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Calliope doesn’t really sleep well anymore.
Not that she needs sleep in general. She’s a goddess, after all, and divine beings such as herself only sleep because they want to, because they feel like indulging in all the wonders available to them upon closing their eyes. Few things truly and regularly excite beings of myth, but the Dreaming is one of those few things. Only very rarely, such as in cases of extreme injury, do they need to sleep. Mostly, sleeping is a comfort, a way to pass the time.
In the early days of her imprisonment, after Erasmus Fry first captured her, Calliope thought that she would use sleep for both. Though her relationship with her husband had ended about as terribly as a relationship can end, the Dreamlord had never reneged on his promise to always give Calliope the sweetest of dreams. She would rest, then, and find a distraction and comfort in the Dreaming until someone, be it her sisters or her mothers or somebody seeking her favor, would save her.
Then, she found out all the terrible things one person can do to another while they’re unconscious.
Even though she’s now safe, the once-familiar action no longer comes easy to her. Almost every time she’s tried—and those have been few and far between—she wakes up in a panic before she can fall asleep enough to even make it to the Dreaming. When she closes her eyes, she sees them once more. Both of them, Fry and Madoc, taking what was never theirs in the first place. She feels their cruel, rough hands on her body, hears their voices demanding that she give them inspiration for their works.
(Works that she wishes would be little more than drivel. But no, nothing inspired—forcefully or not—by her could ever be drivel. They’re wild successes every time, and so the men just continue to take take take until Calliope thinks that she has nothing left to give. But she does, because she is the Muse of Epic Poetry, and for as long as people still believe in her, she shall be a source of inspiration. And so she continues to be drained like a tree of its sap, an essence so integral to her being that she knows not who she is without it. Until one day, when Madoc returns to his home ranting and raving—and there is a knock at the door.)
Calliope’s been doing some reading on the device that you gave her, the one that’s like a digital library, and she believes she might have what today’s humans call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The inability to sleep, the flashbacks, the ever-present hum of vigilance that still thrums under her skin and warns her that the threat might be just around the corner—it’s all there, and it’s all her. It’s humiliating to think about it as a possibility, and more humiliating still to see herself in the words written.
Goddesses shouldn’t have trauma! They shouldn’t even be in a position where trauma could be inflicted on them! She misses the age when she was at her strongest, the age when people worshipped the very ground she walked on, dropping to their knees in reverence and begging for her gifts.
But that world is long gone, and Calliope has landed in a new one that is entirely foreign to her. Slowly, though, she likes to think that she’s adjusting. Since the night is long and sleeping is not an option for her at present, she finds other ways to pass the hours when the rest of the world rests. The 21st century is new and exciting, and there is much to catch up on.
Not only is she learning more about this new world, but she’s also learning herself all over. There are hobbies that she gets to discover once more, enjoyments that she forgot were hers. She listens to music (music now is…very different from even a hundred years ago, but there have been some works that she enjoys) and reads—not just the books that tell her things about herself that she does not wish to hear, but she reads epics! And poetry! How she missed poetry; that special language so near and dear to her, the words of her most favorite patrons. She reads all that she can get her hands on, good and bad, for the simple pleasure of being able to read once more.
Oftentimes, she simply enjoys the quiet at night. She basks in the knowledge that she can do what she wants, when she wants, with nobody lording over her or imposing their will. Yes, she is still technically bound to a human, but that is a non-issue. Calliope knows with absolute certainty that you have no idea of who she is or what Richard Madoc had done when he declared that she was your problem now.
She likes living with you, though it has been an adjustment being what you call a ‘roommate’ instead of a captive. Whereas the two men (if such brutes can be referred to as men) had been the worst of humanity, she finds humanity endearing when she sees it through your lens. How can she not develop a fondness for you, with how earnestly you try to include her in your life and make her feel like she belongs?
