All the Fabulous Beasts

by Priya Sharma

That day the crow palace had been covered with carrion crows; bruisers whose shiny eyes were full of plots.

He was an unknown entity to me because I didn’t care enough to want to find out who he was. Shouldn’t blood call out to blood? Mine didn’t.

“We were there at the world’s birth. We are wedded to the earth. We don’t submit. We endure.”

I felt confined. I needed to be outside. I wound a scarf about my head to keep the serpents in check and selected a pair of dark glasses from the basket by the door.

My hate for Poseidon wouldn’t abate but it grieved me to sell off his pearls, one by one. Each was a lustrous story. They’d fall from Poseidon’s ears, nostrils and mouth whenever we quarrelled. It was his way of getting me to laugh and make up with him.

He knows how to pass as human. He does it every day.