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She’s floating.
Peacefully on her back, her eyes closed, her arms stretched out, with no worry in the world. Floating on the massive ocean with nothing but waves and fish around her (no land anywhere in sight.) She’s save here, she’s loved; she is not scared, not anymore, not ever. The sun shines, it always does, and the seagulls scream but she no longer cares. All she cares about is the feeling of the ocean around her and the sounds it makes, she cares not for her past or the world she came from, she cares just for this.
And yet maybe she is not.
Maybe she’s the one who’s drowning, maybe the ocean is all around her, and maybe she has no escape anymore. Maybe she only thinks she’s floating, maybe her eyes are closed and this is the only way she will no longer fear what comes next. Because maybe, just maybe, this is the end.
Or perhaps that is another girl perhaps that is someone else, lost in the same place.
Before her or after her (it does not matter.)
Maybe she swims, maybe she paddles, desperately to make it to the land she can no longer see and could probably never find again. Maybe she tries to make it to the place where she can finally breathe again, maybe she just wishes she were floating in safety.
But perhaps none of it is real, perhaps it is all a dream really, perhaps she is lying on an island and she’s save. Perhaps she is only drowning in the ocean of her own tears.
(It matters little though, at least she thinks it doesn’t, whether she’s the girl who drowns or floats or swims in the massive ocean, or drowns in her own tears, with no land in sight and no one to save her, her tale would always end there.)
Maybe they’re the same girl, floating, drowning, swimming and living.
Maybe they’re different girls, all in the same ocean, reacting differently to the moment that would be their end.
Or maybe, just maybe, none of it is real.
*~*
The waves of the ocean crashed around her, slowing her down, pushing her under, trying to make sure she does not make it to the light in the distance.
(She knows she will not, the current is too strong, but she still tries, oh god, she still tries.)
The light is too far to reach anyway and she knew that but the desperation and the desire not to die made her swim, further than she normally would have been able to. Perhaps if everything had been different, if she did not hold her young child in her arms, if she did not jump, if her husband had not been driven made by Hera, perhaps then her life would have been different and the world would have actually turned right. Perhaps if she had accepted it all, if she had been alone, she would have been able to close her eyes and just float and allow the current to carry her away to wherever it wanted. But nothing will change the events of the night, nothing will make it all different and so she swims, babe in arms, to escape the madness of the man she loved the most.
And the light shone in the distance, urging her on, telling her that safety was there.
But she knew it was over before it even began.
Once, long, long ago – when she was but a child herself – she’d stood on the beach and watched as the waves hit the sand. She lived in the before then, before the fear, before the anger, before the Gods and even, regretfully, before the happiness. She thought then – or perhaps she did not, perhaps those thoughts did not come until later – how beautiful and peaceful it all seemed and how amazing it would be to be able to a part of something that seemed so endless even if it was only for a moment. She could just go in and swim, swim until her limbs could no longer handle it and then she would float and the currents would carry her away as she listened to the sounds around. But she’d been afraid, and still now, so afraid that were she to go in it would be the end and so she’d stood at the water’s edge and watched as the waves hit the sand. The reality is this: there is nothing peaceful about the ocean, it is vast and endless and harsh and unforgiving. Her little boy, just a small child, had done nothing wrong, nor had she, and yet still it would claim them, victims of the water.
But for now she swims, to the light in the distance, to safety and hope, to the beginning and the end.
(With the horrible past behind her but no real future ahead.)
She’d stopped when she’d realized that her little boy was already down, that his life had already come to an end and she’d closed her eyes then and expected the whole world to stop. (It did not, it kept turning, and it always kept turning no matter what happened to the people in it.) The sea gulls screamed above her, the light in the distance grew weaker and weaker – though that might have been her imagination – and the waves crashed around her and carried her away but she, she no longer cared. They’d sunk, down under and she’d closed her eyes and she’d tried to imagine what it would feel like if they were somewhere else. The ocean Gods surrounded her suddenly, those that came before her – and she wonders, briefly, how many others there had been in these vast waters, how many others had cried and begged and drowned and how many of them had actually been saved? (She thinks not many and the ocean is filled with the tears of the death and the ones that are living.)
“It will be alright,” they whisper in her mind and in her child’s “you are save here and welcome among us, let it all go, it will all be alright.”
She’d been tired, she’d been done, and she’d been broken.
She’d closed her eyes and allowed the Gods to carry her away.
