IT WAS RAINING the day heaven was found.
The world was grey skies and melancholia, cold nights and angry breezes. But there, her heart swelled with warmth. He descended in the dark, crawling out of the sea with foam dripping from his tanned nakedness—the entrancing stranger with eyes of an ocean. His voice called out to the young maiden who stood alone, reveling in the feel of sand between her toes, and it melted her. The jug she carried shattered, drops of life spilling out from the clay shards as she marveled at the man. She was just a girl, but he was no boy, nor was he really a man. He beckoned her with a rippling aura, and her cheeks reddened with the wanton desire that infected her budding loins.
This dark stranger was godly, she felt it looking at those ocean eyes. She was his, no matter her own life. Despite worship, she feared him then, eyes shining with that knowing look she had only been seared with once before, a little babe being swept away in the river, bloodshot eyes catching sight of a pitying face.
He took her, a young girl helpless to the Gods, pressing her searing back painfully into the sand as he pushed his celestial heaviness in her. Rain sizzled as it hit his back, searing from the heat of passion, such violent delights executing anything dare interrupt him. The ocean whispered in her ear as the lay under those palms, cold, rushing water licking her feet as her toes curled in pleasure and disgust all at once. Heaven and hell were found in the deep thrusting and heavy breathing of the brisk night, the moon, and stars bearing witness to their sin—their divine love. She cried because she felt the world at that moment.
Happiness.
Pleasure.
Fear.
Depression.
And in an instant he was gone, the tides pulling him back out to sea, receding further and further down the beach. Her thighs shook with the power between them, the sheer essence of gods sitting in her pulsing, broken heat. She convulsed, chest heaving as the emptiness burned her throat. Those with the fortune to touch the stars were burned as it imploded in a dazzling supernova. Who was he, this man of the sea? That had her heart pound like waves on the shore? That made her feel the world?
Her body shook with the pain of twenty lashes, searing back bared and bloodied as her father stood over her, murder in his eyes. None believed her when she crawled from the beach, stripped and sobbing, legs and lips trembling, wildly claiming a god came from the sea and took her. Took her everything—youth, innocence, wonder—and crushed it in the power of his rushing waters. He came and went, leaving her to bear the suffering of the world on her small shoulders. It was not long after her face pressed into the dirt, back raw and beaten, laid out in front of the whole village, a whore, that the swell appeared. Ten-foot waves pounded on their restless coast, her stomach curling and rounding like the crest of the surf. She was famed the Whore of Pylos, a soon-to-be mother of a bastard no less.
When her screams filled the empty streets of Pylos with the despair of a dried up spring, it began raining. So much rain fell that day, the children of the village spent a whole month swimming from here to there.
She felt the world then too, fighting against the tides to expel the child of violence from her, the child she never should nor wanted to have. A child of the gods would be every mother's dream, a babe with golden locks and platinum skin. But the strange man's spawn was everything a mother nightmared, an angry red neonate with eyes black as night.
Yet when the infant came out cooing, with bronze skin and brown eyes that looked like the ocean, she cried. Because looking into those eyes she saw the world, and it was more beautiful and breathtaking than the sparkling sands and spilling springs and serene shores and summer sunsets.
She called her, MARIS, she who is of the sea.
And through ocean eyes, Maris made the world believe. A little babe with the gods in her toothless smile made her mother into the Beauty of Pylos, the chosen of the gods, who eased the pain in the scars on her back and cut away the sharp glares of the villagers. Maris was her mother's saving grace, a light burning brighter than even the largest of stars, the sun.
The sea called out to her, beckoning the child to its dark waves, the foam licking at her toes. Often her mother, the once young maiden who had been given a gift from what had been stolen from her, would find Maris crawling down the beach, dampened sand stained with the little handprints. It was fear then, that shook her to her very core. She was afraid that it the child touched the ocean, the dark stranger would come and take her—take the only thing that she had ever loved. She prayed to the gods that the day would never come.
When Maris turned three and her little legs had her running to the shore, the stranger rose from the sea again, naked and proud, holding the confidence only a father could. She ran away, straight to her mother's side, ocean eyes raging in the reflection of her creator. He claimed her, the screaming tot, little hands grabbing for her mother, his own with the whisper of ichor flowing in her veins.
Who are you?
Her mother asks, desperately clinging to her child, trembling as the man who took everything from her seeks to do it once more.
I am no man.
He stands taller than she remembers, hands bigger, eyes fiercer. He has a beard now, tendrils curled like cold rushing water around the stones of the tide pools, and he's lost the tenderness from that night. The violence is still there, that dangerous crushing surf that pushed her into the ground and seized her maidenhood. He is no man, that much is clear to her.
For what purpose will you take my child?
She cries, not understanding what she must have done to make the gods hate her so. It's a great injustice that has been done to her, a cruel misdeed in an even crueler world. They take and take and take from her and no matter how long and how hard she has searched, she cannot fathom why.
There is a war just over the horizon, can you see it? Look across the waters and you will see, the world will end.
The gods are not prophets and oracles, but he has seen it once before in a dream. Images of fire, death and destruction plague his nights, a storm that would destroy him. He wishes she would understand, but it is not his sole desire. There is more at play than silly mortal desires of love and family.
What place does a child have in war?
She screams as he rips the babe from her arms. Maris is all she has and will ever have—the light that gives her life. Without her sweet babe she will become nothing, she thinks. But she already is nothing.
Not a child, MY child—of Titan blood.
He walks to the sea, the tot hanging off of his arm in a blissful ignorance. Maris thinks him a jolly giant, taking her to a land of treats and wonder. In the moments she spares an uncaring glance back to her mother, the water hits her, ice cold. And suddenly its as she knows not how to swim, the sea filling her lungs—drowning her. She kicks and kicks, fighting against the current to the fading image of her mother, but the moon is full and tides strong. The gods just take and take and take, rarely hearing those prayers of the weak.
note
woo im back baby.
what a boring, entirely expositional chapter. hope you guys aren't ready for action because the next chapter will be basically the same thing from another perspective.
in case anyone missed it, the opening scene was indeed a rape. i didn't want it to harm anyone or hurt their feelings by not putting a trigger warning, but often that's what the gods of Greek mythology did, and it was always brushed off or even romanticized—i kind of wanted to emulate that(read leda and the swan). i personally am in no way romanticizing rape or sexual assault of any kind, but that should go without saying. again, i tried to make it vague, but i really am sorry if i hurt anyone with the surprise.