// e.r.

With hindsight in mind, if I was ever turned into stone again I would definitely pick a different pose. Though, with hindsight in mind, I don’t think she’d have turned me into a rock either. Not then.

I’m on my knees.

She was on her knees too, the last time we officially spoke. She’d just raced out of the temple, heaving sobs so shattering I thought she might choke on them. She raked her hands over the writhing mass of her hair, but for each hungry mouth she covered, another twisted past her fingers like a story thread refusing to be cut.

“What happened?!”

“Don’t look at me.” She curled crumpled on the grass. “Just go away!”

“They’re not so bad,” I said. “They’re – pretty.”

“They’re hideous! I look hideous.”

The serpents hissed their indignation. They really were glorious, those snakes. They weren’t just one colour or one type, but a vast explosion of mottled blues and yellows and greens. They were resplendent in the light – just like her.

“I like them.” I stepped forward, despite the uncertain hammering of my heart. I knelt down in front of her; determined to prove that, no matter what happened, I wasn’t afraid. Not of her. Never of her. “Hey. Hey. C’mere.”

“No.” She reared back. The snakes shifted too, flaring, fanged. “No, don’t – I don’t – the snakes—”

“—They’re you. They won’t hurt me.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I know you.”

She gulped, snorting a slightly hysterical sound that might have been a laugh. She dragged the back of her hand trembling over her eyes.

“I know you,” I said again, softer.

I reached out, gently brushing the tears from her damp cheeks. Her skin was cracked and almost unrecognisable beneath my touch, but the snakes did not attack. They settled like I was the sun and they were basking. I felt their tongues flicker across me, felt the nuzzle of their many heads, craning for me in the way that she never would as a priestess of Athena. It made my chest ache. It gave me courage to match all of the great heroes.

“I know you and I love you,” I said. “So whatever’s happened—”

Her head snapped up to look at me.

“You love me?” she echoed.

Then she realised what she’d done. Then she realised what she could do.

. 𝓲𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓸𝓯𝓽 𝓵𝓲𝓰𝓱𝓽

The Bay .

and with fingers intertwined, we ran along the beach, allowing our toes to grip the falling sands. Our bare skin was pinched by the salty seas, while our cheeks were kissed by the winds.

As we ran, we met the ocean, pulling at hair and limbs, calling us home. We had once thought it foolish that the water could wash away our sins, yet here we stood, swimming in the bay.

Laughter swelled with the tide, keeping the night company, if only momentarily. Our blood vanished into the seas, now beyond the foam. Salt now crawled into our wounds, forging homes within us.

Our running slowed, ankles sunk deeper into the sands. Water beneath our knees, allowing us to return.

“We could lay upon the sand, let the tide swallow us,” but we both knew that it was only a dream.

and with fingers interlocked, we returned to the lands, waving goodbye to the bay we called our own.

I look back at pictures from the time and see how separated I was from them. I remember knowing I was different. I remember posing questions about the world to the girls playing next to me and realizing that they had never asked the same ones to themselves. That the ways we thought couldn’t be more different.

I kept myself amused with my own fanatical stories and musings in my head. I would wander the playground on a circular path, imagining a friend and being sorely disappointed when it didn’t feel as real as I’d hoped.

"You can not give up so that no one suffers"