There is also some level of comfort to be gained from the blissful ignorance you live in, the way that you believe your world to be black-and-white with no potential of the things you were taught to be nothing more than myths and stories. To you, such tales don’t exist—Calliope, the Muse, doesn’t exist—and Calliope, the woman, feels that she is able to let her guard down for the first time in a long, long time.
At times, she can feel your desperation for some sort of inspiration, lost as you attempt to complete your studies. It is comforting to know that you have no idea the being that you now share a home with. It is even more comforting to know that she has the choice of whether to grant you some inspiration or not.
Tonight, Calliope decides for herself once more, and thinks that she would rather like to sit outside on the patio and enjoy the late night. With her mind made up, she sneaks out of her bedroom with a blanket in one hand and a book in the other.
“Oh!” Calliope gasps in surprise, startled upon seeing a figure sitting on the couch.
Moonlight shines through the curtains that were most definitely closed a few short hours ago and illuminates your face staring out at the dark. She relaxes, but her fear immediately shifts to concern upon seeing what look to be tear tracks drying on your face.
“Hey. I’m sorry.” Just as she suspected, your voice is thick with tears. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Do not apologize,” she lightly chastises you. “Are you alright?”
You nod and use your sleeve to wipe under your eyes. “Yeah.”
It’s obvious that you’re planning on leaving it at that, which simply won’t do. Calliope levels you with a stare (a ‘mom stare,’ you teasingly referred to it as the first time she used it, without knowing how true your words were. One day, she thinks, she’ll tell you about Orpheus. Once the pain of losing him stops hurting so much) that you try your hardest to act unaffected by. You sigh after a moment, knowing that the fight is lost.
“I had a nightmare,” you admit. “And like, I’m not a little kid anymore. So why did this nightmare scare me so badly that I literally woke up and jumped out of bed in fear?”
Well, that explains why she heard a noise of surprise from your room, followed by a loud thump. She assumed that you hadn’t yet gone to bed, that you were up late finishing a project or just plain procrastinating your sleep. Why your late night required what sounded like the moving of furniture was beyond her. But no, instead, you’ve found yourself at the whims of a nightmare.
Nightmares are not something that Calliope has a lot of experience with. She’s met nightmares, of course. With how much time she spent in the Dreaming, it was a foregone conclusion that she met a nightmare or two. And when they weren’t performing their duties, a lot of them were really quite nice!
(The only nightmare she truly could not stand was her former husband’s most beloved creation—The Corinthian. He…creeped her out, for lack of a better term. It wasn’t just the ocular mouths, though those were also chill-inducing. Rather, it was his entire demeanor. Like he was simply playing nice, biding his time before he could go in for the kill. She was glad to have never seen him again after the end of her marriage.)
But has Calliope ever actually dealt with a nightmare? The lives of immortals are long (obviously), and while she may have once had nightmares when she was very young, it was so long ago now that she can’t remember any particulars. Even when her own son was young, nightmares were not truly a concern. Though she and Morpheus had mutually agreed that he needed to sleep like a normal child at least sometimes in order to aid in his development, the very first time his little brow creased and frightened whimpers began to well in his throat, that decision was quickly forgotten in favor of comforting the boy and assuring him that nightmares would harm him no longer.
So, while it’s true that she does not have much experience with nightmares, what little experience she has had helps her to know just how frightening they can be—and how frightened it’s made you.
“Would talking about it make you feel better?” Calliope asks.
You shake your head resolutely, determined to keep your fears to your chest. “I don’t remember it anymore.”
For many mortals, dreams and nightmares do not follow them out of the Dreaming. They may remember snippets of it, or certain emotions, but often, they fade away in the few hazy moments after waking. It’s pretty obvious that this isn’t the case for you, however. You continue to hold yourself tense, as though whatever had troubled you while you slept would reappear at any moment. Calliope has also seen you deep in thought a couple of times now, and the way you were looking outside when she first stepped out of her room was the same way she had seen you look when trying to complete schoolwork or focus on making something complicated.
