Chapter Text
My mother was a goddess, and the daughter of goddesses. As such, she did not know love. Love, she claimed, is a human’s flaw. She was my mother, my world, and I believed her. My mother wanted me to be strong, and I would be. I did not need love. It was a human flaw.
Yet, I felt that I was in love with everything. The sea, and the way in which the salt kissed my skin and the sand would curl between my toes and the wind breathed; alive, just as I. I was in love with the trees, which bowed their branches to me, beckoning me to climb higher, and higher, and I would comply, climbing till my nose touched the stars and they would smile at me, and I would smile back.
And then, I would fall. I always did.
Love, I learned, was a warm, fiery feeling. Eventually, though, it would be drowned out.
She would come back, my mother, in the earliest hours of the morning, and I would run to her, craving the attention, the praise, the pride.
You are taller, she would say. You make me proud, I would hear.
You are stronger, she would whisper. You are perfect, I would hear.
The people will love you, she would claim, and I would think, but will you?
And so, the years went by.
My father was nothing like my mother. He spoke his heart, always, and his heart was kind and full of love. He would tell me stories, and teach me lessons, and love me, but all the time I would wish it was my mother who said such things. She never did.
I was five when I first performed to a watching crowd. We travelled to Opus, my father arranging for us only the best travel - our boat sturdy and constructed of the finest wood, our carts beautifully modest, and our horses finely bred. We did not meet the King, the first day, and my father seemed displeased. King Menoetius is an unfeeling man; he rules with fear, an iron fist, my father stated, matter-of-factly. He is a King, but he is not loved. Do not be like him.
The second day, the games began. They were magnificent. The track was smooth as the sea flat, and I ran, and threw, and jumped. My father was proud. My mother didn’t know I was there. By the end of the races, I felt like the breeze; smooth, fast, fleeting. At some point, the leather holding my hair back had fallen out, and as I walked to the dais, I was looking at the world through a curtain of golden curls.
Then, I saw him. He was small, expressionless, but his eyes held within them all the stars I could never count. King Menoetius pulled the garland from his hands, placed it on my head like a crown. I did not look away from the boy, I wanted to count all the stars in his eyes, and then the ones across his nut-brown nose, and his cheeks, and… my father placed a hand on my shoulder. I had to look away, then. He was smiling, proud. He was not my mother. He was not the stars.
He pulled me from the dais and I did not look back up, I wanted to keep the galaxy to myself. Behind me, I heard a deep, burning voice say, “That is what a son should be.”
I thought that he was talking about the boy. I thought, I agree.
When I returned home, I rushed to the beach to greet my mother. She was there, waiting, like I knew she would be.
Where were you? Her voice scratched like nails against a chest plate. Underwater, it would sound beautiful. She was not made for the land.
I competed at the games. I won. The garland still adorned my brow, I had not taken it off. I had hoped she would be proud.
Instead, she sucked in a breath, sharp, wheezing. Her eyes, dull and lifeless, flashed with anger. You are not to fight again, not at the games, nor where one might see you. In secret, only. I shall be your only audience.
I thought about the boy, the stars that he held. Then I thought of my mother, she was not proud yet. She would be. She would see for herself what I was capable of. The stars could wait. Love is a human’s flaw.
Beyond this, my life became that of less loving, and more craving to be loved. I would fight imaginary enemies, and sometimes I would see my mother smile. Then it became a race to see her smile again. My father, who seemed to find a strange joy in harbouring the unloved, brought more and more boys into the house until the only time I could be alone were the early mornings, late nights, and stolen moments in-between. The boys, I found, were an adequate source of short-lived love. If my mother had not smiled in weeks, I would instead make the boys smile. It was not the same, but it was enough. For a moment. But then, as I left, and I could no longer see their faces smiling up at me, the warm feeling would dissipate, and my blood would run as cold as ocean ice. As I grew older, my lust for love bordered on obsession, and my ability to love diminished. I found myself indifferent to the salty kisses of the sea, or the creaking tree branches. I was left only in love with the stars, and I found myself travelling to the tallest tree and climbing it, trying to count the stars on nights I could not sleep. As I drifted off into the arms of Morpheus, I would see glimpses of a memory, of stars that had shone so bright, and entranced me so inescapably, I could not look away. When I opened my eyes, eventually, the sun would be blinding overhead, and any opportunity to recall those stars became ashes, and blew away in the breeze.