They’d surrounded them in the beginning, explaining everything to them and they had renamed them too (Leucothea her name would be from now on and this is how the people would know her, Ino would be a lost princess from a land far away who’d drowned in the ocean when her husband went mad. Or maybe they wouldn’t even know that, maybe all they would know was her name and where she came from and perhaps, someday, even that would be forgotten.) Her name could not be Ino anymore, for Ino had drowned in the waves, she had not made it to the light in the distance. She had been a princess, once, a beautiful princess who had loved a man with all her heart and given him two beautiful boys and she had been so happy, and so at peace.
Leucothea was someone else, no longer that innocent little girl.
You’ll aide sailors, they told her, sailors in distress and you’ll make sure they’re safe.
And so she did.
*~*
The night the world fell apart it was freezing.
It was odd to for she never thinks it had actually been that cold before – and perhaps, just maybe, it really hadn’t been, perhaps she’d imagined the cold just like she had imagined so many other things. Perhaps it had been a warning, from a God on their side, or perhaps Hera had wanted to scare her. And she should have known it was coming, she should have known because one does not simply anger the Gods – and if one does one must always expect that something would happen to the live they had built. An hour before the night felt he’d turned to her with a strange look in his eyes and perhaps if she had not been that naïve, that loving, the stupid she would have realized that something would go wrong and she would have called for the guards. (The guards that never came during the night, the guards that never remembered they were meant to protect.)
(She’d once believed, long ago, that their love could withstand anything and perhaps it could for she still loved him but forgiveness was not something she would ever grand him.)
Now she knows what she saw in his eyes: madness and rage.
Not his own but powerful indeed.
And she had allowed to leave then, hadn’t moved to stop him because she had believed, naïvely, that that was the best. She thinks sometimes that it would all have been different if she had stopped, perhaps they would all still live in their castle happy with the life they had been given or perhaps she too would now be dead.
The night fell then, the cold, cold night and she’d lain in bed and waited, in vain, for him to return. He had not and as the sky grew darker and she grew more afraid she’d realized that she could not wait for something to happen. She’d made her way, silently, across the halls, thinking, idly, that if she checked on her children surely she would feel better. In the distance she’d heard a scream, so filled with rage it had stopped her heard and she had known it was Athamas but she had not known who was at the receiving end of his newfound rage. She felt sorry for whomever it was for surely they would be in shock, her husband was, after all, known for his calm nature and his patience beyond all others.
She found him, knife in hand, in her oldest son’s room.
Her son, her beautiful little boy – who was not so little anymore – lay dead at his father’s feet, the rage still burning in his eyes. Ino had known then that this was their punishment; this was what the Goddess Hera visited on them for daring to take in Dionysus and caring for him. They had taken care of a child they should not have and in turn they’d lose their own. The scream that left her lips was just as loud, just as harsh and just as inhuman as the murderous scream from her husband had been before. She would have buckled, fallen to the ground and screamed and held her boy until her husband – her beloved husband who would wake later and realize what he had done – murdered her as well, she would have but she’d remembered then, her younger boy, her hope, in a bed not that far away.
And so she’d run, her hair in the wind, her heart beating loudly, tears running down her cheeks and behind her, her husband in a murderous rage. She’d found her boy, eyes wide open in fear, in his crib and she’d run again with her bade in her arms. The ocean had been vast under her and she could see nothing in sight and she’d known then if she jumped she would die and if she stayed she would too (but her husband had done nothing wrong and perhaps he would wake soon and save them, perhaps someone else would, she did not believe it, not really, but she’d hoped.)She’d run again past the trees and leapt of a cliff into the vast ocean below.
She remembers thinking; at least she thinks she does, that it seemed wrong somehow, that she who had loved the ocean so much and had once considered it save would now die in its waters. And that her son, her oldest, who’d loved the ocean just like her, would die alone in his room and her youngest would drown in the ocean of which he was so afraid. But there was no changing it, and no changing her mind, for in that moment she believed – in the moment she’d leapt to the ocean below – that drowning would be far better than dying by a husband’s (or a father’s) hand. And perhaps she had hoped, in the back of her mind, that someone would see them, that someone would save them that they would not have a watery grave.
There was no changing that either.
And it would have all been so much easier – to her, to the world, to her husband, to her family, to his – if she had never loved them at all.
If she never truly loved him.
But she had loved him, of course, and he had loved her – and it seemed so strange to think of the past, so strange for when she first met him she had disliked him intensely but she was a princess and she could not say no to marrying him. It matters little what she felt then of course, it never would matter at all.
They had been happy then and now they were not.
(And she loved him as he loved her and she hated him as he hated himself.)
*~*
Sometimes she sees him.
