Chapter Text
"Dad!" Cassandra says in surprise upon opening her front door. "What are you doing here? You're early."
She steps aside to let her father into the house, and he answers, "Yes, well, I wanted to speak to you before the rest of our company arrived." He holds out a small box to her and adds, "I brought dinner rolls."
"Uh-oh. I don't know how I could've possibly gotten in trouble, living miles away and only seeing you a couple times a week," Cassandra says dryly, accepting the offering and turning towards the kitchen. "At least let me finish cooking while you berate me."
Her father chuckles. "No, you're not in trouble." Stepping inside, he looks around the country cottage thoughtfully and comments, "You've been doing a wonderful job keeping this place in order."
"Is that why you're here early?" Cassandra asks wryly. "To inspect that I haven't brought the house to ruin?"
"No, sorry, I'm just impressed. You never had such care when we lived here together," he responds, observing the neatly arranged bookcase near the door.
"Well, I was also a child then," Cassandra reminds him.
"And a teenager."
"A moody teenager," Cassandra specifies.
"You're still moody," he informs her, amused, walking over to join her in the kitchen.
Cassandra snorts. "Are you going to tell me why you're here early or just keep me at the edge of my seat?"
"I was hoping you'd move back to the city," her father says plainly.
Cassandra pauses in her seasoning. "Dad, you know I prefer it out here."
"You're all alone, Cassandra."
"I'm not alone! I've got Owl, and Fidella, and Maximus-"
"Cassandra," her father sighs, "as much as I love your animal company, you need real people around you."
"Ugh," Cassandra groans. "What have people ever done for me?"
"You're in the prime of your life. You need to meet new people, have new experiences. Out in the country is no place for that, especially since-"
Her father cuts off, hesitating as though he's trying to think of how to phrase a delicate matter. Cassandra raises an eyebrow.
"The city is a more modern place, you're a lot more likely to meet someone," he finally says.
"Ahh, the, 'you're going to die alone' talk, you could have led with that." Cassandra resumes her cooking.
"Well that's not what I was going for, but if you insist on never speaking to another soul it's possible."
"Listen, you're right," Cassandra tells him. "If finding a life partner was my only goal, the city would be the best place for me. But I've got more going on! Like, there's no way any place in the city would have enough space for my studio - at least, nowhere I can afford."
"I know you're attached to your sculptures, but what about your dream when you were younger?" Her father prompts. "Now that I'm a captain I might be able to get you into the guard - at least as part time shifts, it will take some time and administrative hoops to jump through but-"
Cassandra puts down the wooden spoon she was using to stir her stew and sighs. "It would break my heart, dad. What if you can't? I can't get my hopes up again. I found something I love, that makes me happy. I still practice my sword fighting, I hunt, I do the things out here that I can't do in the city. If I moved back and I couldn't do any of them... I could meet Aphrodite herself and I wouldn't be happy there."
Her father looks at her with sadness in his eyes. "I understand, Cassandra. But would you promise me you'd think about it? I can get started looking into ways to get you into the guard. If it looks like I could pull it off, would you move back?"
Cassandra considers. "Maybe. But I'm not the only one attached to my sculpting. If you want me to give it up and move back, you'd also have to convince-"
An abrupt and distinct knock at the front door interrupts Cassandra.
"Speak of the devil," the captain mutters while Cassandra snickers and walks over to the door.
"Uncle Monty! It's great to see you," Cassandra says, opening the door for the short man who lacks relation to her, but is such a close family friend that he was awarded the title.
"Ahhh Cassandra, bring 'er here," Monty says, opening his arms wide for a hug. After they part he looks towards the kitchen and says, "Ohoho, I see Mr. CAPTAIN has already arrived."
Cassandra's father sighs. "Hello, Monty."
"Eh? What kind of a greeting is that?" He asks as an aside to Cassandra, "Who spit in his pastries?"
Cassandra snorts. "Just wait, I'm sure it'll come up over dinner."
"Speakin' of dinner," Monty says, "I ran into Quirin in town today. He says he's deeply sorry, but he and Varian won't be in attendance tonight. Seems the lad blew up the basement again."
