Hathor didn’t understand why she couldn’t attract men the way she used to.

There was a time, only a few short years ago, when she could attract any man of any age with just a glance, she was positively hypnotic. Even infant boys would stare and reach out towards her. She could command attention from older gents chatting in the park, from teenaged boys loitering outside of schools, from fathers chasing toddlers through the supermarket. She was a living example of a pin-up girl, full of va-voom and intoxicating charm, with curves in all the places that a man dreamed of putting his hands.

That time was past though. She wasn’t sure why or how it happened. And she couldn’t even pinpoint when. She still had the charm and the va-voom, she was still intoxicating – or at least that’s what the mirror told her. Sure, her university classes (even timeless goddesses could get bored, you know) told her she wasn’t supposed to need a man’s approval to make her way in the world. Her life coach told her that she needed to keep the focus on things she could control. Her hairdresser, manicurist and her massage therapist all told her that she was a great looking woman and that the problem was just that men were ridiculous.

She couldn’t argue with any of it. She didn’t really need approval – but she did like it. She did want to focus on the things she could control – even men weren’t among the things she could control any more. And her beauty team were totally right -men were ridiculous.

Ridiculous didn’t begin to cover it, really. The men would all be much happier if they followed her around like ducklings the way they used to. What could possibly be bad about feeling like they were in love with her and that they were the most important creatures on earth. Sure, if you stopped to think about it, every man couldn’t be the most important creature on earth, that didn’t make sense, but she used to make them feel as if each of them were. It didn’t make sense that that had lost its appeal.

She looked the same, she acted the same, she smelled the same, she smiled the same. The problem had to be the men. It was enough to make her wish that she hadn’t outlived all the people of her homeland. A goddess with no worshipers was hardly a goddess at all, she might as well be an ordinary woman – at least then she could have had an ordinary husband and children.

Hathor sighed and swung her legs out of the car. Her red stilettos had barely touched the pavement when she heard a long, low whistle from the car behind. She stood up and smoothed her skirt, preening a little before she turned to see her admirer. The woman sitting behind the wheel of the lipstick-red Miata convertible had her sunglasses on top of her head, and was grinning in a way Hathor hadn’t seen in a while.

This was something she hadn’t considered. Perhaps all was not lost.