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“It is said that the sea gives nothing back, but I know this not to be so. It takes, in truth, as it has taken from me, as it bore my first love far away and fast, while I lay sleeping on the sands. And I wept then, and raged, and cursed the sea and all who sail upon it, and wished doom down on Theseus, who I had loved only hours before.
The sea did not listen, or so I thought. It was pitiless, inexorable, the waves washing higher over the shore, smoothing the sands and erasing all sign of the Athenians' passage, leaving me alone and bitter, a broken thing.
It was from the seafoam he arose, the froth of it clinging across his skin for a moment, shining in the light of the setting sun. I knew him for a god, for who else can rise from the waters as though they are made from them? But he gave no other clue to his identity, circling me like a prowling cat, noting my dishevelment, reaching out with a gentle hand to smooth back the hair fallen over my brow.
He was beautiful, beautiful as the sun, and filled with as much power and menace as the sea itself, yet it was more than that – I had known powerful men before, and beautiful ones besides. But I had never once known one who looked at me as though he saw me for who I was, and found that beloved. He saw not a princess, or a savior, or a fortune in human form, but simply a half-dressed girl on a beach, with windblown hair and a face streaked with tears and flushed with rage. All this he saw, and he knew it for the woman beneath, one who was not happy, not content with her lot but longed to escape it, to make something more. And his eyes told me, long before his lips said the words, that he thought this a worthy feeling.
He knelt beside me then, the white sand clinging to his golden skin, and said, 'Why so sad, love? He was unworthy of you, and the precious salt of your tears is wasted on him.'
'Drink with me, and forget all sorrow,' he said, and set his hand into the sand, and there appeared a river of wine. So I knew him then for Dionysus, and he promised me rivers of milk and honey, and all else I should desire, as we lay together in bliss, on the purple robe he had spread beneath us.
My crown he set in the sky as stars above us, so that something of me should always be looking down on him, and for many years we lived together, in love and loyalty. Every promise he made to me, he kept, down to the last – that I should fight by his side, for I had had enough of standing in the shadows, waiting for heroes to return.
And so I have come to this place, for Perseus turned me to stone in that battle. A statue and a crown of stars are all that remain in the world above, to show that I have lived. Those, and the grief of a god, for I fancy I can hear his mourning even now – a quiet sound, but steady, and unending, enough to rend the world and keep the dead with the living.
So ends my tale, my queen; is it enough to satisfy?”
“It is the tale of your marriage,” said Persephone, fingers brushing the petals of black and silver flowers, “but not, I think, of your life.”
Ariadne smiled, looking across the fields to where the distant rivers lay, the borders of the Underworld. “No; a life is always more than a succession of loves, as I am certain you would agree. But for me, now, it is the only part that matters.”
Pollen dusted Persephone's fingertips, glistening in the soft light; the goddess studied it a moment, then sent it wafting away on the breath of a few whispered words. “Why do you believe this to be so?” she asked, turning to Ariadne.
Eyes focused on a far distant horizon, Ariadne remembered the ebb and flow of the waves, the seafoam tickling her feet, the sands warm and giving beneath her. “Because,” she said. “He comes for me.”