"Every day I thank the gods that you did not get into alchemy the way that child has," the captain says to Cassandra.
Monty barks a short laugh. "Yeah, since she lacked the wits for science instead she just got into brawls with every other kid in the seven kingdoms." ("Thanks Monty," Cassandra says dryly to the comment about her wits.)
"Didn't cause my property any damage, so in retrospect I see that as a gift," the captain notes.
"Well if we're all gathered, how about we serve dinner," Cassandra suggests, not interested in hearing her family recounting every trouble she caused as a youth.
Monty sits at the dinner table while Cassandra brings the pot of stew and the captain carries over the dinner rolls, nicely arranged on a platter, and a large bowl of roasted vegetables.
"Oh Cassandra," Monty says, reaching for the bottle of wine on the table as she and her father sit down. "I've got news for you that you'll love."
Cassandra's eyebrow raises while she serves herself some of the assorted dinner dishes.
"King Trevor of Equis is looking to woo the widow Queen Arianna," Monty continues.
"Monty, I'm glad you thought of me, but I'm not as interested in royal gossip as you," Cassandra comments.
"Hey, I'm not finished!" Monty huffs. "King Trevor is looking for a sculptor. He wants a life-sized statue of the lady Arianna to present to her as part of his courtship."
Cassandra pauses, her spoon of stew stopped shortly before her mouth. "That's a big job."
Monty laughs. "Yeah it is! And get this: he's heard the name Pygmalion! Trevor wants an example of his work shipped to his palace in Equis to examine. No doubt he'll choose you! We'll be raking in royal funds, and this'll open the doors for more nobles to commission you! This is the biggest opportunity yet! Forget busts for temples, this'll get you famous across the Seven Kingdoms! Even beyond!"
"Get Pygmalion famous," Cassandra corrects dryly.
"Tomatoes tamatoes," Monty says. "Did you not hear what I said about the money?"
"Dad, you want to chime in any opinions here?" Cassandra asks, placing an elbow on the table and looking at him innocently.
The captain's brow furrows. "Why does he want a bust sent to his palace? There are plenty of examples of Pygmalion's work in Corona's capital."
"King Trevor's not going to just show up in the queen's city without invitation, without any gifts! You should know formalities like that as a royal guard," Monty returns.
"Of course not, but he could send a proxy. Someone to examine the work for him," the captain suggests.
"Trevor's far too much of a control freak for that." Monty looks between Cassandra and the captain. "Am I going crazy? Why are you two not jumping for joy about this?"
"Dad wants me to quit sculpting," Cassandra says bluntly, lifting another spoonful of stew to her mouth.
"WHAT?" Monty cries incredulously. "You've got to be kidding me! Why?"
"It's not that I want her to quit sculpting!" The captain protests. "I want her to move back to the city-"
"-away from my studio," Cassandra embellishes.
"-because she's wasting the prime of her life alone in the middle of nowhere!"
"Dad thinks I'm going to die alone," Cassandra embellishes again.
"We can get her a studio in the city-"
"-nothing remotely like the space I have here, and surrounded by distractions, if we could even afford it," Cassandra adds.
"-and she can keep working there." The captain finally finishes.
"Out of the question," Monty answers. "If we're going to keep Pygmalion's identity a secret he can't be working out of a goddamn city apartment! Listen, if you're worried about Cassandra dying alone, don't be," Monty tells the captain. "Once we get the cash for this job and beyond we'll buy her a mansion on Lesbos itself and she can have any girl she wants."
Cassandra groans and puts her face into her hands, devastated by his trademark bluntness. "Thank you Monty," she says sarcastically.
"That would be quite a ways in the future, if it even happens," the captain replies to Monty. "If we keep pushing it off saying, 'oh after this job' and 'just one more' and 'oh, now that we've had this big break we can't quit now' she'll never get out of here. Especially if she starts taking on full-body statues, those can take years!"
