Let's check in with Trevor and Charliese in modern-day Greece :) ...

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Scene 8: Big Bang

A.D. 2015

"So, assuming just for argument's sake that somehow you're not insane and are actually primordial Chaos incarnate," Trevor posited, overstating his own skepticism, because a reasonable professor like him would never entertain such a notion, "on that assumption, here's my question."

From where she stood at the far end of the hotel room packing for their imminent departure to the isles, Charliese cast a brief glance at him over her shoulder, lips upturned in an affectionate smile. "Still pretending that you don't believe me, love? It may get tiresome prefacing everything you say to me with artificial incredulity..."

"Would you stop using your feminine charms and five-syllable words to seduce me into saying I believe you? You know I'm a sucker for your coy little smiles and superfluously elegant vocabulary."

"Oh, my dearest professorial fiancé, I'm extraordinarily apologetic if you erroneously thought me to be so deliberately manipulative..." Charliese enunciated each multisyllabic word as an excruciating tease.

He scowled, then pushed his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose, since they had inched down from the scrunching of his brows. "As I was saying," he continued, "assuming just for argument's sake that your overwhelmingly unbelievable claims are all true, then this is my question to you: what the motherfuck are you planning to do?"

His fiancée calmly carried on folding her clothes, placing them into her rollaway in tidy little rows. "So much for elegant vocabulary..."

"Of all the forms of language, expletives are by far the most expressive. There is elegance in such effective expression," Trevor asserted, overplaying the obnoxious tone common among many in his profession. "So cut the shit, please, and answer the question."

"That's very cute," she cooed. "But honestly, Trev, I have no clue what the motherfuck I plan to do. This present life is my first time on earth, and therefore my first incarnation as a human, as I've told you."

"Right. Unlike the Fates."

"Correct. Each of them has experienced millennia of mortal existence. Whereas in my case... let's just say I'm very new to this."

Trevor nodded. "Which is why, unlike them, you retain memory of your immortal identity. I mean — of your alleged immortal identity."

She flashed another of her coy, charming smiles at him. "Yes, that is certainly part of the reason. These memories remain with me partly because I am less distanced from my divine existence."

"Part of the reason?"

Charliese bit her lip for a moment while carefully folding her favorite grey dress. "The entire explanation is... complex."

"Honey, I'm a nerdy professor; I get off on explanatory complexity."

"I know, love. Maybe I'll indulge you in the full, long-winded, complicated story once you've openly acknowledged my identity."

"Oh, come on, that's a totally unfair level of bitchy..."

"Really? Just a few days ago, you claimed to have accepted me as basically the uterus of the universe — don't look so disgusted, Trevor, those were your own words—" she reproved in response to his petulant grimace, "—and I know that you meant it, which is why it's disingenuous of you to keep expressing doubt about it now."

"There you go again with all the syllables... 'disingenuous'..."

"Trevor, dearest, for just a second can we please be serious?"

"I was serious when I asked you what you plan to do."

"And I told you: as of now, I have no clue," she restated, zipping up her luggage once she finished packing, then crossing the room toward her fiancé, sitting in bed beside him. "In this life, my first ever experience as a human, there is only one thing I know for certain."

He grinned. "That it's time for us to bang? Long overdue..."

"Make that two," she sighed with a roll of her steely grey eyes, slapping his hand away. "The second being that I absolutely hate you."

"The first being the opposite, I hope?" he murmured as he leant in for a kiss, glad that she loved him too much to resist. "Love you, too."

The following morning, Trevor was dizzier and sorer than he'd ever been, even after his worst hangovers. Which he soon realized made a lot of sense, since he had spent the last night getting busy with the origin of the universe. He had basically banged the Big Bang. The nerd in him thought that was super cool, even if freakishly terrifying.

Meanwhile, Miss Big Bang was already wide awake, showered and primped, platinum hair spilling down her shoulder in a sideswept pony, shimmering in the sunlight where she sat beside the window browsing through a classy magazine and sipping tea.

"Morning, Trev," she uttered without even raising her gaze from the page. "Last night was lovely, but I hope you're done recovering; we have to leave in half an hour to catch the ferry. Please be ready."

Damn if she wasn't hot when she was so damn cold, he thought.

On the shuttle ride from Athens to Piraeus Port, Charliese asked whether he had been in touch with Cloe recently.

"Cloe?" he parroted, playfully pretending not to recognize the name for a second. "Ohh right, you mean Cloe Turner, aka Clotho—"

"Please, spare me another of your snarky remarks about how her role as the creator of souls means that she's practically your mother. That's not how it works, as I've told you before," she maintained. "She's still just a girl, the same girl we both know and adore."

"Sure, easy for you to say," he huffed beneath his breath. "You're a self-proclaimed deity, unlike your measly mortal fiancé."

"Trev, please try to be cool. She doesn't even know."

"And we're keeping it that way for... how long?"

"Like I've explained a thousand times, it's really not the type of thing that Cloe should be told," Charliese reminded him. "Now that her powers in this life have been awakened, she will learn more about her true identity and abilities on her own, organically. It will be best that way."

"And in the meantime, I just have to make sure not to slip?"

She shrugged. "Hopefully you can manage it. But if you do slip, I'll just promptly shut you up, or tell her that you're drunk. And that your nerdy little brain imagines everybody as a mythological deity, when you're under the influence."

He pursed his lips, impressed. "That's actually very believable, Char. You're a genius."

"Thank you. Though for the record, flattery with compliments like this does not make up for calling me a cosmological uterus."

Trevor tried to make up for it with a kiss, but Charliese was in one of her cold moods, so of course she would resist. "We're in public," she hissed.

As she turned to look out the window, he took out his phone and checked his email. At the top of his inbox was a message from Cloe.

"Oh hey, speak of the devil — or divinity of destiny, or whatever."

"Very funny, Trevor."

"Don't worry, honey, I won't tell her. At least not as long as I'm sober," he reassured her as he read the email. Cloe had sent him some photos of the monuments on Delos, knowing how much her favorite nerdy professor would appreciate those. "And hey, she says in a few days she'll be on Santorini — so will we. Should we make plans to meet?"

"Of course," Charliese replied. "I'd love to see her if we can."

"Great! I'll just tell her to write it on a napkin, and it'll happen."

That pissed her off, quite a bit, but Trevor knew that he — unlike anyone else one earth, probably — could get away with making the Big Bang angry. Because she loved him. For better or worse, primordial Chaos, the living, breathing origin of the universe, loved him.

And when he stopped to think about it, that was sort of motherfucking awesome.

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Any thoughts about #Treliese? ;)

Next scene, we'll jump back to B.C. with Atria and Akhel...

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