Calling all Demigods! discussion
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message 51:
by
., Goddess of Bacon
(new)
Oct 25, 2010 07:31PM

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That, or they're gonna be ladybugs. Either way, they're gonan be cute. If I get a picture of them and I, I'm uploading it.
YES!
AND I'M GONNA BE A PEACOCK!
:D I'll upload a picture of myself as well.
I have a bunchesz of picat00rs on GR.
AND I'M GONNA BE A PEACOCK!
:D I'll upload a picture of myself as well.
I have a bunchesz of picat00rs on GR.
AW. WOULD YOU KINDLY EXPLAIN WHY YOU'RE NOT GONNA BE A LITTLE SISTER?
Unless it's because you couldn't get contacts. That's compeltely understandable.
I have moaaarrr. I actually reached the limit... NO WAIT. I have room for one more picture... *runs off to find planner*
Unless it's because you couldn't get contacts. That's compeltely understandable.
I have moaaarrr. I actually reached the limit... NO WAIT. I have room for one more picture... *runs off to find planner*
I couldn't get contacts and a bunch of other taangz.
Being a peacock is just so much easier. :3
xDDDD BUT YOU HAVE NO PICATOORS OF YOUR LOVELY SELF.
Being a peacock is just so much easier. :3
xDDDD BUT YOU HAVE NO PICATOORS OF YOUR LOVELY SELF.
Awws. D:
My friend made her costume last year. SHE WAS A CUPCAKE. She's small, so she looked even cuter in it. XD
'COS IF MY MOM FOUND OUT, SHE WOULD KILL ME. >.>
My friend made her costume last year. SHE WAS A CUPCAKE. She's small, so she looked even cuter in it. XD
'COS IF MY MOM FOUND OUT, SHE WOULD KILL ME. >.>
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
... awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Does your mom check over your shoulder?
... awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Does your mom check over your shoulder?
I'm being a goddess for Halloween!
My friend is being Artemis, I'm Athena.
I have a character in the fields.
OH MY JESUS FLY. DON'T TALK ABOUT HALLOWEEN HERE (would you kindly look at my event list?). TAKE IT CHAT. e____e
http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...
Maybe I am
Just a little insane.
I know I joke about it.
You know,
~insanity~
That word
that states
"The state of mind
by which a person
acts insane
while keeping
a sane train of thought."
The word
That we made up together.
But in all honesty?
I feel
Just a little
insane.
That word
It was just a joke
I thought it was
Is it still?
Yes,
It should be
But I'm feeling
more insane
as the days go by.
I say depression
People don't believe.
I say I'm ~insanity~
And people think I'm insane.
I say a crap load more
And they don't give a damn.
I'm just insane.
Yes I am.
Don't deny it.
Because I won't believe.
Don't deny
Because I know it's true.
I dropped my mask.
I dropped that plastic smile.
I dropped every lie,
But I still feel insane.
Maybe I am
Just a little insane.
I know I joke about it.
You know,
~insanity~
That word
that states
"The state of mind
by which a person
acts insane
while keeping
a sane train of thought."
The word
That we made up together.
But in all honesty?
I feel
Just a little
insane.
That word
It was just a joke
I thought it was
Is it still?
Yes,
It should be
But I'm feeling
more insane
as the days go by.
I say depression
People don't believe.
I say I'm ~insanity~
And people think I'm insane.
I say a crap load more
And they don't give a damn.
I'm just insane.
Yes I am.
Don't deny it.
Because I won't believe.
Don't deny
Because I know it's true.
I dropped my mask.
I dropped that plastic smile.
I dropped every lie,
But I still feel insane.
Him.
No. Not a real person. Well. Not a real, physical person. And not a real, physical, nice person.
No. Not a real person. Well. Not a real, physical person. And not a real, physical, nice person.
Whimsicality wrote: "I see some e.e. cummings in there... ;)"
:)
Finished a report on AnOther.
I showed Jamie "may i feel said he" and I think I kinda scarred her. I also showed her "the boys i mean are not refined". Also kinda scarred her. XD
:)
Finished a report on AnOther.
I showed Jamie "may i feel said he" and I think I kinda scarred her. I also showed her "the boys i mean are not refined". Also kinda scarred her. XD
Butterflies
i’m charming all my butterflies
one by one,
i’m floating off to venera,
one by one,
i’m seducing all my troubles, i’m beguiling with my smiles,
i’m slipping away and hiding,
a foolish giggle on my face,
a lovely poison i have laced,
drinking it with a cup of
soothing brooding tea.
i’m kissing you i’m kissing you,
one by one,
stitching up the gaps i’ve made,
(m)(e)(s)(s)(i)(l)(y)
one by one
i’m charming all my butterflies
one by one,
i’m floating off to venera,
one by one,
i’m seducing all my troubles, i’m beguiling with my smiles,
i’m slipping away and hiding,
a foolish giggle on my face,
a lovely poison i have laced,
drinking it with a cup of
soothing brooding tea.
i’m kissing you i’m kissing you,
one by one,
stitching up the gaps i’ve made,
(m)(e)(s)(s)(i)(l)(y)
one by one

The coughing began three weeks before the disease turned serious.