Cassandra very badly wishes that her other usual family dinner guests were present to prevent the budding argument. Varian might interrupt the conversation to talk about something more exciting to him, like one of his experiments or inventions. Quirin might offer some sensible compromise early on. Xavier, not present this evening due to spending the weekend with his family in the capital for his niece's birthday, would at least exchange knowing eye contact with Cassandra about how ridiculous it is for those two to debate her future in front of her.
As her father and Monty continue their increasingly heated discussion, Cassandra looks down at her bowl and wishes she were done with her dinner so she could remove herself from the conversation. She starts eating very quickly as they continue bickering. Trying to ignore them, she only catches parts of their argument: ... "I'm a businessman-" "You're a baker!" "A bakery is a business!" … "Would you rather she die alone AND broke?" … "What if there's an accident in her studio, like one of her pulleys snapping while moving a block of stone and she gets crushed? No one is here to help her!" ...
"Well let's ask her," Monty says after a while, finally acknowledging the topic of their debate is in front of them. "What do you want to do Cassandra?"
Cassandra sighs. She has no interest in continuing this discussion. "How about I sleep on it and do some soul searching and tell you at next week's dinner?"
"Trevor wants the bust ASAP," Monty says. "You should make one so we can send it. You can always turn down the job after he gets it."
"Well, I needed something to work on anyway." Cassandra answers, pushing her chair back to collect the empty plates. "Who does he want the bust of?"
"Anyone will do. I think your interpretation of Aphrodite is one of your best, and it would certainly be suitable for the situation. You've got a couple in your studio, right? You can refine one of your works-in-progress and we'll send it over."
"You got it, boss," Cassandra says to Monty as her father sighs.
"Don't pay attention to him," Monty tells Cassandra. "He'll lighten up once he sees the gold from this job."
⚒☀⚒☀⚒
Cassandra has trouble sleeping that night. This isn't unusual for her, but her mind is particularly burdened after the eventful evening.
She was fifteen when her father was offered a promotion from a city guard on the outer walls to be a royal guard of Corona's castle, so they moved from the country home Cassandra grew up in - a couple of miles from the edge of the city - to an city apartment to be closer to his work. Cassandra's grandmother moved to take care of their home in their absence, and they visited her weekly.
Transplanted from the country - where she had been occupied with tending their vegetable gardens and small orchard, caring for their animals, practicing sword fighting and archery with her father, and attending school in the nearby town - Cassandra needed something new to take up her time. Surrounded by sculptures and murals by the city's various temples, she became fascinated by art. She started sitting in on lectures for art at Corona's university, pulling her hair up under a hat and wearing baggy clothes so she'd look like a boy. She was old enough, at that point, to understand that she'd never achieve her dream of following her father's footsteps: women were simply not allowed into guard positions. Even her new dream of becoming involved in art was tenuous. Women artists were looked down upon by far compared to their male counterparts, and Corona university's lectures were not open to women - at least, not without a large payment.
This did not deter Cassandra, nor did her initial struggles with the craft. Her father taught her the value of hard work, and she was a very stubborn youth. She spent the next couple years single-mindedly pursuing her new interest and slowly became remarkably skilled at life drawings and portraiture, using charcoal to sketch anything and everything around her. The small apartment she and her father lived in quickly became filled with drawings, at times covering most open surfaces in their home. Fixated on realism and technical aspects of art, she rarely strayed from representational style.
When Cassandra sat in on a lecture for sculpture, she realized it was what she most wanted to do. As a child and adolescent in the country she had become adept at whittling and wood carvings, and most people in the village closest to their home had some trinket or another that Cassandra had made: a whistle shaped like a duck, a figurine of a deer, a cane engraved with foxes chasing each other, to name a few. She had a knack for visualizing the shape hidden under the material, just cuts from her knife away from liberation, although at the time she lacked the direction to make anything very detailed.
The combination of her old hobby and new passion led directly to sculpting. She learned how the process of stone carving begins with sketches from all angles and meticulous measurements, to be followed with a prototype shaped in clay, which is then used as a model to carve the stone. She lacked the ability to practice with stone - it was expensive, heavy, required a large array of specific tools, and needed a large work space - but for the next couple of years would make all sorts of small sculptures from wood and clay her father bought her. Having run out of space in her room in their apartment, Cassandra began doing with her wood and clay sculptures what she did with her best drawings: gave them away as gifts to family friends when she and her father would visit the countryside. Monty in particular delighted in her art, and he would proudly display it in his bakery in the village.
