How could this happen to one
of us? I felt myself falling to the
ground, tears unable to form, blurry
vision, throat tight like a thousand
different storms trying to break
through my skin. I wanted to crawl
outside of this hurricane-skin
that was holding me in.
‘Are you saying,’
I whispered,
‘that my mother
isdead?’
Death
Even here, in the kingdom of death itself, dying as an immortal felt like an impossibility. My only experience with death was the stories my mother gave me. She told me tales about how mortals are doomed, so everything is more beautiful to them yet more cruel because they live such short lives. She told me about the villages not far from us where once people died, their bodies would rot if not set aflame, but I had never seen decay until I saw the bones and skeletons of the Underworld. When a mortal died, prayers were given for their safe passage, a feast in their name. And yet, although my mother was a Goddess, a guide to stars and maker of prophecies, the creator of dreams, there was no one to attend her last rites, speak kindly of who she was. She left her immortal Goddess body to become an island, a death in every way that counted to the divine, completely alone.
Styx Put Her Arms Around Me
And I shuddered against her cold form.
She put her chin on my head,
spoke comfortingly to me.
‘We do not die, child.
She is not dead,
not the way you are thinking.
Instead, you must picture her alive,
just in a different form.
Here, and not here.
We do not have to have
these bodies to continue
to exist.’
But it did not matter
how Styx saw it.
To me,