Standing on the cliff, staring at the vast ocean his wife and child had leapt in. Sometimes she wishes she could touch him, reach across the vast ocean now separating them and hold him and comfort him. Other times she wishes she could use her powers to drag him into the ocean he so fears and make him pay for what he did to her, for what he took. The madness, the rage, that had so consumed him that night – that had caused him to slaughter his own beloved heir and watch, in satisfaction, as his wife and youngest jumped to their deaths – had long since fade, leaving in its wake grief and guilt.
He stands on the cliff and stares at the ocean and he waits.
Perhaps he’s hoping she’ll return, perhaps he hopes – against better knowing – that they live, that they’re somewhere out there in the world and that they can still claim the world they’d wanted to build. His guards, his friends, his people, urge him to return to his castle, to go back to being who he was before, to being the king of Thebes and helping his people live their lives. But his grieve is to great, his guilt to vast, and all he does – day in, day out – is stand on the cliff and watch the waves hit the rock beneath him. And she would see him – but her son would, could not – but he could not see her and they would forever be parted by the ocean that had saved her and her son.
The love they had once shared, the beautiful all-consuming love that had been so promising had faded and left them with screams and anger and guilt.
They would never be one again, they would never hold each other and love each and be more. She would forever roam the seas, helping those that needed her and he would stand on the cliff’s edge until he no longer could and then, one day, he would leap like she did before but the Gods would not save him. He would drown and she would hold him but he would not know for he could not and then he would be gone, gone forever and she would grieve and she would rejoice (for he was her love, her one and only, her only one and he was her son’s slayer too and her would-be slayer and that it was not him but Hera who led his hands changed nothing of what happened.)
Sometimes she wonders if perhaps he did not jump, perhaps he went back home and married another girl and had more children. And she would have hated that, more than she hated his end, for if he had stolen her happiness he could have none of his own.
But of course he drowned so that never mattered at all.
*~*
She drowns, babe in arms, in the massive ocean.
But she rises too.
*~*
Longer ago, or maybe not that long ago, maybe at the same time or maybe after, she does not know.
She does not care.
The meadow is filled with the most beautiful flowers and she sits in the middle and stares at the sky above – sometimes she runs with the nymphs and plays, sometimes she sings, sometimes she lies down and closes her eyes. Kore they call her, the maiden, for it is who she was then and it is who she had intended to be forever (or for a very long time indeed.) She had run behind the nymphs, her laughter filling the air and she had thought of her mother, far up on Olympus, awaiting her return but she still had a few hours. She would remember this, always, as the last moment of her innocence and her childhood and we she thought of it, later, she tried to forget what came after.
There had no warning, none at all.
(Or perhaps there had been and she had been too young, to naïve, to fully understand them and so she had not told her mother who would have understood.)
He came suddenly, with no warning, from somewhere behind her – and far, far down below – and he’d grabbed and she, she had screamed. Or perhaps she had not, perhaps she had been too shocked for sound to leave her lips and instead she had kicked, and struggled and watched as the nymphs ran behind her to save her but it was not enough, it would never be enough. She had not known until later that it was Hades who was dragging her to his domain, Hades who had seen her in this same meadow weeks ago and had fallen in love, Hades who had decided that he wanted her. And he had known, then, that her mother would never say yes and that she would not either and so he had taken right in his hands and he had kidnapped her and taken her to the world down below.
And the nymphs had screamed, and the nymphs had cried but they had not saved her.
Once they’d arrived in his world and domain he had released her and offered her the world, everything she wanted it would all be hers, she would be the queen of the Underworld if she were just to consent to marry him. It was dark and cold, no light from the world above, no flowers, no nymphs, nothing that would make her happy. Persephone had no desire to live in the dark, she preferred the sun far above and the meadows and her mother and all it had to offer. And Hades had said that it was alright that he would wait until she realized that the world he offered was far better than the world up above (but it was not, and yet it was, for him but not for her.)
Her mother would come, she was sure, but then she’d realized that she could not, for how would her mother know where to look?
There was a flower in her hand, which had not fallen in the struggle, and she watched silently as it died in the dark.
She feared she would to, she feared that everything was dead in Hades’s domain.
*~*
The world of above withered and died as she waited in the world down below.
But she did not know this.
She did not know of the despair of her mother on learning that her beloved child was gone, taken by a man none had recognized. And how she searched night and day, aided by Aramis, but no matter where they looked they could not find her. Torches guided the way but nothing could bring them to where the child had been taken. The world withered, the world died, the grain died and the people starved, the flowers withered and faded away. The people begged, the people screamed, they went to the temples and begged the Goddess why but Demeter, who had cared for the humans by giving them food, did not care for them anymore. She cared solely for the search of her child.
