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Athena moves into the mountains on her twenty-seventh birthday. She’s just graduated from law school, the family isn’t tearing itself apart for once, most of her siblings have already left home, and a dozen other reasons why, but mostly just because she wants to. She’s lived most of her life ignoring the things that she wants, in favor of beingresponsible, which she’s never really minded. She never snuck out to go to parties, or meet boyfriends–or girlfriends–in the woods. She never stayed out past curfew, or lied if she could help it, or forgot to do her homework, or showed up late to class. For the most part, she never did those things because she never really wanted to.
But now she’s had twenty-seven years of being the Responsible One. She’s sat with her sisters while they nervously pissed on a pregnancy test in the gas station bathroom. She’s covered for her brothers when they snuck out for parties, or trysts in the woods. She’s sent her nieces and nephews to bed at a reasonable hour, when they visited her in the high-rise she lived in with three other girls, in the city. She always took Erichthonius for walks when her roommates couldn’t be bothered, even though he was technically their dog, and she’d always hated Griffon Bruxellois’s. She’s always been more of a cat person.
But she’s tired of city lights and city noises and the constant rush of people all around her, jostling about, always in a hurry to be somewhere else. She’s tired of having to wake up at three in the morning, just so she can go running without feeling like she’s being smothered by strangers, or traffic. She’s tired of the constant sunlight, the constant tourists, the constant good weather and smell of suntan lotion and sea water in the air. She’s tired of the evening calls from her father, just to check in, she’s tired of having to listen to him complain about his wife and his girlfriends and his children that aren’t her, because–no one can replace you, Athena. But she almost wishes someone would, just so she wouldn’t have to play counselor all the damn time.
So she moves to the mountains, and she doesn’t buy a house phone, and her cabin only gets cell reception when it isn’t raining, and it rains almost every day. She moves to the mountains, and breathes in the air so deeply it burns, and she revels in it. She takes a long bath and she soaks in the silence, letting it soothe her skin like hot water.
She still goes running at three in the morning, though. It’s a hard habit to break.
Her father buys a cabin just fifteen minutes from hers.
"I like hunting," he says, defensive, when she asks what he’s doing there. She doesn’t argue, and she sits with him in a deer stand, for three hours around dawn, watching the clearing with sleepy disinterest. A few deer come through, lick the salt and the morning dew, and then amble away. Neither of them move until their stomachs growl, and then she follows him back to his cabin, and he makes blueberry pancakes the way he used to when she was a little girl, with the shapes–peace signs and smiley faces and Christmas trees. Except now she’s twenty-seven, and he shapes hers like a cock, and then laughs when she pokes at it, disgusted. When she was little, she thought her father’s laugh was booming, all-encompassing, like thunder shaking her bones. Now that she’s older, she just thinks it’s loud, and a little obnoxious.
He leaves in under a week, because Zeus can never stay quiet for long, and there are no pretty girls among the trees this time of year. Just the deer and the rain, just the way Athena likes it.
Medusa comes to visit not long after he leaves. She never takes very long, to find Athena, or else Athena comes to her. They don’t do well, with staying apart, even as they keep trying, a constant test just for themselves. Last year, Medusa spent six months on a Caribbean cruise, and Athena lasted four weeks before breaking down and buying a plane ticket to Caracas.
"I like what you’ve done with the place," Medusa smirks, unwrapping her hair as she steps in the room.
Athena has very little furniture, since the high-rise had come already furnished, and Athena didn’t see the point in buying a dining room set that she’d never use. She has a mattress on the floor in the corner, well-made but plain, and piles of Encyclopedias in Welsh, Turkish and Mandarin, so she can practice whenever she wants.
"You talk too much," Athena says, and unwraps the rest of her like a present. A gift, precious and new. It always feels new, with Medusa, like they’re relearning each other, every time.
She still remembers finding her, collapsed and broken on her door-step, because she’d had nowhere else to go. She remembers what she’d asked that night–make it impossible for them to touch me. Make it so I’ll never be hurt, again.
Athena had been young back then, and arrogant. She’d thought herself clever, coming up with the spell. Or curse, depending on the story. But now she knows better. She could have done any number of things, gifted Medusa with any other defense mechanism just as powerful. But she’d been selfish, and she’d read too many fairy tales, about the fey godparents whose gifts were all twisted riddles with moral lessons tacked on.
"Why do you like this weather?" Medusa asks, after, making a face. She’s lying on her stomach on the mattress, one of the books propped open on a pillow, so she can pretend to read it. Or maybe she picked up Turkish on her trip; Medusa’s clever, so it’s possible.
Athena finishes lacing up her running shoes, and glances out the window, at the rain so cold it’s nearly sleet. She’s always liked the cold, liked the harshness of the season. She’s always liked how unforgiving it can be–in avalanches and ice storms and hypothermia in the night. But then soft again in the morning, small flurries melting when they touch the ground, or the tip of her tongue. Ice dancing across window panes like the lace patterns found in wedding dresses.
She likes the holidays, too. She likes the carols and the smell of cinnamon and peppermint, everywhere she goes. She buys cheap Christmas ornaments impulsively, whenever she sees them for sale, and the fir tree in the corner of her living room is so overflowing with gaudy baubles and figurines that she can barely see the needles.
She reaches out to pet one of the snakes, coiling into the warmth of Medusa’s neck. It hums under her touch, almost like a cat. They could so easily bite her--she's seen them vicious, hissing and spitting angrily, coiled and ready to strike. They could sink their fangs into the soft pads of her finger, and hold on while she screamed. But they never have.
"I always thought owls ate snakes," Medusa jokes, but Athena doesn’t smile.
"Do you regret it?" she asks, not bothering to specify. She asks the question at least once a year, and she knows Medusa grows tired of answering it, but she can’t stop.
She can’t stop wondering what might have happened if she’d just given her impervious skin, instead, or the power to make men walk off cliffs with her voice, or just the ability to see an attack coming, so she could duck out of its way.
She can’t stop wondering what if what if what if, like a broken record scratching its way through her head. What if she didn’t turn all her other lovers to stone–would she still be here?
But Medusa sits up, leans over just enough to press her mouth to the spot where Athena’s neck becomes her jaw. If Medusa were to bite the skin there, she would bleed.
"I don’t regret you," she says, and it’s not the answer Athena’s looking for, because Medusa is good at dancing around in riddles. Athena nods and kisses her, and goes running in the rain, letting it numb her whole body until she can’t focus on her thoughts.
When she comes back, Medusa has Turkish apple tea boiling on the stove, and she’s wearing a bed sheet draped across her shoulders, tied around her hips so her long legs drip down, pale and perfect. She turns towards Athena, eyes black and flickering, and she’s flying back home tomorrow, because she could only take the weekend off from work, but.
She’s here, for now, and now is good.
Athena sits beside her on the window, pressing the warm lip of the mug to her lips, as their legs tangle together on the sill; and she’s not sure if it’s selfish or not, but she doesn’t regret it, either.