The Curse of Moonlace

There is a fair isle

UNDER the unblemished night sky that shines down beauty from the heavens above to the island forever condemned to be both everywhere and nowhere, a garden of luminescent moonlace twinkles and casts a silver glow upon the open land. Freshwater waves gently lap at the pristine white beaches that surround the entirety of the island; water that is never too cold and never too hot, a perfect balance that feels unnatural. On one side of the island lay a grove of magnificent and ancient cedar trees that seem to be older than the island itself, with the middle of the island inhabited by four glorious fountains, satyrs adorning each one as water pours out of their reed pipes endlessly, as if forever playing music lost to the ears of any who could be listening.

Luscious swaths of green grass bound across the small hills that blend into rocky outcrops from which the mouths of caves form, wherein objects such as a loom, harp, and easel are present and look outwards towards the immaculate landscape of the island. From the mouths of the caves on the ground level form footpaths worn down from millennia of use. They form sweeping meanders to the wonderful fountains and the ancient grove, but the widest and most worn path is that from the western shoreline to the glowing moonlace gardens.

In the gardens sits a woman, spade in hand, tending to the expanse of flowers in front of her, growing it slowly by the night. She is both plain and exquisite at the same time, with dark almond eyes and hair of caramel beset upon her timeless face. A flowing white chiton rests upon her body, and she glimmers in the beauty of her flowers.

Here sits Calypso, upon her island of paradise and her prison. A blessing and a curse, for a fate that could have been so much worse. Here, she finds her happiness in the little things from which she can forget about the life she has lived, the life she is currently living, and the life that she forever will live. Long has she put to rest the notion of counting her days from within this prison, as the millennia muddle together on the island where time acts strangely.

No sooner does Calypso finish placing the moonlace seedlings does a floating watering pot come to rest next to her. From this point she takes to watering and caring for every one of her needy moonlace plants. The water pours over her hand, as she lets it splash out and spray around the soil of each flower as it absorbs the nectar of nature. As she runs out of water, she simply twirls behind her to where a new pot of water hovers in the air, waiting to be plucked by her graceful hands, leaving the empty watering pot on the footpath she walks along. Here the empty watering pot is taken away by an invisible force, drifting off to the fountains in the middle of the island to be refilled for the next pirouette of a transfer. The process is elegant, like a spontaneous dance that imbues grace and grandeur.

Finished with her dance, she wanders along the familiar footpath towards the western beachfront where the sky is darker than the eastern, lays upon a blanket that was not there before and gazes out at her freshwater ocean and the twinkling stars above. There she will rest for an hour at most before retiring for the night. For this is the realization of Calypso's punishment, the culmination of her toils for the day. Here she is the most content, the most happy, and the most free – here on this late night after all her hard work of the day is done, where she can sit and stretch without a care in the world as her day is complete. She languidly sips her last glass of wine, that exists even with no vineyards present in Ogygia, and consumes a date or three, taking pleasure in the sweet, sticky taste.

This is where she takes solace in the punishment the gods have bestowed upon her, for she is free of any extenuating fate and almost completely secluded from the gods that condemned her to isolation. And she is happy, somehow, in this lonely world that the Fates decreed would be her prison, with her curse to bear seeing hero after hero wash ashore only for her to fall in love with them and see them leave; she is happy nonetheless, at least in this present moment. For night will end and day will rise, and the process will repeat again. While she may decide to work on her loom and weave a new blanket or another white chiton, it will always result in her sitting upon this western beach, feeling truly free and accepting of the curse she endures.