Until the day, the night, the morning, she does not remember – and Persephone down in the Underworld does not actually know – Zeus give in, having had enough of the screaming of man and told his sister, in hushed voice, that Hades had taken her to the world down below. And Demeter, always so kind, always so busy with everything she had to do and nothing else, screamed in anger and in disgust. She told her brother, the most powerful of Gods, that it was his job to ensure that Hades, their brother, returned her daughter at once.
And so the message came to the Underworld to allow the child to come back to where she belonged.
The answer came swiftly and said “she cannot for she has consumed the food of the Underworld.”
And Demeter wept, Demeter begged and Zeus called forth a council to listen to the tale and bring judgment upon the Goddess who had eaten in the domain of Hades. And she had stood at one side of the room, wanting to reach over, to run to where she was and hold her and love her and never let go but Zeus’s word was law and so she waited until there was nothing more.
*~*
He had been kind to her, at times.
He had offered her everything there was to offer, he had shown her the whole Underworld and though she’d thought, idly, that if he had been any other man (with another domain up in the world where she could see and feel the sunlight) that she would perhaps have considered marrying him, if her mother would consent. But she was made for the world of above, not the one below, and so nothing he showed her, nothing he had could sway her from the path she had set for herself. Let me go home, she’d begged day and night – though she could not truly tell when it was day and when it was night – and he’d answered, every time, you are home now.
She’d sat beside the remains of the flower she’d had with her and waited.
The screaming of the death and the lost and the barking of the Cerberus was almost too much for her. But she waited, patiently, for the mother she knew would come. Then, finally, the message came, from Zeus himself telling his brother to let the girl come home to where she belonged. And she’d rejoiced, imagining the world already and he had seemed resigned to losing her (though he had never truly had her) and as a last gift he offered her a handful of pomegranate seeds, just so she would have eaten something of his domain. And she had not understood, she had not known. All she had known is that he had been kind to her, at times, and he had shown her the wonders of his domain. And she’d imagined that if there was light and flowers, she might have considered marrying him. And now she was leaving, to the world above, and he’d looked resigned but sad too (a trick, of course, to make her eat) and so, to make him somewhat happy, she had eaten tree seeds, because she truly did not wish to eat at all.
He had smiled then and send the messenger back.
She had eaten, she could not leave.
He’d taken her to Zeus, to stand before the council so that they could decree her faith, and her mother had cried (from so far away because she could no longer reach her.) The nymphs, even farther away, whimpered and Zeus had stood and asked questions and she hadn’t lied (though she wishes she had.) In the end, when it was it done, it was decreed that since she had only eaten tree seeds she need only spend three months in the world below – with her new husband the king of the Underworld – and the rest she could spend basking in the sun at her mother’s side. And Hades, Hades had smiled because he had what he wanted and he’d told her later that she too should smile because she too had what she wanted and they should rejoice for the fact that it had all worked out (though he wished she’d never have to leave him.)
He gave her a garden, to do as she pleased.
He gave her all she wanted except of course for what she wanted the most.
He could not give her the sunlight, for it was not a part of his domain and since his domain was that of darkness and the death sunlight was the one thing she could not have. Most of the flowers she loved, most of the plants she loved, could not bloom in the Underworld and so she was left with whatever flowers could – the ones Hades himself had brought here. She wishes desperately her mother would come down but she does not – angry as she is at Hades and saddened by her daughter being trapped in his domain.
*~*
And the world withered, and the world died, as Demeter mourned her daughter’s absence.
And the people suffered.
But then she would rise, from the world down below, back to the world from which she had come and the world would grow once again. The grain would be better, the flowers would bloom and the world would know how happy Demeter was to have her daughter back. And so it would stay, basking in it’s glory, until the too soon day where Persephone, though she did not wish to –at least at first, eventually she grew to like the world down below enough to not be sad every time she went down though her mother always was – went down, back to the Underworld.
And then the world would wither again, and it would die.
And the people, the people would grow accustomed to this until one day they could no longer recall it had ever been different.
(But Persephone could and so could Demeter, and they would never forget a time when they had always been together.)
*~*
She would fall in the winter into her husband’s arms and rise in the spring into her mother’s love.
Forever she’d be a part of both worlds and yet in the end she would belong in neither.
(And the nymphs played in the meadow forever and always and Persephone; Persephone forgot what it was like to be so innocent.)
*~*
The boat made its way across the water, leaving behind it her hometown of Knossos.
