Collaborative short story: "I Don't Give a Fig!"

[ceelove]

mangosteen and I pondered the origin of the wasps-becoming-figs phenomenon and decided it needed an origin story, a la Greek myth. We crafted one, and I fleshed it out. For extra challenge, I wrote it in segments of <140 characters so I could put it on Twitter. Here it is.

The lesson is probably, don’t neg a goddess. Or maybe, know your origin stories.
Either way, he’s in for it from the moment he opens his fool mouth to say, “I could do better.”
Now, Athena has some serious resting bitchface - but still, it shows when you’ve displeased She who knit-bombed Arachne into a spider.
Possibly because she’s been hearing this stuff for millennia and most of us are sick to death of it after about five minutes.
And yet, she gives him the same calm, unearned grace she bestows so freely. “You could create a better olive tree, do you mean?”
“No, olives have been done to death. I’d want to go in a fresh new direction, cleanse the palate with something fruity…”
The next thing you know, he goes and creates this flowering tree. Nice enough in its way, but then he keeps fussing with it. Like they do.
He prods the bloom until he is hopelessly entangled with it, inverts it around his finger.
And then he’s caught up in an impossible intimacy, caressing and penetrating its newfound interior.
He shudders with love and it near lifts him from the ground. He buzzes with agitation to be one with his creation.
Athena takes his measure with her cool gaze. “And what would a virgin like you know of it?” he says waspishly.
But it does not sting her. “So what must happen to consummate your union?” she queries. “I don’t give a fig!” he flies back.
Ah, but she does: it is her specialty to unravel the tangled desires of the human will, to find the thread.
And so she weaves his DNA afresh to be himself most fully.
He is a wasp, and he thrusts himself with desperate ardor into his flower, merging to become one succulent flesh.
Athena plucks a fig and nibbles it appreciatively. “I’m glad you decided to do better,” she tells it.