It started with Edwin’s mother, Ann Marie. No one knows where she got the sickness; no one lived long enough to find out. No one knows what the disease was, and there wasn’t enough evidence to find out.
After Ann Marie caught the sickness, it was passed to little four-year-old Marie, Edwin’s sister. Little Marie was young for her grade- she was already in kindergarten, expected to start first grade in three months. Extremely tangible to the disease, Marie only suffered for a short while.
Then was Edwin himself; he suffered the longest, as is always the case. He was still forced to go to school while he was sick, until it became obvious he was contagious and near delusional. Then he was assigned to be in bed for the remainder of his sickness.
Last to be sick was Edwin’s stepfather, Richard. Richard died first, however, which seemed to shock the others to their senses.
Slowly, one by one, they all ended up hospitalized. But only two survived.
A weak cough sounded from the bedroom. Following was a young, feeble voice.
“Momma?”
If Ann Marie hadn’t been paying attention, she wouldn’t have heard her son’s call. She scarcely heard it in the first place. When she did, however, she went running into the bedroom, near frantic.
There was a bed and a crib in the darkened room, Little Marie being too delusional for a bed. The young girl slept fretfully, tossing and turning inside the wooden crib and a light sheen of sweat coating her sickly skin.
On the bed, huddled under what seemed to be millions of blankets, was the young nine-year-old Edwin. His blue eyes were half closed and his lips slightly parted as to breathe. His cheeks were flushed and the same sheen of sweat on his sister covered his forehead.
Ann Marie knelt beside her son and tested his forehead by gently pressing her lips to it. High fever, as they all had. She didn’t say a single word as she moved, almost methodically, for the liquid medicine resting on the dresser.
“Momma,” he coughed again, sitting up slowly and weakly. She shot him an appraising glance but nodded, indicating for him to continue.
“Momma, I can’t drink that stuff.”
Ann Marie carried a small cupful of the medicine over to Little Marie, who awoke grudgingly and took the medicine without uttering a single word.
“And why not, dearest?”
He coughed again and pulled the sheets up to his face, dull eyes moving to watch Little Marie as she nestled back among the blankets in her crib. The blinds were shut, as they had been for countless weeks, and the room was dark.
“Because I can’t swallow it,” Edwin managed to cough out.
Ann Marie poured another small cup of the liquid medicine and walked to kneel beside the mattress Edwin was laying on. “Why not, Edwin?”
Scooting up against the wall and as far away from the medicine as he could, Edwin collapsed down onto his pillow. “They won’t let me…”
He awoke to the beeping of monitors and an uncomfortable bed, shuddering from the lack of blankets. Edwin lifted his head weakly and was almost immediately greeted by a wave of vertigo.
In a hospital crib was Little Marie, her chest barely rising and falling, her eyes shut tightly and tears streaking down her sickly cheeks. Edwin was in one of the hospital beds, in between his two parents.
Or, rather, where both of his parents should have been.
Richard was gone, though the shell of his body still remained. Edwin, who had never really liked his stepfather, felt no remorse and no emotions towards his dead father. The only thing he felt was worry that he would be next.
But, always to suffer, that was nowhere near the case.
Little Marie went in her sleep. She didn’t utter a single sound, nor make any movement. She was only announced dead when the nurses came the next morning to check on her.
Ann Marie was near tears, had she been capable of them at that time. She knew, she just knew, that her family would be dead by the next dawn. All of them.
Edwin, after seeing Little Marie carried out of the room, dropped back onto his pillow with a groan. He didn’t reject the treatment from the friendly nurses, but mostly because they had it dripping into him through a needle.
His eyelids didn’t want to lift and his joints didn’t want to cooperate. His skin was sensitive to almost every touch, as was his hearing. He could feel the sting of the needle and the burning medicine as it traveled through his bloodstream.
All Ann Marie and Edwin wanted was for the torture to be over, for it to finally end.
But neither of them was to die.
Two, possibly three weeks later, Edwin and his mother were chauffeured out of the hospital and back to their home. It seemed empty, what with the widow and her son being the only two in a house built for six. Ann Marie had been expectant with twins just before the disease hit.
It killed them as well.
Stumbling into his bedroom, which seemed so foreign to him now, Edwin collapsed onto his bed and drew all of the millions of sheets around him and let himself cry.
For the last time in his life, Edwin cried.
Within a month, Ann Marie and her son had moved out of the sickening home and into a smaller apartment, where there was just enough space for the two of them. They had been gifted new everything, because the old items were still contagious.
The young boy and his mother were quite a pitiful sight indeed, but over time they healed.
Mostly.
Edwin was always to suffer; the Fates determined that at his birth. Every tragic event, ever solemn situation, Edwin was to be harmed but not killed. He was to always be in pain.
Always.