When Cassandra was eighteen people began asking Monty if the exquisite little statues in his bakery were also for sale. With approval from Cassandra he began selling them, and with the money he earned from it Cassandra was able to buy more clay - enough to start making life-sized busts. Looking through her drawings, she decided to make sculptures from her renditions of the gods, inspired by the murals and statues she'd see at their temples.
These were a hit in Monty's bakery. Their village outside of the capital was one that most travelers to the city would stop in on their way, so Monty had a lot of traffic. Cassandra's life-size busts of the gods and smaller sculptures began popping up in the city's temples, as people who bought them on their way into the city would leave them as offerings.
Cassandra knew that since she's a woman, her work would be looked down upon as soon as any potential buyers knew her name. She told Monty that if anyone asked, the sculptor was a man who went by Pygmalion - a name she chose based on an ancient Cypriot king who dabbled in sculptures.
Curious about the lovely offerings left in the temples, some of the priests and priestesses from the city visited Monty's bakery to ask about the sculptor - specifically, if Pygmalion might complete works for their temples in marble.
With savings from the sculptures she had already sold, Cassandra was able to afford the tools she needed to work with stone. Since she needed more room to work than what the apartment in the city offered, Cassandra moved back to the country home with her grandmother and turned the barn on the property into a studio for her work. Cassandra was able to help her grandmother, too, with the gardening and orchard maintenance and animal care as the older woman began to decline with age. After practicing sculpting in stone - a much more time consuming and much less forgiving process than carving with wood or clay - Cassandra became familiar enough with the medium to complete a marble bust commission for one of the city's temples, modeled directly from Cassandra's clay renditions.
She was almost twenty years old at this point, and Pygmalion's popularity kept growing. Monty - who told inquirers that they could place orders for Pygmalion through him, as Pygmalion's a shy fellow - was receiving an influx of commission requests, some from temple priests, some from wealthy townsmen, and even some from a crown representative for civic beauty projects in the capital.
Cassandra had yet to make a life-size full-body statue, but she made smaller sculptures of the human form, assorted animals, and plenty of life-sized busts. By the time she was twenty-two, her work adorned most of the city's temples, the gardens of numerous wealthy citizens, and two fountains in the city center.
A couple of times when she was commissioned by wealthy townsmen for busts of real people, she bound her chest and pinned her hair under a hat to accompany Monty to the mansions to take the sketches and measurements required for her work, with Monty presenting himself as Pygmalion's representative and Cassandra as a young man who worked as Pygmalion's assistant. While Monty would discuss business details with the commissioner, Cassandra would take down the information that Pygmalion would need to make the busts, making sketches of the models from various angles and measuring proportions of their faces with calipers. Luckily, Pygmalion's work was popular enough that his eccentricism in refusing to show his face to any commissioner was forgiven.
A couple of years after moving to the country, Cassandra's grandmother passed and Cassandra was left alone in the country home. This was only a few months ago. And it seems her father had become anxious thinking of Cassandra living out there alone, even if he did visit her weekly for their dinners with Monty and their other family friends in the nearby village: Xavier, Quirin, and Quirin's son, Varian.
Back in the present, Cassandra frowns into the darkness above her bed. Cassandra doesn't feel lonely. She misses her grandmother terribly, of course, but that is more a matter of loving her grandmother than craving human company. She has the horses Fidella and Maximus who stay with her when she works outside, and Owl who perches nearby in the barn as she works on her commissions and accompanies her on hunts. Besides that, she sees her father at least once a week, and every couple days she goes into the village for business talks with Monty, having tea with Xavier, or picking up food items she can't grow or hunt herself.
