▸ Column · Contemporary modern day — Ares walks the modern world, stalking wine bars and smartphones with the patience of an immortal who has seen every empire built on the same bones.
ARES replies.
Replied to by Ares, with a rebuttal from Wonder Woman.
The letter
I had cleared my entire evening for this — arranged it two weeks out, arrived at the wine bar on time, ordered water, and sat there for sixty-three minutes counting the clock. When he finally walked in, he slid into the booth and launched into a story about some podcast he'd been listening to in the car, not a word of apology. When I mentioned I'd nearly left, he laughed and said something about traffic, then ordered the most expensive bottle on the menu and split the cost with me down the middle. What I can't shake: the rest of the night was genuinely wonderful. He texted the next morning asking when we could see each other again. Am I foolish to be tempted — when his very first move was to treat sixty-three minutes of my life as though they owed him nothing?
Ares replies
You are not crazy. That much I will grant you.
He arrived over an hour past the appointed hour, unapologetic, launched straight into his story, laughed at your one small protest, consumed the most expensive wine at your table, divided the reckoning evenly — and still the evening was good enough that you write to me now, about him. You have not said the quiet part aloud: you find him magnetic.
Ten thousand years have taught me why.
He took the field. He walked in and claimed your time and your coin and your attention without paying a price, and lost nothing. You are drawn to that because you were shaped to be. It is not madness. It is the oldest law in the blood.
But hear what you are truly asking. You go back as what? As a province that absorbed the first conquest without consequence? Then you return as territory, and territory does not negotiate terms.
The price of your company is not his apology. Apologies are the armor of the weak-willed, and men of his kind reach for them cheaply when pressed. The price is his understanding that the next hour costs something. If he cannot grasp that, the field has already shown you what every engagement with him will look like.
Go back, or do not. Both are strength. The one path that is closed to you is returning as the woman who sat counting his minutes while he drank your wine.
— Ares
Wonder Woman weighs in
Ares has watched humanity for ten thousand years and still cannot tell the difference between a man who is magnetic and a man who simply does not believe he owes you anything.
"Traffic, you know how it is." That is the line that matters — not the late arrival itself. What a person does with a small truth, the kind that costs nothing except the admission of having been thoughtless, is exactly what they will do with every large one that follows.
Tell him plainly that the hour mattered. Honor him with the truth, even though the truth is that he failed you. Watch what he does with it. That response is the only audition worth attending, friend, and you will not need a god of war to read the result.
— Wonder Woman
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