Up until now, you’ve tried so hard to always be positive and to make your home and yourself as comforting as possible so that Calliope may have the best possible environment to heal. She appreciates it—this new life she’s found herself in has truly been conducive to recovery—but now, she struggles to watch you try to keep up this facade so as not to lay your upsets upon her. She wishes that you would, though; that you would feel like you can confide in her the same way that you have made her feel towards you. After all that you’ve done for her, you deserve to feel like you have gained a friendship.
Calliope will let you keep your secrets, then, even though this means that particular avenue of help is closed—she will not force you to do anything that you do not want to do. She moves on to Plan B, into the kitchen where she fumbles around until finding the kettle. Filling it with water, she places it on a burner and turns the stove on. Though she’s still not very confident around newer inventions like kitchen appliances, she’s proud of the fact that she’s slowly learning.
At the sounds, you peek up from the couch. “What are you doing?”
“What you’ve done for me when I find myself particularly upset,” she says, fetching two mugs from the cupboard.
“You’re making me tea?” Your voice sounds strangled, as though you can’t imagine why she would be providing you this small comfort.
You first started making tea for Calliope on the night that she technically became ‘yours.’ After locking herself in the bathroom and scrubbing her skin raw under the stream of hot water until she was sure that every inch of her body was clean from the DNA of another, she spent an interminable amount of time just enjoying the knowledge that she was now safe. While it was true that you were still practically a stranger, she had lived for long enough now and had honed her gifts well enough to be able to get a good read of a person’s intentions.
From the moment that she met you, you held none of the same ill will as the others. No, your immediate concern had been making sure that she was warm. When was the last time somebody cared for how she felt? She watched intently as you grabbed a coat from your vehicle, sure that, at any moment, your intentions toward her would change. Though she didn’t believe that she had the power (both strength and will) to fight you off, she would not be caught off-guard if it came to that.
But it never did. You simply wanted to make sure that she was out of harm’s way. You concluded on your own that whatever had happened to her in that house, at the hands of the man you called your professor, was horrific. To you, Calliope was a woman, battered and scared, with nothing to her name and nowhere to go. It was the obvious option to offer her food and shelter, to ensure her safety, simply because it was the right thing to do.
Still, even after your show of immense kindness, she did not want to face you, for some part of her was waiting for the inevitable. When you would demand the use of her gifts, wanting inspiration and fame and power and riches. She was dreading the potential that you were simply another human wanting to take take take. So she waited until the water ran cold and she was shivering. Even then, it took until she physically could stand the water no longer for her to finally make slow moves to get ready to leave the bathroom. Toweling herself off and putting on the borrowed clothes (clothes that actually covered her skin, so much more than the satin slips that she had been granted by her former captors) could only take so long, so with a heavy sigh, she steeled herself and opened the door.
There was no sign of you, however, and a quick glance at the light from under the closed door of one bedroom indicated that you were inside. The only sign of life that proved that you were once in this space was a plate and a mug sitting on the counter. When Calliope cautiously got closer, she saw a note next to them.
“Made you some dinner and tea. I’ve always been told that tea (or your preferred hot beverage of choice) can do wonders for making you feel better, and I’ve found that to be true a few times now. Sweet dreams!”
Your name was signed at the end, along with what looked like a drawing of a smile.
Aware of the very real possibility that this could be a trap—Fry, after all, had first tried to woo her before taking what he believed to be his by force—she hastily grabbed the ceramicware and made off to the room that you had called hers. She had no real need for food, of course, nor for bathing. But they were those same creature comforts that not even the gods were above, and beyond sporadic, cold baths, they were creature comforts she had been denied for over sixty years. Calliope would take any that she could get, especially when they were (seemingly) freely given. Unfortunately, she was not in a position to spurn such gifts right now.
These gifts kept coming, without an expectation of anything in return from her. She was free to take whatever she wanted, go anywhere she liked, do anything she wished. And you were always there to cheer her on and encourage her, with a smile on your face and (when she wanted it) tea in hand.
