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Every little twerp is descended from Heracles these days, it’s practically a requirement for entry to polite society.
These are the men of note. We regard them as one might regard a rash – hopeful that it does not spread further – and then move on.
Like most people on Ithaca, she has a secret. Unlike most people on Ithaca, she is not used to having secrets, and is already going a little mad with it.
If Eos is calm no matter what, Autonoe has mastered the art of selective hysteria, of falling about and weeping at the most pertinent of moments.
Sometimes, when duty forces him to look Antinous in the eye, he plays a game of imagining precisely how he’ll kill this suitor, only a sniff older than him, who would be his stepfather. He finds the exercise allows him to maintain eye contact, politely, as if he were not calculating the best angle to slip a blade up between his ribs.
Elektra smiles, and it is the smile of the skinless skull that laughs at jokes only Hades enjoys.
She even secretly sometimes pays them to add a verse or two that goes “Te-dum-te-dum and when he returns te-dum-te-dum he will slaughter all who have sullied his home te-dum-te-dum oh mighty mighty Odysseus.”
She learnt that when the south wind is dull and heavy, you do not sweat; nor when the north howls in the harshest of winters must you shiver. The storm may bend your back, but only you can straighten it again.
Friends should find each other in gentler times, when there is a mutual space to learn of each other’s hearts without danger or threat to unite them. I do not know when there will next be gentle times, but for what little it’s worth… I hope one day to meet you there.”
“Well then. I suppose we’re stuck being family.” “What an unpleasant notion,” she replies, without rancour or regret. “Quite.” “A bond that is, if anything, even more irrational than friendship.” “I couldn’t agree more.” “And yet somehow we give it sanctity.”