Ariadne stood there and looked ahead or at the ocean’s below but never, not once, did she look back. For fear that if she did she would she her father standing angrily on the shore, screaming for her to return (if he’d noticed she was gone at all) but also for fear of not seeing him standing there, of finally being shown that the man that was supposed to love her the most did not care at all. (And also for fear of seeing ships that would follow them and make this boat sink and leave her lost, with her new love, at the bottom of the sea.) So she looked ahead at the time to come, at the world she was building with Theseus at the live she was about to start – sometimes she looked at the ocean below and wondered what it would mean to never be alone. Theseus stood behind her, his arms around, pointing the world around them and telling her all the things he would give (the whole world, he’d promised her the whole world.) They did not talk about what came before – never, ever, ever – they only talked about what supposedly laid ahead.
(She had sacrificed everything for him – her world, her family, her future, her land – and she had given him all her love and in return she expected nothing less.)
They knew her betrayal was great and that she could not return.
And they knew she had done because she loved him.
(He’s supposed to be the hero of the tale; he’s supposed to be her hero not a selfish bastard.)
He’d grabbed her hand on the shore and he’d whispered in her ear that it would all be alright, that she need not stay – for the punishment would be far too great – and that they could go anywhere they wanted and he’d promised, he’d promised her the world. And she had believed, she had smiled and believed and allowed him to take her on ship and sail away – and she had imagined it all, the future she would have the lands she would see and the love they would share forevermore. (Oh, how naïve.)
She stood all day and watched everything (for in her young life she had not seen much at all – and sometimes Theseus behind her or beside her and she believed all he said. They’d sailed, desperate he was to reach his homeland and reunite with his father, until one moment they’d seen a light that had led them to an island. Ariadne had never seen anything of the world, all of it was new and Theseus said: “I’ll show it to you.” Sometimes, not often but sometimes, she thinks that that had always been his idea, that he’d always known that island would come and that he had known, from the moment he took her, that that is where he would leave her. And though she had learned later that he was selfish and cared not for her and that his intend had always to leave her behind she had never truly known if he had decided, from the beginning, where it was that he would leave her.
Perhaps it was just convenience.
He’s shown her things on the island she had never seen and things she already had. He’d laid her on the ground and they’d slept, as the waves hit the rocks and she’d dreamed that she was floating, peacefully and happy in the massive ocean. (And she had thought, then, how lucky am I to have found a man so deserving of love, such a grand hero, and such a surprise to be deserving of his love.) She had slept through the sunrise and the waking of the birds, she had slept through the talking of the man and the leaving of the ship and then, suddenly, she had woken alone. She had given him all and he had waited, laid down on the ground beside her and waited until her dreams took over and then he had slipped away (like he had always intended to.) Disappeared into the darkness, onto the ship that would sail him home and he did not look back, not even once. (She wonders, at times, if he ever felt guilty, if he ever thought about poor Ariadne whom he had left on that island and if he ever wondered if she had turned out alright.)
Far away, into the horizon, where she could barely still see it, was the boat disappearing from view.
(She had screamed but they had not heard and she wonders if they would have turned if they had; probably not.)
There was silence all around her, or maybe, actually, there wasn’t. The waves crashed against the rocks and the birds sang in the sky, the sea gulls screamed and far, far away she could hear voices (maybe.) She had fallen on her knees, too weak to stand – this she knows though she does not remember – and she had screamed. (Before she’d curled in a ball and no longer moved, before she stayed there on the ground and never went away.)
Maybe she had not screamed, maybe she just thinks she had.
Maybe the world around her had ceased to exist when her love sailed away.
Maybe she had died, alone on that island.
Maybe she had lived, with heartache and pain (and broken heart that threatened to tear her apart.)
Maybe, just maybe, this was all a dream and he had not left her at all, maybe she’d wake in a moment and he would be by her side, whispering reassurances into her ear and the world would turn right again.
Maybe none of it had happened, maybe she would wake in her room in Knossos and the dream would be nothing but a warning, a tale of what could be if she saved the boy in the maze (and maybe in that world she would let him die, maybe she would save him still.)
Maybe her father had send people after her, maybe they would come here and tear her apart or return her home and allow her father to tear her apart. (Perhaps they’d feel sorry for her, but she does not truly believe this, perhaps they would say that her broken heart was punishment enough.)
Maybe she could jump into the ocean below and just sink.
*~*
She had cried, she had curled up and screamed, she had been lost in the ocean of her tears.
(And she had drowned in her despair, in her pain, in her tears, she had drowned but she had still been there.)
