she only had two choices
after she left you here.
She could either go with Zeus
or she could go with Poseidon.’
Styx reached for my shaking hand
and held it between her cold fingers.
Her next words were carefully chosen.
‘Your mother did neither.’
My Mother’s Choice
‘Your mother is unlike any Goddess I know. It’s why her gifts are so strange, they were crafted for a strange deity. We were girls together, her and I. Cousins, but more like sisters. And even then, when we were young – back when it was not dangerous for our family to be close – she was able to make the strangest things happen out of thin air. One day, she invented a fox made out of fire. None of us knew how she did it, only one night, she disappeared into the woods and came out with a creature bright as starfire, its swishing tail sparking embers across my father’s river-flooded palace. We loved that fox. My sisters still love its descendants. Each of them has a cub and they cherish it like a child. She knew how to do this. Reach into us, find what was lacking and give us a sky full of something we did not realize we needed. So what Zeus and Poseidon wanted from her was not just herself, but all of her gifts. They did not understand that a Goddess like Asteria would find a way out of their quagmire, because Asteria was not a Goddess who could be possessed or owned through a trap. She was bright and shrewd, even when we were young. So when faced with this impossible choice, after she left you with us, she first became a hare, one of the fastest creatures in the world. But they became leopards and cornered her. Then, she became a bird. But they became eagles and nearly caught her. Which left her with her last and only choice. She flung herself into the sea. And she transformed herself into an island, full of birds and trees and a place where no God can go without her permission.’
Comfort Is a Peculiar Thing
No one teaches you how to find comfort
when all you have known is running, fear,
the collapsing walls of a once-palace,
where the only source of true stability
and love you have ever had is your mother.
And when she is ripped from you,
there is nothing anyone can tell you
that will bring you that strange emotion.
Comfort is for children who have not known war. Comfort is for children who have not been
left in dark places with strangers.
What Styx just told me gave me no comfort or joy.
All it told me was that my mother
was chased so far
that she finally ran out of land to run on.
The only place she had left was the ocean.
The only thing she could do as a Goddess, to get away from the cruelty of Gods, was turn herself into something
they would never want to possess.
An unwelcoming island in a stormy sea.
Styx Had Been Watching