The ten-year-old girl threw open the doors of the apartment, her expression radiant as the bellhop carried her many, many bags of luggage inside.
“Daddy! I’m home!”
Her blue-green eyes, rimmed darkly with almost too much makeup, glanced skeptically around the familiar apartment before turning to the gaze of her father. Rosa’s shell-pink lips broke into a smile as her father drew her into his arms and twirled her around with gusto.
A gleeful laugh escaped Rosa’s lips, but the smile disappeared and turned into a grimace as she caught sight of her stepmother in the doorway. Her father gently set the pink-clad girl down on the soft, Persian rug in the entryway before turning to his wife.
“You remember Angelina, right, Rosa?” Eric Alvar’s tone was almost pleading as he glanced between the two.
“Of course,” Rosa replied in an overly sweet tone, taking a step closer to Angelina. “How could I forget the whore that-”
Smack. Angelina’s perfectly manicured hand left a bright red mark on Rosa’s cheek. The young girl seemed incredulous as her pale hand flew up to her now stinging cheek. A satisfied smirk darkened Angelina’s flawless face as she nonchalantly readjusted the rings on her hand.
Eric didn’t react in any way, biting on his lip and eyes flitting between the two.
Rosa took a threatening step closer to Angelina, a near murderous expression on her otherwise perfect face. “Do you not like hearing the truth, Mommy-Dearest?” she asked in that sickeningly sweet tone, cocking her head to the side and widening her eyes innocently.
Angelina bent down beside the girl, yanking her ear to her lips so that she could speak without Eric hearing. “You want to see a whore?” she hissed, her voice heavy with her accent. “Go look at your own mother.”
In truth, Rosa barely understood, You vant to see a whore? Go look at your own mudder. But the message was much the same.
Now it was Rosa’s turn. A hard crack sounded the room. Rosa’s small pale hand was clenched into a fist, hanging back at her side after connecting with her stepmother’s jaw. “Never,” she hissed in a voice as quiet as Angelina’s had been, “Say anything about my mother.”
Angelina straightened with a cruel smirk. “Do you not like hearing the truth, Daughter-Dearest?”
Rosa’s hands were clenched into fists; her expression was determined enough to warn Eric she wouldn’t hesitate to strike again.
So he intercepted, taking his daughter forcibly into his arms and carrying her out. She kicked, she flailed, she whined and punched and bit. But Rosa wasn’t very strong at all yet, so her resistance was pointless.
Eric set her down roughly on the pink velvet carpet in her room and kneeled in front of her to reach her height. “Rosie, what’s gotten into you?” He hoped using her pet name would get some softening out of her.
Rosa’s expression was furious, though she kept her stinging cheek away from her father and refused to meet his gaze or answer his question. She stubbornly crossed her arms over the chest of her pink sundress, expression never faltering.
Eric waited patiently for a few more minutes before sighing heavily and ruffling her chin-length auburn hair, slowly standing and moving towards the door. “Whenever you’re ready, Rosa.”
Rosa didn’t need to ask. This was what her father called ‘punishment’. She wasn’t allowed out of her room until she decided to talk to him- or, in this case, Angelina
Her blue-green eyes followed him out of the room and waited until the door shut behind him. When it did, she threw herself down onto her bed without a single word and pulled one of the magazines off of her bookshelf.
Rosa waited out her ‘punishment’ for three full hours before her father gave in and let her out. Eric used the time wisely and talked things through with Angelina, explaining very simply how sensitive Rosa was about her mother and her reputation, though he didn’t say anything more than the vagueness of ‘showgirl’.
Eric disappeared for a few more moments, in which he spoke to Rosa privately before carrying her back out. She shot a lethal glare at Angelina but didn’t utter a word as she took a seat on one of the fluffy ottomans.
“Aren’t you too young for makeup?” Angelina questioned, a sneer to her voice as she took in Rosa’s appearance.
Rosa simply stared at Angelina for a few moments, her expression never once changing, before Eric answered for her.
“Not where she goes over summer, no.”
“And where is that?”
“None of your business,” Rosa snapped, crossing her legs petulantly and flipping her hair out of her eyes with a flick of her head.
An uncomfortable silence filled the room. After a few moments Eric excused himself and stepped out of the room, leaving the two alone.
Almost as soon as Eric stepped out Angelina spoke. “Listen here, pretty girl,” she spat, eyes filled with loathing as she reluctantly met Rosa’s. “Your father only has room for one perfect girl in his heart. And you and I both know who that is.”
With a smug smirk, Rosa stood from the ottoman. “Mommy-Dearest,” she sneered, “Are you certain? Who has he had longer? Who simply happens to be better?”
Angelina’s fierce glare faltered, and Rosa chuckled darkly. “As I thought.”
Rosa turned back to the hallway, bare feet sliding along the dark hardwood floors covered by Persian rugs easily. Her pink toenails peeped up from the puffy white rugs as she turned, hands on her hips. She raised a hand in a mockingly sweet goodbye gesture and waved her fingers. “Toodles, now.”