This was not how the tale was meant to go, this was not how she imagined it would go, the girl would fall for the hero and the hero would be kind and chivalrous and they would be happy. The hero – kind and good – was not meant to leave his love, if she was that at all, on an island with no way out, in the middle of the night with a broken heart. (A hero was not meant to be selfish, a hero was meant to think of others – but then she had only known the tales that were told.) She needed him, she loved him but he did not need her nor did he love her in any way and so, instead of speaking, instead of telling, he had lied and then he had sailed away back to the world he came from.
(She should not have saved him, she should have chosen someone else or perhaps, the smarter plan would have been not to save anyone at all.)
She should have gotten up – after that first day passed and turned back into night – should have gotten up and moved. Should have gone to the world of the living and tried, but she had been scared and alone and broken and hurt so she had not; she had stayed there and listened to the waves and waited for the end to come (for it would come.) That night she dreamed of the ocean but she no longer felt safe, she dreamed she was sinking into the vast ocean and far away from her, where she could still see him, was Theseus and she had called to him, somehow, and he had turned and just watched her sink and then he’d gone away. (She wonders how people will tell the tale, if they tell it at all, and she imagines that no matter how many times it changes one thing will remain the same: he will be the hero of the tale even if he is not.)
This is what he did, the truth in her dream and her reality, he had promised her everything and he had let her behind to drown in the sorrow that he’d created himself. (And then, perhaps, he had laughed.)
She had woken in tears, with sorrow in her heart but she had not been alone.
A God sat beside her, Dionysus his name was (he’d said) and he’d tried her tears and promised her the world, promised her everything. He’d told her she should not cry for the likes of a hero that could not appreciate the beautiful women she was.
And then he’d carried her away and given her the world.
(And she’d laughed and been happy.)
*~*
Aeria had learned the tales – of Gods and heroes and the ordinary people whose lives they messed with – at her grandmother’s feet.
Her grandmother was a fountain of knowledge about the Gods and her storytelling abilities were wonderful. She hadn’t been the only sitting there, her friends would come as well but her siblings never cared enough to hear all the tales again. (Sometimes, after her grandmother was done talking, she’d ask her if those stories really happened and her grandmother would look at her and say: of course they did, my dear child, of course they did. But Aeria wasn’t sure, didn’t know, if she’d ever actually believed that.)
Her grandmother had loved the tale of the contest between Poseidon and Athena to be the patron saint of the town they knew as Athens.
Her best friend Livia loved the tale of Troje the most (and of Helen who had started it all.)
Aeria loved the tale of Aphrodite’s birth, of her rise from the sea foam as her father was castrated by his son.
(She had begged, over and over again when she was younger for her grandmother to tell that story and her grandmother had, time and again, dutifully told it to her.)
That however was long ago, back when they were children and those tales matter, back when she believed they were real (and perhaps a part of her still does.) Now she is older, now they are older, now they are grown and she understands more, now she knows that the Gods don’t always do good things and heroes aren’t always heroes. (She still goes to Aphrodite’s temple just in case they are listening.) Her grandmother had died long ago, her tales lost in the wind and no matter how hard she tried Aeria had never really been able to tell them the way her beloved grandmother had.
The tales of the ocean were the ones told the most.
(But they all end in tears, Aeria thinks now, or perhaps they do not, perhaps she only remembers those that do.)
A times she, they’d wondered – she and Livia – as they stood at the water’s edge and looked over the massive ocean if the Gods looked down upon them and were deciding, perhaps in that moment, if they were important to them or not. Livia had always wanted to believe that someday they would be that they would sail away and have their own adventures but Aeria had always rather suspected that to the Gods they never mattered at all, that they were nothing but another worshiper. (She’d joined Livia in imagining their adventures but she’d never believed they’d go on one.)
She’s not special, not to them, not to the world, not to anyone.
(Not to anyone but her grandmother that is.)
Her mother too told her tales but those were not well-known, just stories of people she had once cared about that were no longer there at all. (And the world at large would not hear those tales, nor would they care they but she had learned them and she’d carried them in her heart and for a while at least it seemed they mattered.) Her mother told the tale of Syria, one of her friends, who had fallen in love with a man who lived on an island far away. She had worn white on her wedding and she had been the most beautiful girl in all the land and then she had kissed her best friend goodbye and she had sailed away to her husband’s home. They had lived, her mother tells her, near a lighthouse that belonged to his family – and Aeria had at times imagined what that light would look like, how many lost sailors it would save and how many it would destroy.
They had been happy, they had been at peace.
