Circe

by Madeline Miller

Conditions, constrainment. These were novelties to my father, and gods love nothing more than novelty.

You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see.

The thought was this: that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.

That is one thing gods and mortals share. When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.

This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh.

But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.

But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.

Amusement flashed in his eyes. I had fed off that look once, when I had been starving and thought such crumbs a feast.

He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.