, and that produced magic. It was from this that sprang forth Spring, flowers and water itself. Eros became instantly infatuated with her, and he wrongly wanted Agape all to himself. Erratic, lacking caution all his life, the Great Gods rightlh prohibited him seeking courtship with Agape. It came from fear. What if all of her love, the power and drive of their world, could be directed in an all consuming flame of combustion when met with Eros' desires? He was to remain on the plains of Earth, as always, spurring and flaming man's desires to produce more serving mortal servants, and that alone. But...He made many a plea and entreaty for her to run away with him and to forget what he considered to be her shallow admirers. She refused him, even though her love for him grew daily as did his attentions. His free spirit made her long for him, to be free with no bars. Agape worried. She had to love everyone equally. That was where her power came from, she did not know what was to become of her if she didn't obey it. Equitable love tempered the sheer strength of her love. Eros, brooking no refusal and becoming ravenously jealous by the day, entered the hall on a cool, starry evening, and convinced her to give him all the love she possessed; he drank all the contents of her cup of sustenance. She had died right then, as did Eros, and they created the first lovers' suicides and with it a curse; with their deaths, the bountiful spring valleys dried up and cracked like deserts. Her body turned to stone, and she was whisked away into a special part of the underworld. She herded the lost lovers of the world, harnessing their power to give to the Gods who restored the scarred Earth. She, a lost lover, and now the Queen of lost lovers.

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Agape's tears ran black against her cheeks, underneath her black veil. She stirred an orange river with a large wooden ladle; what bobbed up from its rivets and currents were statues of lovers once possessing the warm skin that forever held a blush. Now, their skin was cold stone. She constantly wept for those the world treated so cruelly, a world that drove them to suicide. The River of Suicides, it was called, and her tears created it; indeed, she cried for all the lost lovers of the world over, and those tears made the river they drowned in within the Underworld.