And with that, the ten-year-old Rosa turned and walked smugly back into her room, launching herself through the French Doors and onto the beautiful canopy bed, pulling up her magazine again and relaxing against the soft pillows.
That exact attitude would be what would get Rosa thrown out of the house in four years. That smug smirk and that bratty, ‘everything-revolves-around-me’ attitude would get Rosa sent to camp permanently.
But, of course, no one ever warns them of these things.
Title: Wait
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating: K+
Word Count: 1,911
Summary: The princess of Levsos had been carried away to Troy by Achilles, fierce son of Peleus. After conceiving his child, he allowed her to flee back home, not wanting his second son to be born in war.
This describes the crimes of passion that brought the most famous war in legend to life, and the story of a girl that is irrevocably woven in Homer's epic.
This is a story of loss and life and love.
This is a story.
Wait
Black sailed ships mark the distance.
I cannot see the colour of their eyes, not even count how many they are, but they are familiar. Too familiar. The sight of those black dots fills me with grief.
So Troy has fallen.
We saw the plumes of smoke from that once splendid city rise, a smoky grey against the serene night sky. Dotted with stars, the sky was. A lovely black velvet shrouded in mist: the origins of the ancestors of the golden gods.
Since he and that horrible red-haired man sacked our city ten years ago, since he took me to the Achaeans’ camp on the shores of Troy. I remember watching the waters when he was out fighting, leading his Myrmidons in the war. I remember how the water changed shape and colour and texture, from azure to lapis lazuli to a flat grey. The colour of his eyes. His mother, supposedly, had been a goddess, a daughter of the Old Man of the Sea. Nereus. I did not believe him until he killed my father, my three brothers. He killed Adrastos. He did it beautifully, dancing with his spear, lithe as the panthers they have on Mount Ida in Troy. He was a streak of glorious Death and could only be divine. If he had been human I would have strangled him with my bare hands in my fury.
I remember Briseis. Her lovely long dark curls, the porcelain skin. The hut we shared with him. Her large liquid eyes, her quivering tone as she subjected to his every wish. She did not fight against him like I did. She did not challenge him. I challenged him. I hated him. I spent seven years in that filthy war camp. It was seven years of seeing our friends and cousins of Troy die at his hands.
He held me with those hands. Stained with Trojans’ blood. He kissed me with the mouth that yelled insults from the battle line, sneered at Hector, at Paris, even at his own king Agamemnon.
The ships are closer now. With a sickening lurch of dread I realize the possibility that they’re here to sack us again. It is mere panic, however—there is no way we could have amassed any treasure worth taking since the raid.
I drift forwards. My dress is just pale dyed cotton, light for the sweltering season. Down the grassy hill, down to the cluster of people gathered around the shore, waiting for the ships to arrive. They will greet the heroes with the sullen sense of loss, but they do not feel the fear I feel.
I wonder if he is on the ships. He must be. Regardless of the prophecies made by Nestor, the old man I thought of as a fool, he must be alive. He was the strongest warrior of them all, by far. I don’t want to see him step onto the shores of my Levsos, because then I will stumble forwards into his bronzed and muscled arms. Arms that killed so many people. He hated me with a desire, an ardent passion. I remember the day by the ships where I nearly drowned myself. It was the second week of war. He was angry.
“Life should be lost to glory, you fool, not a cowardly escape.”
Briseis was a beautiful object. I was a person. I was not as beautiful as Briseis. Or Patroclus.
Patroclus was his lover. He was taller than him and he looked like a god. Golden hair, golden skin, blue eyes like the vases my mother bargained for from the east, called glass. Bluer than glass. Patroclus was the only one he ever loved.
I am walking forwards, mingling with the crowd. My mother has probably put on her best robes, the earrings from Crete engraved with little bulls, made of purest gold, the pearl hairnet to cover her golden hair, streaked with silver to greet the men that killed her husband. Irony is the sweetest part of war.
Surveying the crowd with weary eyes, I can see that we do not have enough men. Nearly no men. Plenty of children and women, jostling each other, assembled. My mother is dignified as an august beauty, the widowed queen of the island, and she brings me back to the palace so I can wash and prepare myself. I do not see why I need preparing. The Achaeans have seen me at my worst. Our city sparkles, but it is nowhere near the magnificence that Troy had. That they destroyed.
I think about Helen as the ships come. Others are growing restless under the relentless beating of the sun. I think about the woman whose beauty I have never seen, the beauty many will never see. It is a beauty that will survive nonetheless. I know it will. Mine will not, but I am glad. The time for heroes is over; it reached its peak with this war, this massacre.
My son is at the front, pushing with the few other boys. He is the youngest of the lot. An illegitimate prince. Now that the ships are near, I see the green eyes on the ships of the Myrmidons, lined in glistening black paint on the dark wood of the ships. There seem to be fifty; I am too dizzy to count. Damon does not know that these are the ships of his father’s. He will never know, because no one will ever tell him. He is the constant in my life. Though he was born on Levsos, he was conceived at Troy, conceived with war. With him. Somehow I feel as if he was part of me the entire time, like Athena was with Zeus before springing fully-grown from his crown. Damon is not fully grown. He is a small child, not yet two years old.