It suits her much better than the city. While she had many opportunities in front of her and a lot of mental stimulation surrounded by so much bustle, it had been exhausting to her to be around so many people. And it always made her nervous, too, to be out in public: either she passed as a boy and went overlooked, or people would see her as a deviant and stare. It didn't even matter when she tried to dress femininely to avoid the looks. It was like people could tell, somehow, that it didn't suit her, so she still stuck out.
In her bed Cassandra turns onto her side somewhat aggressively. She doesn't miss that. And she certainly doesn't want to go back to it. Her father is right that there are more people in the city, and some of them "modern" - why do others always think that gay and transgender people are some new invention? - but the high population density meant that she'd meet a lot more stare-ers than fellow stare-ees. At least everyone in the nearby village she grew up with, so none of them treat her like a deviant. To them she's just Cassandra, or Cass.
Cassandra considers ways she might be able to continue sculpting if she moved back to the city. Xavier's family works in shipping and owns two warehouses by the port, so Cassandra's sure her father would recommend going to them first looking for a good deal on a city-based space for her new studio. But Cassandra already feels guilty enough that they took on marble as part of their trade portfolio specifically to help her with her work. Marble is such a heavy material with so little demand, and they could be making a lot more money than what she has to offer with that space on their ships.
No, she would not be going to Xavier's family for a space - they've done enough for her - so she would have to find something elsewhere. But even if she could afford a place big enough for her work, it'd be a nightmare to transport all of her tools and her prototype clay sculptures over, and to rig her stone-slab-moving pulley system from the ceiling of whatever warehouse she manages to rent. She could go back just to working with wood and clay, but even that would require a studio considering the volume of her output. Sculpting with wood and clay isn't as permanent, profitable, or satisfying as stone anyway. And then there's the question of curious eyes seeing the individuals going into the warehouse-turned-studio, and the works coming out of it.
So Monty is right: she'd have to give up her sculpting if she moved back. That wouldn't be much of a problem if her days became filled instead with opportunities of guard work. But what are the odds of that? She has to wait and see what her father learns looking into it.
In the meantime she'll consider the new job Monty presented to her that night. She tries to think about what she knows about the Coronan queen. Arianna was a princess of another kingdom who married the crown prince Frederick of Corona over two decades ago. Apparently the two were madly in love and made the Day of Hearts - Aphrodite's main holiday - into Corona's biggest festival of the year. The queen became pregnant and tragedy struck when their newborn died in childbirth. Within a year the king Fredrick fell ill with some sickness, and perished on the anniversary they lost their child - many Coronans say he died of a broken heart.
So the queen was left alone, without daughter or husband. Since that day she has rarely stepped foot outside of Corona's palace, only leaving with guard accompaniment to attend services at Hades' temple in the capital every couple weeks. The anniversary of her daughter and husband's death she turned into a day of observance called the festival of lights, where hundreds of paper lanterns are released into the night air to represent the souls of the ones Corona has lost, and great offerings are made to Hades to look after loved ones who have departed. Despite the grief-filled background to the festival, before dusk the day is spent in cheer, with Coronans celebrating the lives their lost ones had lived before their death.
The queen herself encourages the more positive celebrations of the festival, but Cassandra wonders if she can bear to feel any kind of cheer on that day. It has been almost two decades and she still seems in as deep mourning as she was all those years ago. Cassandra guesses King Trevor is going to have a difficult time with his plans. Well, Cassandra's not terribly invested in that - as long as he pays her for the commission, she doesn't really care how it works out for him. Honestly, she thinks that he should probably leave the poor woman alone.
Cassandra wonders at the job. If he means to surprise her with the statue, how the hell does he intend to get the measurements and sketches done to make it? Cassandra would need to sit with Arianna for hours to get all the details she needs for the work, and she suspects that Arianna might catch on to what's happening once Cassandra pulls out some calipers to measure the distance between her nose and her eyes. Perhaps a statue has already been made of Arianna before, and all the notes she'd need exist somewhere. She hopes that's the case.
A full-body statue… Cassandra wonders how long it would take her to make one. It depends on the material, but surely Trevor will want something in marble. A year, at least. Cassandra wonders what his intended timeline is for his courtship. Does he even know how long it would take to make a statue? Trevor is seeming more and more like an idiot to Cassandra by the minute, so she doubts it. Hopefully she won't bother with making this Aphrodite bust and shipping it just to hear back weeks from now that he has decided against ordering the statue.
