The Taste Of Divinity

Ε Ι Κ Ο Σ Ι Ε Ξ Ι

Kyane stood still, her pale fingers permanently bloodless now as they clutched her spider woven gown. It looked like had been created from the lace that graced the crudely stacked stones, like the spiders themselves had come out from the cracks and ensnared the nymph's naked form in their translucent webs.

"Am I truly so wretched in your eyes now that you cannot even bring yourself to look at me, Persephone?"

Somewhere between the initial shock and the manifestation of her ever growing fear, Persephone had averted her gaze, the shame heavy on her dropping eyelids.

"I wish to remember you as you once were, not as you are." If her voice was a temple, then it was a ruin, roofless with headless statues and broken pillars.

"Then, don't remember me at all."

"How can you speak such words? The love I hold for you-"

"Is nothing if you cannot stand to look at me in the eye. You are not greater than me because your veins hold ichor instead of blood." The ghost that wore Kyane's face said, unkind for the first time in years. "Whether you remember me or not means little. You yourself won't be remembered. Not as you are. Many will speak your name and treat you like you are their property and many will laugh at your story. Others will drive you away from it and take your place if they wish to imagine themselves part of a grand romance or a terrible tragedy. They will weave lies into your story and your mother will be a villain instead of the victim she is. As far as you are concerned, you wild, beautiful creature with your eternal soul, you will be a victim instead of the woman that you are. So, you see, your memory is not needed. "

"Do you hold some power over the future now, sister?"

"No, I have no power over fate, only years and years of knowledge. I know how history, the art of men brave enough to see carnage and not take part in it, writes us into its dreadfully yellow pages and that will never change. Most of these brave men tremble before women with bones of glass because they know they cannot be broken. They fear them and so, they slowly bury the bones that offend their be very beings and over time the remaining bones are so few, that even their owner cannot recognise them."

Persephone lifted her head, her lips quivering as they took in the translucent creature whose very being had been woven from dreams and death. She almost hit the floor. Her knees shook, imitating leaves taken by the wind. She dropped the dagger. Her hands ached as though they'd pounded the stone until they bled. And yet, no golden liquid adorned the pale, trembling flesh. "I do not need history to bury my bones for me not to recognise myself. The face I see in the mirror is no longer my own. My body does not accept sorrow, any longer. It hardly ever spills any tears. Therefore, it does not matter what they write and what they say, he ruined me."

"No, he did not." Kyane whispered, her translucent hand on her friend's hair. The Goddess bit her lip and dug her heels into the ground so as not to flinch away from the foreign sensation. "You are simply tired of your grief, it is normal."

"Careful now, Kyane, or I'll start believing that you're advocating in his favour." Reluctantly, she leaned into the caress, desperate to seek fragments of familiarity hidden in the ruins of hopelessness. Oddly enough, there were none to be found. "Which would be strange, considering the opinion you had of him even before he took me away."

The idol allowed a rehearsed bitter chuckle. It was the perfect imitation. "No, of course not. I simply know that it would take much more than a man to ruin you. You hide your pain well. You manage to hide it until not even you see it. That's not a bad thing."

She closed her arms around the weeping Queen and trailed her fingers down her back to offer all the comfort she could provide. Time passed. Endless time. Minutes, perhaps or hours. The tears that manifested came and left as a miracle, as the spring.