The silks of my dress are a gauzy green, a false colour, for it signifies freshness and luxury, none of which I have. I am twenty-six years old. I was sixteen when I first gazed upon his bloody nobility. I will never be married, for I am a spoiled virgin, princess of nothing but an invaded isle too close to the destruction of Troy.
It seems as if half of the palace city has come out to greet the warriors, eager for news of Troy. Colourful head scarves bob and flutter in the breeze, sandals scraping against the sand of the beach. My mother and I stand back. We are all that is left of the royalty of Levsos: my sisters have been married off to various foreign husbands before the war had reached its peak. My father, my brothers, had been killed by him. Ten years ago.
He sailed with me himself to Levsos two years ago, once Damon had become apparent in my womb as a ferociously kicking bump.
“And he is my child?” he’d asked with unaccustomed doubt in those grey eyes of his. Yes. There was no mistaking him for the child of any other man who had violated me. What a shell I had become over the past decade. Cold as the winds that Boreas sends from the north. I did not expect the sudden voyage to my hometown, the island that had been so tantalizingly close the whole time. But he deposited me there during the night, cool Nyx’s arms enveloping us in a last embrace.
Still I find it hard to decide whether I love him or despise him. Both, probably. With a heavy fluttering my eyes adjust to the now moored ships. There are so many of them—not the whole fleet, for some reason, but they seem to hug the curves of the island for as far as the eye can see. They have not beached themselves but rather anchored at a short distance from the shore. This is a good sign; they are merely visiting. Asking for a night in a bed before setting off for their long journey back to Sparta, to Mycenae, to Ithaca. The Achaeans had come from everywhere, all the suitors for the most beautiful woman in the world come to her rescue. I wonder if she wanted to be rescued.
He was from Phthia. Hard to pronounce, but he did it with a strange look in his eye and a softening of his harshly cut mouth. He was a man made of fire and steel and ice.
They are approaching now, getting off the small little boats that carry them over the distance between the black ships and the water. The sound of water lapping at hollow things is my favourite sound. I have never gotten tired of it. But not all of them have dismounted. I see the familiar tall king Agamemnon and his brother, not as huge but striking nonetheless. I do not see Odysseus: his flame-coloured shock of hair is easy to spot over long distances.
My mother glides forwards to greet them. There is no disguising the cold in the line of her jaw or her gaze. The kings bow to her, the woman whose family they slaughtered ten years ago (do they remember? Yes, they do) and we lead them up the hill to our city.
The conversation is stilted and I only remember bare gaps of it. I am desperately searching for Damon’s father with my eyes. None of the kings recognize me and I am glad Odysseus is not here. As the craftiest of the lot he would know my face immediately. He is not here. He would recognize him in Damon.
It is as if we are playing the parts of different people than the ones who met each other ten years ago. My mother makes no remark of the slaughter of her people or the enslavement of her daughter, and neither do I. I am silent, for the most part. The weary kings tell us a marvellous story of a wooden horse, their best fighters concealed in that horse, ready to strike on unsuspecting Trojans. Massacre. Odysseus had commissioned it.
Conversation floats in awkward gaps and pieces. I am only half at the table, staring into the dregs of wine in my golden cup and immersed in memories. So many women have been lost in either death or love. Helen. Her abandoned Hermione. Iphigenia—sacrificed by her father before leaving for Troy. Cassandra. Hecabe. Me.
Living and loving and loss. The three are all connected—the age of the heroes has passed and yet time continues. It all goes on, a godly cycle. You can damn the gods and damn the fates to the darkest pits of Tartarus, and still life will go on. So I wait. Wait for the kings to leave or recognize me—worse yet, recognize him in Damon, who sits unnaturally obedient at my feet, never knowing that his half-brother, the son of his father who took his place in battle at age fifteen, sits mere feet away garbed in battle gear.
He has none of Achilles’ fierce elegance. He is a coward, a coward that lusts for blood. Damon... Damon is not weighed down by family names. He will grow up to be a prince and a poet, a marvellous storyteller. Or a beggar. Whatever makes him happy—the time for heroes is gone. And so I wait for the story to end, wait for life to go on.
Waiting in silence and wrapped in memories.
Genre: Historical Fiction
Rating: K+
Word Count: 1,911
Summary: The princess of Levsos had been carried away to Troy by Achilles, fierce son of Peleus. After conceiving his child, he allowed her to flee back home, not wanting his second son to be born in war.
This describes the crimes of passion that brought the most famous war in legend to life, and the story of a girl that is irrevocably woven in Homer's epic.
This is a story of loss and life and love.
This is a story.
Wait
Black sailed ships mark the distance.
I cannot see the colour of their eyes, not even count how many they are, but they are familiar. Too familiar. The sight of those black dots fills me with grief.
So Troy has fallen.