Until one day she’d left to see her mother, who’d begged for a visit, and she had promised him she would return as fast as she could. But that night, they say, Poseidon had been angry – why nobody knows and Aeria wonders at times if Poseidon had ever understood what his anger did or if he cared about it at all – and her ship had not been able to withstand the storm he created. (But then no ship on the sea that night, near where she was, had been able to withstand it and Aeria hears this tale of the one girl who died and wonders how many others lost their lives that night.)
Her ship had gone down in the waves and she had drowned (her eyes closed her mother said, though she cannot know this, her eyes closed imagining a better time.)
She had never been found.
And her husband, her love had stood on the shore and watched the ship sail away and then he had gone back to his life and waited for her to return. The storm had grown and it had scared him and he had stood there watching the seas hoping to see her ship return and hoping she had decided to wait until it had passed or not return at all (for then, at least, she would have lived.) He had been lost to them all once he learned the truth, her mother told her, and he’d drowned in his grief. He has spent the next year sitting on the island, staring at the world around him and imagined seeing her everywhere. He had gone crazy, the people whispered, and they felt sorry for him but none, ever, tried to help. They had too much to do, too much to take care of in their own lives to care about a man who had lost it all.
(And Aeria never asks if her mother had cared for him, if she had tried to reach the man her friend had loved so much or if she too, like all others, had deemed her problems more important – and perhaps they even were.)
One night, her mother whispers, he could no longer stand it and so he’d leapt head first into the ocean and he had drowned. Aeria likes to imagine he had gone to the underworld and he had found her there and they were, somehow, happy. And she had wondered what the difference was between Syria and those that had come before. Why had, she wonders, Ino been saved and not her mother’s friend? Surely she was just as kind and her death just as undeserving, just as random. Perhaps there was really no reason why some were saved, perhaps it was just the moment it happened, and perhaps it was all just a simple coincidence.
She’d asked nothing though about that and she’d just imagined what it would be like to love someone so much you were unable to live without them.
(And she had wondered, then too, if she would someday have a love like that. If somebody would one day look at her and declare her the one, the everything, the only one that would ever matter.)
*~*
Livia sailed away with her brother one day.
Her brother was going to Athens and they needed to go by boat, over the ocean, and Livia – who had been dreaming of the day she could see the world – had decided to go with him. She had asked Aeria to come too but she had been too afraid, to determine to stay with her mother to even think about sailing away. And so Livia had promised her thousands of tales and that someday, when she came back, they would sail away together and see the world. (And they’d meet Gods, Livia would say, and Heroes but they would live their own lives just like they wanted to. Aeria liked the idea, the plan, but she’s not sure she believed in it.)
She had stood on the shore and watched the ship disappear into the horizon.
(And she had wished, desperately, that she had been strong enough, brave enough to go with her.)
She had stayed in her home, as Livia sailed across the seas; she had stayed as sickness swept across their tiny island and took her mother far away (and left her in charge of her younger siblings and in that moment she was glad that she had not gone for if she had they would have died.) Every day, whenever she had time – sometimes at night when her house became too small – she stood on the shore where she had stood before and waited for a ship to appear in the horizon but none ever did. (Ships appeared on that horizon but never, not once, did they bring her best friend.) And so she waited, as her old house fell apart around her, she waited or the best friend’s return.
As night turned into day, and days into weeks, and then into months and then a year.
(And then another, and then three, and in the end she waited five whole years.)
Her siblings grew and learned to take care of themselves – Alicia married a young man that lived not that far away, Aeria likes him he’s kind and treats her with respect, Lucinda married another man, a little older, and though at times he treats her well there are times that Aeria would like to kill him for hurting her (slowly, preferably.) Man came for her too sometimes, one in particular – broad shouldered, tanned and smiling all the time – but she turned them away, waiting as she was for the return of her friend and the start of the live they had imagined (perhaps, she thought, perhaps if she told him he would tell her he was coming, perhaps he would say that he could sail away with her. But she suspected that she and Livia were the only ones who really wanted to go.)
She waited, live went on, the house fell apart and night turned into day.
And then, five years after she’d waved goodbye, she’d finally relented and given up. Livia was not coming back, she’d realized, Livia had found something out there in the world (and she refused to even consider the possibility that Livia could not come back, that somewhere out there she had joined others in their watery graves) and it made her happy, so happy she never returned. She had thought then, at the shore staring over the ocean, that she would go to his house and tell him that yes she would like to get married, and he would fix their old house and they would live their lives together (and she would name her first daughter, whenever she came, after her best friend who’d left one day.)And so they did, and they grew old and Aeria would tell her children the stories her grandmother told – though she could never tell them well – and she would tell the tales her mother shared. And she would speak of her best friend who’d sailed away and never returned and had found her happiness and her adventure somewhere out there. (She imagined Livia on a boat or in a beautiful house, a man she loved by her side and children playing all around her. And she imagined that Livia sometimes thought about her and imagined her happy.)
