Ariadne

by Jennifer Saint

I could feel the weight of it pressing down upon me like the heavy sky that Atlas bears upon his mighty shoulders.

He kissed me then. It was a bolt of lightning, a shattering of the sky, a shaking of the earth and everything that stood upon it.

Women would leave their lives of drudgery and obedience; they would cast off their veils and loosen their hair to escape into the mountains for secret rites, away from the eyes of men.

Why mortals bloomed like flowers and crumbled to nothing. Why their absence left a gnawing ache, a hollow void that could never be filled. And how everything they once were, that spark within them, could be extinguished so completely yet the world did not collapse under the weight of so much pain and grief.”

I would not let a man who knew the value of nothing make me doubt the value of myself.

I had been a fool to trust in a hero, a man who could only love the mighty echo of his own name throughout the centuries. It could have undone me.

Mortals may age, but the gods are prisoners of their own infantile whimsies, never capable of change and never knowing what it is to love, because they dare not risk the suffering of loss.”

that all a woman can do in this world is take what she wants from it and crush those who would stand in her way before they break her into fragments

“It is not possible to feel this way—to have this connection with someone, to know it like I do in every bone of my body—and for it not to be reciprocated. He feels it, too, I know that he must.”

Girl what?? You're so delulu