We saw the plumes of smoke from that once splendid city rise, a smoky grey against the serene night sky. Dotted with stars, the sky was. A lovely black velvet shrouded in mist: the origins of the ancestors of the golden gods.
Since he and that horrible red-haired man sacked our city ten years ago, since he took me to the Achaeans’ camp on the shores of Troy. I remember watching the waters when he was out fighting, leading his Myrmidons in the war. I remember how the water changed shape and colour and texture, from azure to lapis lazuli to a flat grey. The colour of his eyes. His mother, supposedly, had been a goddess, a daughter of the Old Man of the Sea. Nereus. I did not believe him until he killed my father, my three brothers. He killed Adrastos. He did it beautifully, dancing with his spear, lithe as the panthers they have on Mount Ida in Troy. He was a streak of glorious Death and could only be divine. If he had been human I would have strangled him with my bare hands in my fury.
I remember Briseis. Her lovely long dark curls, the porcelain skin. The hut we shared with him. Her large liquid eyes, her quivering tone as she subjected to his every wish. She did not fight against him like I did. She did not challenge him. I challenged him. I hated him. I spent seven years in that filthy war camp. It was seven years of seeing our friends and cousins of Troy die at his hands.
He held me with those hands. Stained with Trojans’ blood. He kissed me with the mouth that yelled insults from the battle line, sneered at Hector, at Paris, even at his own king Agamemnon.
The ships are closer now. With a sickening lurch of dread I realize the possibility that they’re here to sack us again. It is mere panic, however—there is no way we could have amassed any treasure worth taking since the raid.
I drift forwards. My dress is just pale dyed cotton, light for the sweltering season. Down the grassy hill, down to the cluster of people gathered around the shore, waiting for the ships to arrive. They will greet the heroes with the sullen sense of loss, but they do not feel the fear I feel.
I wonder if he is on the ships. He must be. Regardless of the prophecies made by Nestor, the old man I thought of as a fool, he must be alive. He was the strongest warrior of them all, by far. I don’t want to see him step onto the shores of my Levsos, because then I will stumble forwards into his bronzed and muscled arms. Arms that killed so many people. He hated me with a desire, an ardent passion. I remember the day by the ships where I nearly drowned myself. It was the second week of war. He was angry.
“Life should be lost to glory, you fool, not a cowardly escape.”
Briseis was a beautiful object. I was a person. I was not as beautiful as Briseis. Or Patroclus.
Patroclus was his lover. He was taller than him and he looked like a god. Golden hair, golden skin, blue eyes like the vases my mother bargained for from the east, called glass. Bluer than glass. Patroclus was the only one he ever loved.
I am walking forwards, mingling with the crowd. My mother has probably put on her best robes, the earrings from Crete engraved with little bulls, made of purest gold, the pearl hairnet to cover her golden hair, streaked with silver to greet the men that killed her husband. Irony is the sweetest part of war.
Surveying the crowd with weary eyes, I can see that we do not have enough men. Nearly no men. Plenty of children and women, jostling each other, assembled. My mother is dignified as an august beauty, the widowed queen of the island, and she brings me back to the palace so I can wash and prepare myself. I do not see why I need preparing. The Achaeans have seen me at my worst. Our city sparkles, but it is nowhere near the magnificence that Troy had. That they destroyed.
I think about Helen as the ships come. Others are growing restless under the relentless beating of the sun. I think about the woman whose beauty I have never seen, the beauty many will never see. It is a beauty that will survive nonetheless. I know it will. Mine will not, but I am glad. The time for heroes is over; it reached its peak with this war, this massacre.
My son is at the front, pushing with the few other boys. He is the youngest of the lot. An illegitimate prince. Now that the ships are near, I see the green eyes on the ships of the Myrmidons, lined in glistening black paint on the dark wood of the ships. There seem to be fifty; I am too dizzy to count. Damon does not know that these are the ships of his father’s. He will never know, because no one will ever tell him. He is the constant in my life. Though he was born on Levsos, he was conceived at Troy, conceived with war. With him. Somehow I feel as if he was part of me the entire time, like Athena was with Zeus before springing fully-grown from his crown. Damon is not fully grown. He is a small child, not yet two years old.
The silks of my dress are a gauzy green, a false colour, for it signifies freshness and luxury, none of which I have. I am twenty-six years old. I was sixteen when I first gazed upon his bloody nobility. I will never be married, for I am a spoiled virgin, princess of nothing but an invaded isle too close to the destruction of Troy.
It seems as if half of the palace city has come out to greet the warriors, eager for news of Troy. Colourful head scarves bob and flutter in the breeze, sandals scraping against the sand of the beach. My mother and I stand back. We are all that is left of the royalty of Levsos: my sisters have been married off to various foreign husbands before the war had reached its peak. My father, my brothers, had been killed by him. Ten years ago.
He sailed with me himself to Levsos two years ago, once Damon had become apparent in my womb as a ferociously kicking bump.