She still went to the shore every day and stared at the horizon for a while.
You never know after all.
*~*
Livia sailed across the seas and saw the world.
She saw things she could not describe and things she would never have believed existed if she had not seen them herself. She did not, however, find adventure in the way she had imagined, there were no heroes and no Gods, no impossible quests. (Perhaps, she thinks, it was just the men who were supposed to go on the quests.) She did however find adventure in another way, by meeting new people and seeing new lands, by sailing the seas and never knowing what would come next. And then, one day – after five years, five very long years in which she missed Aeria desperately at times and wished she had just come with her – her brother said: “It’s time to go home.”
There was still so much that Livia wanted to see, still so much she wanted to know.
But she’d thought then, on that ship near the docks – two days from her home town – that’s okay, we’ll sail home and I’ll convince Aeria to come with me. (Surely now she would do, surely now she was grown and she no longer needed to care for her siblings, surely now she would not fear.) And so they’d gone, back to where they came from and someone, she never remembers who, said they should sail to the left but her brother had said no – both ways would lead to home but the way the sailor said they should go would take a day or two more not that Livia really cared – and so they’d sailed the way her brother wanted to.
There’s a tale about a girl, Aeria’s mother used to tell them, a young girl, with long beautiful hair that moved in the wind and beautiful piercing eyes – though nobody had looked in those in years. She had fallen in love with the prince of her dreams and they had married in a ceremony in the hills but then a war had broken out between her father’s kingdom and his and he’d had to choose which way to go. And so he had sailed, to the land in the east, to talk with his father and calm him at least. She would speak to hers and they would relent and if they did not he would return and they would run away and they would build a new home in another world where they would be save. She talked to her father but he only grew angrier until one day he build a tower on the cliffs and locked her in, the door closed behind her and he’d said if her prince returned, if he did not side with his father, he would allow him to live with her in her tower on the cliffs. And so she had waited, staring out of the window at the ocean, but her love had never came. He had died in the attack her father had led, died even after he’d convinced his father peace was the way and her father never told her that he would never come. Instead he sends whispers of the betrayal of love, of her husband who had chosen the other side and left her to rot.
She had died in that tower, alone and in pain but somehow she lingers, they say.
Her song can still be heard, haunting the seas and any sailors that pass wish to give her peace.
(They all drown in their haste for none think it through; none remember that she had died long ago.)
She had not believed the story, though Aeria had, and truthfully shad forgotten that that story supposedly took place near their home. Now she believes, now that it’s too late, as the song fills the air and shatters her heart. Her brother and his crew go towards the tower – that still stands though it looks worn and old and she swears it will fall apart at any minute – to save a girl no longer there and she pleads, and she talks, but they ignore everything she says (she thinks perhaps this is the revenge of the princess, who had believed she had been abandoned and now killed all those that passed.)
Livia closed her eyes as the ship went down and imagined she was somewhere else. She imagined she was with Aeria and they were sailing the seas and seeing it’s wonders, she imagined they’d stopped in a beautiful town and lived there for years, she imagined they travelled by land as well and seen all there was to offer. She even imagined, as the current carried her towards the tower, that she had never left at all, that she had waited until Aeria was ready to leave. She imagined that she wasn’t drowning but floating and that another ship would come and save her, she imagined it would take her home and she would see her best friend and she would tell her how much she loved her and how much she missed her and they would sail away to their future together.
But of course none of that happened.
Of course she drowned as the haunting song filled the air.
*~*
Livia’s floating.
And yet maybe she’s not.
Maybe she’s drowning like so many before her, maybe the floating is in her imagination.
Maybe she swims, desperately towards the shore, like Ino before her (but Ino rises out of the ocean and becomes more.)
Maybe she’s like Aeria, save on an island, sad and waiting but, at least, safe. (Like Ariadne on another island, sad and broken but not drowning. But no God would come for Aeria, no God would make her his.)
Maybe none of it is real, maybe it’s all a story.
*~*
Persephone falls and rises and the people feel her mother’s despair, Ino saves the sailors as they drown in her domains. Ariadne sails the worlds with her God by her side and their lives are forever told in the tales of the land.
But Aeria stays on her island and stares over the sea waiting for her a friend’s return that could never be.
But nobody would tell their story (of Livia & Aeria.)
Nobody would care to know.