The Goddess In Training

Magnolia sat at home and thought about this Venus.

She was beautiful, that much was undeniable.

Of course she was beautiful. She was the fucking goddess of love, Magnolia chided silently. Beauty was her stock-in-trade. Beauty looked to her for help when it was having a bad hair day.

Hard to compete with that, Magnolia thought. She pursed her newly plump and now permanently red lips lusciously.

Not that Zem seemed to care for Venus, personally. And the love goddess certainly nurtured no warm, fuzzy feelings for her former master on Olympus. Judging by her reactions tonight, she considered him a major source of unhappiness, the thorn in her lovely, perfect side.

Would that be useful? Or was it another problem? Magnolia considered the thing from all angles, or as many angles as she could think of, and wondered where her best course of action lay.

She’d sat, had Venus, silent and stony-faced, while Magnolia described the Temple of Impotence in all its sleazy single entendre glory. Magnolia had deliberately gotten more flowery as she’d talked, trying to get a reaction from the blonde goddess. But nothing had moved her, nothing had elicited so much as a raised eyebrow, until Magnolia pulled out the sketches.

Then, all hell broke loose. Venus had raged, she’d screamed, she’d torn the pages out of Magnolia’s fingers and ripped them to shreds. She’d ranted and raved and stormed and banged. And then she’d left.

It wasn’t as impressive as Zem’s anger. No lightning bolts, no transformations. Magnolia had watched after her, not realizing at first that the scene was finished. Honoré had watched, too, incensed in her own way at the Temple designs, but mostly just staring open-mouthed at her star.

A full minute after Venus’ exit, Honoré had suddenly realized that her wonder girl might be gone, really gone, and ran out, screaming at stage hands and dancers to find her, find her before they had to cancel the whole show.

Magnolia had sat and surveyed Venus’ dressing room. She fingered all the goddess’ brand-new costumes. The hotel had spared no expense, she noted. The beads were real crystal, and the fabrics were divine– a turn of phrase that made Magnolia smile as she thought it, running a jeweled cape through her fingers. She imagined wearing it, the luxury of feeling it swirl around her as she spun and strode across the huge stage.

Venus didn’t know how good she had it.

Then Magnolia left, too. The backstage of Extravaganza! was in uproar. There was no sign of Venus, no hint of where she’d gone. There was also no chance whatsoever of any of the hundred other Extrav! girls, who wandered the halls aimlessly, filling in for her. The very idea of an understudy to the Love Goddess was laughable.

Magnolia walked out frowning, thinking dark thoughts. Her own position in this pantheon was new and precarious enough without ancient goddesses, she considered. Would there have to be a Battle of the Blondes in the near future? In that case, she would have to study up, to find out what made this one tick, and how to beat her. Or, maybe, how to manipulate her.

Magnolia did not intend to let has-been deities interfere with her position. Or her prospects. If Mount Olympus was going to be reborn in Vegas, well, she intended it to have a new addition, a certain former human, former male, beauty of the modern world.

But that was in the future. Meanwhile, she could report to Zem that his minimal competition in town wasn’t offering much of a threat today. From Venus’ grand exit, the erstwhile mayor imagined it would be a long time before she so much as showed her face again, let alone mounted any real resistence to her one-time Ruler.

And by that time, Zem would be securely installed and in charge, Magnolia concluded, and she, herself, might have climbed a few steps higher on the god-ladder. She ran her long fingernails through her hair, tossed it, and walked out amid the raging chaos of a goddess-less Extravaganza!

NEXT POST: FALL FROM THE TOPLESS OLYMPUS (Friday 12/18)