“And he is my child?” he’d asked with unaccustomed doubt in those grey eyes of his. Yes. There was no mistaking him for the child of any other man who had violated me. What a shell I had become over the past decade. Cold as the winds that Boreas sends from the north. I did not expect the sudden voyage to my hometown, the island that had been so tantalizingly close the whole time. But he deposited me there during the night, cool Nyx’s arms enveloping us in a last embrace.
Still I find it hard to decide whether I love him or despise him. Both, probably. With a heavy fluttering my eyes adjust to the now moored ships. There are so many of them—not the whole fleet, for some reason, but they seem to hug the curves of the island for as far as the eye can see. They have not beached themselves but rather anchored at a short distance from the shore. This is a good sign; they are merely visiting. Asking for a night in a bed before setting off for their long journey back to Sparta, to Mycenae, to Ithaca. The Achaeans had come from everywhere, all the suitors for the most beautiful woman in the world come to her rescue. I wonder if she wanted to be rescued.
He was from Phthia. Hard to pronounce, but he did it with a strange look in his eye and a softening of his harshly cut mouth. He was a man made of fire and steel and ice.
They are approaching now, getting off the small little boats that carry them over the distance between the black ships and the water. The sound of water lapping at hollow things is my favourite sound. I have never gotten tired of it. But not all of them have dismounted. I see the familiar tall king Agamemnon and his brother, not as huge but striking nonetheless. I do not see Odysseus: his flame-coloured shock of hair is easy to spot over long distances.
My mother glides forwards to greet them. There is no disguising the cold in the line of her jaw or her gaze. The kings bow to her, the woman whose family they slaughtered ten years ago (do they remember? Yes, they do) and we lead them up the hill to our city.
The conversation is stilted and I only remember bare gaps of it. I am desperately searching for Damon’s father with my eyes. None of the kings recognize me and I am glad Odysseus is not here. As the craftiest of the lot he would know my face immediately. He is not here. He would recognize him in Damon.
It is as if we are playing the parts of different people than the ones who met each other ten years ago. My mother makes no remark of the slaughter of her people or the enslavement of her daughter, and neither do I. I am silent, for the most part. The weary kings tell us a marvellous story of a wooden horse, their best fighters concealed in that horse, ready to strike on unsuspecting Trojans. Massacre. Odysseus had commissioned it.
Conversation floats in awkward gaps and pieces. I am only half at the table, staring into the dregs of wine in my golden cup and immersed in memories. So many women have been lost in either death or love. Helen. Her abandoned Hermione. Iphigenia—sacrificed by her father before leaving for Troy. Cassandra. Hecabe. Me.
Living and loving and loss. The three are all connected—the age of the heroes has passed and yet time continues. It all goes on, a godly cycle. You can damn the gods and damn the fates to the darkest pits of Tartarus, and still life will go on. So I wait. Wait for the kings to leave or recognize me—worse yet, recognize him in Damon, who sits unnaturally obedient at my feet, never knowing that his half-brother, the son of his father who took his place in battle at age fifteen, sits mere feet away garbed in battle gear.
He has none of Achilles’ fierce elegance. He is a coward, a coward that lusts for blood. Damon... Damon is not weighed down by family names. He will grow up to be a prince and a poet, a marvellous storyteller. Or a beggar. Whatever makes him happy—the time for heroes is gone. And so I wait for the story to end, wait for life to go on.
Waiting in silence and wrapped in memories.
message 87:
by
Iviana (The Sign Painter), The Goddess of indecisiveness
(last edited Jan 25, 2011 10:23PM)
(new)
See that? Up there? Lemme give you an arrow ^. Now do yo use it? That's called amazing.
I finished my spoon in the dishwasher story.
So I’m sitting in a rack next to some other silverware. Like forks. And knives. And bigger knives. And bigger spoons. It’s not like this is new, or anything. I’ve gotten use to the whole getting-shoved-into-the-dishwasher-and-being-sprayed-with-soap-then-sprayed-with-hot-water deal. It comes with being a spoon. That and the various gunks Knife and Fork have. And all the germs and such from the food I pick up for the humans to eat. The little ones are very annoying. They bang my head against the table and plates and stuff. The little plates complain about that in the dishwasher too much. Now that gets annoying.
“Why are they so immature?” complain the little plates and cups.
Because they’re little like you, I think.
“It hurts after a while,” they continue.
“It’s not only you it hurts,” I say, peeved. I would’ve folded my arms… if I had any, that is.
“That’s—whoa!” With a rush, I and the others were sprayed with bubbles. The littler utensils squeal as soapy froth swirl in front of them. I sigh, far too used to the constant cycle. Some nights I’m here, and other nights I’m on the table outside, where the twinkling lights above stare down at me, reflecting on my untouched surface while we wait for the humans to come for dinner. The bigger plates are usually nicer with conversation. We talk about various things, like how nearly all of us were made in China (I mean seriously, what is up with that? Jeez). We also talk about how funny the little utensils can be, and how the little plates and the teacups are incredibly snobby.