Cassandra turns over in her bed again. She tells herself to stop worrying about all the things she doesn't have the answers for and decides just to focus on what's right in front of her: the maintenance of the country home and property, and finishing that Aphrodite bust. Everything else can wait.
She closes her eyes and hopes sleep will find her soon.
⚒☀⚒☀⚒
(Meanwhile, earlier that day, on a divine plane)
"I was hoping to ask a favor of you, Aphri," Persephone says while weaving flowers into Aphrodite's hair. With the passing of the spring equinox Persephone was just recently returned from the underworld to spend the warm months with her mother and the rest of the topside deities.
"Hm? What might that be?" Aphrodite asks, pulled out of a reverie.
"You're familiar with the Coronan queen Arianna, I'm sure?"
"Oh yes," Aphrodite answers with a sigh. "What a sad tale. She and her husband were two of my favorites, you know. A love that blazed like no other. Wonderful representatives of my domain - they made the Coronans' celebration of my holiday into a party like none I've seen since. How I miss them," she laments.
"Yes, well, with the passing of her husband she became quite the representative of Hades' domain instead," Persephone notes. "The gifts and offerings she's given at his temple surpass all others. My husband and I wanted to grant her a reward for her devotion. I was wondering if you might play matchmaker," she finally suggests. "She's been alone for so long. She deserves love."
"Absolutely not!" Aphrodite cries, pulling away from Persephone's hands and standing to face her. "You expect me to follow up a match like her and Fredrick? It cannot be done," she says, throwing her hands up. "That was once in a millennia. To try to bring another man - or woman - into her life would be like to try to use a candle to warm a woman who used to have a bonfire. You simply must find some other way to reward your devotee."
Persephone sighs. "Fine, but I doubt there will be a way as effective as giving this woman the family fate cheated her of. Her daughter died too, you know, barely out of the womb."
"Well, don't ask me how to help," Aphrodite huffs. "I've got my own problems to worry about, you know."
"Oh?" Persephone asks with a smirk and lifted eyebrow. "And what troubles might a love goddess be struggling with?" She holds out another flower in an invitation for Aphrodite to sit with her again.
Aphrodite accepts the flower and rejoins Persephone, allowing her to resume adorning her hair. "Well, I've got the most darling little lesbian and absolutely no girls that suit her," Aphrodite begins.
Persephone laughs. "Just send her to Lesbos," she suggests.
"No, she lives far, in Corona too in fact. There's little reason she'd travel to Lesbos." Aphrodite rests her elbow on her knee and props her head up with her hand. "And she deserves someone special, not any of those silly girls. You know," Aphrodite's tone changes to a conspiratorial hush, "the girl is a sculptor. I was having the most inspired idea to bring one of her own statues to life for her."
"Well isn't THAT an idea," Persephone says, laughing again like a breeze stirring wind chimes. "What ever did this girl do to win such favor?"
"She's given the most remarkable sculptures of me to my temple in Corona capital. Quite divine. I'd so badly like to grant a soulmate to her," Aphrodite answers.
"And how might you begin to pull your plan off?" Persephone asks, adding another flower to Aphrodite's braid. "I don't believe creating human life from stone is within the realm of your expertise."
"Well I hadn't gotten that far yet," Aphrodite answers with a dismissive wave of her hand. "And it was just an idea." She pauses, lips pursed in thought. "You don't suppose Hades might let me borrow some Lethe-washed soul to use, would you?"
"After you so kindly refused to help him just now? Not likely," Persephone answers. "Of course, if you change your mind..."
"Out of the question," Aphrodite answers firmly. "Arianna's heart has no romantic match. I'll come up with something else."
"Well, now you've got me thinking. A Lethe-washed soul would work... or a soul without any memories to begin with," Persephone observes. She pauses in her hair adorning and a smile dawns on her face. "You know, Aphri, I'm beginning to think we might find a way to solve both of our problems."