So what does a snake do, then ?

So now I've got their attention, what do we talk about ? Have to think quickly, although they've promised not to run off, they won't hang around for ever either.
Decide to be a bit cunning (maybe) and try to see if they'll do for me what they did for Eurydice not long back.
Say to them that I've got a girlfriend who, I think, is going off me - doesn't pay me attention, that sort of thing, and needs a bit of a shock to make her realise how important I am to her. Tell them that I've heard that getting bitten by a snake ( like a viper in particular) while out walking can almost kill you, but not quite, and after a few days you wake up with a bad headache, but still alive. Tell them that I think this might bring her round, and ask what do they think ?
So they think about it for a while, I can hear them whispering to each other, and eventually they tell me that it's a good idea, but you need to be careful. It can go wrong they say.
So I ask them, all innocently, what could go wrong ?
And they tell me all about Eurydice and what happened to her. And the one with the milky eyes says " Got me killed too, I was dead as well, and if it hadn't been for those nice gods and goddesses I'd have still been down there"
Now that was the beginning of what I wanted to hear - so I carry on playing the innocent and ask "Which Gods and Goddesses would that be then ?" and he tells me - swears me to secrecy first, I've got to promise not to tell a soul, but it was - well, there was quite a list - and he tells me it was all because of some nymph or other, who had annoyed them about some Adonis bloke, so they'd decided to sort her out by making her son so miserable he'd probably kill himself. So who was it ? Well, if I said that Mr H, Ares, Aphrodite and Artemis were all part of it, that would just about sum it up.
He said they didn't go into all the details with him, but that he had been approached by Artemis first, who had explained to him that this girl would turn up and ask him to bite her, because she would be set up by Mr H to get bitten by a snake, and that the others were just out for revenge and she was doing a "hit" for them. She said she'd done it before, too. She had explained that she'd be firing a poison dart at the same moment as he bit, so it would look like a snake bite had killed her, and that as long as he did what he was told, he'd be all right. Part of the deal was not to tell her, the target, anything about it, even if it went wrong - and that was why they sorted it out for him - why he was back up here - because he'd kept his side of the bargain.

This was dynamite - what I had suspected had been confirmed - and they were all in it together - so now what could I do ? I'd promised milky-eyes that I'd not tell anyone, and that promise had to be kept, but it was really unfair that Eurydice was still down there, dead, because of a plot by a lot of gods that wasn't even about her ! And the fact that a lot of it was about me made me fel really guilty too - if Orpheus's mum hadn't done what she did for me, Eurydice could still be alive.
So who could I talk to ? Zeus ? Apollo ? Got to find a way to get it sorted.

Anway, for now, tell the two vipers that I'll have a good think about what they've told me - getting bitten to make my girlfriend notice me doesn't sound quite as much of a good idea as it did to start with now, I said, and I tell them they can go, and their secret is safe with me. So off they go, quick as a flash, into the bushes, and I head off back to base, thinking all the way there about how I can make something happen to sort it out and make it fair.

Not an easy thing to manage, that, I'll tell you about it next time.....