The hot water sprays us as we lay in the dishwasher. Well, technically we’re stacked, and I’m standing straight up and down, occasionally getting pushed into Knife and Fork, but that’s beside the point. Another squeal erupts from the little utensils a few down from me, and I have the urge to tell them to shut up. But I don’t, as usual. The little plates and cups above us sigh in annoyance, obviously disgusted by the little ones. I glance at the plates that I’ve spoken to in the past, and we very nearly burst into laughter.
The water dies down and we’re left to dry. Hot air surrounds us. I hear giggles, then shouting from above. I sigh. So much for a peaceful night.
~
A/N: Just completed and not really in the mood to edit just yet. Tell me what you think. ^^ Have to turn this in soon. As in, by the end of the week, so criticism of any kind is much appreciated.
I finished my spoon in the dishwasher story.
So I’m sitting in a rack next to some other silverware. Like forks. And knives. And bigger knives. And bigger spoons. It’s not like this is new, or anything. I’ve gotten use to the whole getting-shoved-into-the-dishwasher-and-being-sprayed-with-soap-then-sprayed-with-hot-water deal. It comes with being a spoon. That and the various gunks Knife and Fork have. And all the germs and such from the food I pick up for the humans to eat. The little ones are very annoying. They bang my head against the table and plates and stuff. The little plates complain about that in the dishwasher too much. Now that gets annoying.
“Why are they so immature?” complain the little plates and cups.
Because they’re little like you, I think.
“It hurts after a while,” they continue.
“It’s not only you it hurts,” I say, peeved. I would’ve folded my arms… if I had any, that is.
“That’s—whoa!” With a rush, I and the others were sprayed with bubbles. The littler utensils squeal as soapy froth swirl in front of them. I sigh, far too used to the constant cycle. Some nights I’m here, and other nights I’m on the table outside, where the twinkling lights above stare down at me, reflecting on my untouched surface while we wait for the humans to come for dinner. The bigger plates are usually nicer with conversation. We talk about various things, like how nearly all of us were made in China (I mean seriously, what is up with that? Jeez). We also talk about how funny the little utensils can be, and how the little plates and the teacups are incredibly snobby.
The hot water sprays us as we lay in the dishwasher. Well, technically we’re stacked, and I’m standing straight up and down, occasionally getting pushed into Knife and Fork, but that’s beside the point. Another squeal erupts from the little utensils a few down from me, and I have the urge to tell them to shut up. But I don’t, as usual. The little plates and cups above us sigh in annoyance, obviously disgusted by the little ones. I glance at the plates that I’ve spoken to in the past, and we very nearly burst into laughter.
The water dies down and we’re left to dry. Hot air surrounds us. I hear giggles, then shouting from above. I sigh. So much for a peaceful night.
~
A/N: Just completed and not really in the mood to edit just yet. Tell me what you think. ^^ Have to turn this in soon. As in, by the end of the week, so criticism of any kind is much appreciated.

Instead of little plates and cups, I recommend saucers and tea cups. I always think of cute lil Chip from B&B. OR baby plates and sippie(sp?) cups. But keep the 2nd set of little plates & the tea cups as saucers and tea cups are incredibly snobby. Maybe say it's so pretentious how the humans sip the teacups with their pinkies out and treat them delicately. They're more loved than little old me.
Hot air could be expanded to descriptions of a sauna. Maybe ease the pain out of the cracks from the more used plates?
It's ADORABLE I admit. If no one smiles at the story, they don't have a heart :( :( :( :( :( :(

I love how I can see a Pixar version of this :P
It's okie~ I have the same issue.
xD I know, right? I should animate this. But that would take a LONG time.
xD I know, right? I should animate this. But that would take a LONG time.

^^ THANK YOU, IVI.
AND ALSO, YOU KNOW YOU LOVE MY WRITING PROMPTS.
Great story, the librarian gave me a hushy look to stop giggling.
AND ALSO, YOU KNOW YOU LOVE MY WRITING PROMPTS.
Great story, the librarian gave me a hushy look to stop giggling.
All righty, so I've probably already posted, somewhere in our dusty files, the link to my first story. I've really been working hard on it, and chapter two is almost done. If you enjoy heroines, dragons, and anything of the like, please feel free to read and enjoy!
Also, I have another story, Peace of Mind, which I hope to work more on soon. It is more of a sci-fi novel-in-progress, with telepaths, amnesia-afflicted protagonists, and more. Please read and review!
PS- in the first one, I am in desperate need of a witty title. If I ever get published, I'll credit whoever comes up with it in the dedication. And send them lots of candy.
Also, I have another story, Peace of Mind, which I hope to work more on soon. It is more of a sci-fi novel-in-progress, with telepaths, amnesia-afflicted protagonists, and more. Please read and review!
PS- in the first one, I am in desperate need of a witty title. If I ever get published, I'll credit whoever comes up with it in the dedication. And send them lots of candy.
Books mentioned in this topic
Flowers for Algernon (other topics)Will Grayson, Will Grayson (other topics)