Real life is boring

~Brooding yet loving Cottagecore mood board~

He had a monster’s form, of course. The result of her husband’s hubris and the spite of Poseidon, yes, such a thing would never be beautiful.

Never be beautiful, perhaps, save in the eyes of his mother?

Did she feed him at her own breast? Did no wet nurse dare touch his twisted body? Was hers the only friendly touch he knew?

She named him Asterion, for a great king of the island of Crete

Her little star

Perhaps he had a little starry tuft of hair on his forehead, shining like the tail of the little bear Ursa Minor?

Maybe a scattering of white on a darker hide, as the vault of night where the gods hung their heroes and monsters.

Was he a monster then? Her little star?

Did she play with him in the courtyards of her husband’s palace? Did the children of relatives and servants flee in horror at her little boy?

Did he laugh? Did he cry? Did he play in the mud and skin his knee as all little boys do? Did he chase the dogs who lounged too long in the Mediterranean sun?

Did she see the disdainful glint in Minos’s eye as he spoke with his advisor Daedalus, the one who had humored her urges driven on by the machinations of the Earthshaker?

Did she know of what the men of Crete said of her son’s appetite? Was it even true? Was it a rumor planted by an embarrassed and furious step-father?

Did she know that the dancing paths her daughter had enjoyed would be buried and sealed to contain her son?

The day came when Asterion was to be locked away. Minos carried the words of a faraway prophet, the words of the gods. His bull, his Minotaur, had to be locked away for everyone’s safety. So said the gods.

And the gods were never to be disobeyed. Minos knew that all too well.

Did he struggle against his bonds when they dragged him to the buried dancing paths once made to delight Ariadne, doomed to a broken heart on a lonely isle? Did he roar? Did he cry? Did he yell for his mother to help him? He’d be good. He wouldn’t bother the dogs lounging in the sun, he’d eat politely at the dinner table. He’d make her proud. He’d make father proud. He’d be a good son.

Was Pasiphae struggling against bonds of her own as she watched her son disappear from the eyes of Helios, condemned to darkness for the rest of his days? Did her heart grow cold in the absence of her little star?

Did he call out for her in that winding maze? Did he plead to his mother, to Daedalus, to the gods, to anyone who would hear in that dark cavern? Did he know why he was cast from the sight of gods and men?

Did Pasiphae wretch at Minos’s plan to feed her little star? A way to solve two problems with one answer. Little Athens had been such a thorn in the side of great and mighty Crete, they needed to make up their wrongs with tribute. And Minos’s bull couldn’t simply be left to starve. Kinslaying, even monsters, was a dark and terrible act looked down upon by the gods. Minos knew not to disobey the gods.

A starving monster or a starving man, hunger makes all decisions so much simpler. Stone or flesh, only one route. Only one thing to eat.

Was Asterion a monster born or a monster made?

Did Pasiphae wail when brave Theseus emerged from the depths of the labyrinth, her son’s blood on his sword? Did she keep a brave face in front of her husband? After all, who would mourn a monster?

Did she follow that length of twine to her son’s broken body once all eyes had closed for the night? Did she hold her son’s cold hand as she sung a lullaby from so long ago, when he was just her little star? Did she kiss the little tuft of starlight that still adorned his bull’s brow?

Perhaps, in the grim hands of Thanatos, his broken body once more came into view of the lights of the heavens? Who need fear a corpse, even a monster’s corpse?

Did Pasiphae plead for a goodbye for her son? A way for him to leave the world of the living as the man he never was?

Did she, hands shaking, place two coins on his forever closed eyes to pay the ferryman Charon who carries souls across the river Styx?

Did she anoint his brutalized, gaunt, starved body in the perfumed oils that had graced the fallen bodies of his ancestors?

Did she hope against hope that perhaps in that cold realm of Hades and Persephone his soul might finally find rest?

Did Pasiphaë mourn Asterion

She does the same, the second and third and fourth times, careful, wary, mindful of her mother’s lessons. Remembers the way her mother’s hands had chafed on her soft cheeks, rough with cooking and cleaning for her fisherman husband, the way her mother’s peat-dark eyes had been tense and harsh with the lesson.

“Mind me, Niahm. Never let them find your cloak.”

The way her mother’s mouth had curved, a sickle of dissatisfaction and relief and envy, as she had escaped into the waves.

So she minds her mother’s lesson, and she takes care with her cloak.

Would that she had taken as much care with her heart.

The fifth time, she wears the cloak to the girl’s door, clutched about her throat, dripping along the darkened lanes.

She enters the home, welcomed with soft kisses and gentle touches and kindling passion. She drapes the cloak, artful in her carelessness, across an old wooden chair, the one that creaks and tilts slightly if you don’t sit just right.

When she wakes, in the wee hours of the morning, even before her lover, the cloak still rests, supple and dappled by the sea, on the back of the chair.

She frowns into the softening dawn, dons the cloak, and returns to the sea.

And again, the sixth time. And the seventh.

The eighth time, she finally breaks, prickling and hurt with longing, gripping a handful of russet hair in her hand, firm with emphasis.

“Surely you know what I am,” she says to her lover, the cool froth of sea foam and the call of gulls curling around her voice.

“Of course,” her lover responds, soft and tender in the dawnlight, throat arched willingly, pale as the inner whorls of a shell. “You taste of the sea,” the girl whispers, reverently.

She shakes her lover’s head gently, fingers tangled still in russet locks. “Why?” she demands. “Why won’t you keep me?”

A long silence that waits and fills, like a tidepool, stretches between them. Cool as a current. Deep as the Channel.

Her lover’s eyes are dark and tender. “Must I trap you to keep you, my heart? Is that the shape of love that you desire?”

She sinks into the thought, struck and stymied, remembering her mother’s harsh hands, her cold eyes. Her hand eases into russet waves, caresses where her grip had punished. Her lips press cool and damp as the sea against the arching curve of her lover’s shoulder. “What shape of love will you give to me?”

The answer is easy, quick, certain. “Myself. Only myself, whenever you should wish it. Your cloak by the door, your body in my bed, and the freedom to go, whenever you must. As long as you wish.”

It’s not an answer a fisherman could ever give, nor would think to.

I lie awake at night, thinking of you. Thinking of what you say and do. Thinking of if you do the same, if you notice me when we pass, and if you remember the short moment we are together. I do, though perhaps I'm far too lovesick to have it matter. Regardless, my sleepless nights are filled with soft thoughts of you. And when I fall asleep I dream of flowers. And you.

Maybe you would tell me the flowers you like. Maybe I should ask.