“‘Make’ should perhaps be used loosely.” She smiles sheepishly, back in the present as the kettle begins to warm. “Depending on how much of your help I shall need after the water boils.”
You wrap a blanket around yourself and make your way to Calliope. “Then we’ll make it together.”
After the tea has been successfully prepared and you’re both settled back on the couch with a large blanket shared between you, Calliope asks, “Do you have nightmares often?”
“Not like when I was little. I was one of those kids that had night terrors, y’know?” She doesn’t know, because she has never heard of them more beyond being mentioned in passing when she was still wife to Dream of the Endless, but she nods regardless. “Apparently, I would just scream and shake until I ran out of breath and woke myself up.”
“I am so sorry to hear that.”
“It’s okay. Like most kids with night terrors, I never remembered them.” You take another sip from your mug. “This is good tea, by the way.”
“You are the one that determined when the tea was done steeping.”
“Yeah, but you boiled the water, which is an integral part of tea-making.” You smile at her, the first smile she’s seen from you tonight, and it makes her feel a little better, like she’s doing something right. “So well done.”
You fall quiet, having said what you wanted to say regarding your nightmare and choosing instead to enjoy your tea. Though you’re content with companionable silence, Calliope is not. She feels like she should be doing more to help you, to comfort you. Caring for another, helping someone to feel better, does not come easily to her like it once did. She has been burned for too long now, that caring nature snuffed out early on in her imprisonment. But slowly, like the first blades of grass pushing back through the soil of a blackened landscape after a wildfire, new life has started to grow in the middle of this scorched area of her heart. She wants to help you, to care for you.
She wants to make you feel better.
“My younger sister, Thalia, is far better at this than I,” Calliope admits with a sigh.
“Better at what?”
“At cheering people up.”
Indeed, Thalia did not preside over comedy for no reason. Many times over the years that she’s been unwillingly away from her family, Calliope found herself wishing that Thalia would be right next to her. She loves all of her sisters equally, but Thalia would have effortlessly known what to say or told an anecdote that would have made her imprisonment easier. Perhaps it would have even given her the extra strength needed to truly fight and find a way out.
You bump Calliope’s shoulder with your own. “You’ve done a really good job of that yourself, Cal.”
She feels her chest warm, both at the compliment and the term of endearment. Somewhere along the way, you (and your friends, who are just as kind and welcoming to her as you have been) adopted a nickname for her. This is new for her—prior to her imprisonment, she was Calliope, eldest of the Muses Nine, Beautiful-Voiced, Chief of All Muses. She has always been Calliope. But now, sometimes she is Callie, or Cal. Those who call her this do not know that they are in the presence of a goddess, that she should be commanding the respect that she deserves from mortals who believe her one of them.
Instead, she finds that she loves having a nickname.
“You have…eight sisters, right?” you ask.
“Yes. Thalia is the second youngest.” Calliope has only spoken about her sisters in the most vague of ways, hesitant to reveal too much. Telling you the names of a sister or two certainly won’t hurt.
“It must be so much fun when you’re all together.”
Calliope smiles wistfully, feeling that familiar pang of homesickness. “It is. There are lots of laughs shared, and we all leave with enough stories to last until we see one another again.”
It hits her almost as soon as the words leave her mouth: There is something that she can do to help. She can do what she does best, that which is her chief function. She can tell you a story. Already the words come to her, the tale writing itself within her, nestled right at the hollow of her throat, and just waiting for her to speak it aloud. Her inspiration, her gift, is used on herself for the first time in a long time, and as her mind goes to work, she remembers why it is that she is so coveted. It feels intoxicating to think up a story once more, to be inspired to create. It’s an old feeling, one that was once so familiar to her, that it feels quite like a homecoming for her to be experiencing it once more.
“Have I ever told you of the wager that Thalia and our sister Mel once had?” she asks, baiting you.
You look at her curiously and take said bait. “No.”
Calliope smiles, feeling her power hum within her as, for the first time in a long, long time, she prepares an epic of her own. “Well, it started one summer…”