{Ogygia, 21st of June 2006}
Calypso POV
I knelt in the soft, fragrant earth of my garden, my fingers dancing lightly over the delicate petals of a moonlace flower. The silvery-white blossom seemed to glow in the eternal twilight of Ogygia, my prison and paradise rolled into one infuriating package.
With a gentle breath, I summoned the Mist, that magical veil that separates the mortal world from the mythological. But here, on my enchanted island, I used it for a far more mundane purpose, gardening.
A faint shimmer enveloped the moonlace, and I watched with satisfaction as it grew and bloomed before my eyes. It was a small magic, but one of the few joys left to me in my lonely existence.
"At least you're not going anywhere," I murmured to the flower, immediately regretting the bitterness in my voice. It wasn't the plant's fault that I was cursed to fall in love with heroes who could never stay.
I sat back on my heels, brushing a stray lock of caramel-colored hair from my face. My invisible servants hovered nearby, their presence a constant reminder of my isolation. They were useful, certainly, but they never changed, never grew. They were as static as I was, trapped in an endless loop of sameness while the outside world spun on without us.
Change. The word tasted bittersweet on my tongue. I craved it like a starving man craves food, yet I feared it like a child fears the dark. Because change brought heroes to my shores, brave, handsome, wounded heroes who captured my heart as surely as I was captured on this island.
But change also meant goodbye. It meant watching them sail away, back to lives and loves that didn't include me. It meant being left behind, again and again, nursing a broken heart that never quite had time to heal before the next hero washed up on my beach.
I closed my eyes, memories washing over me like the relentless tides that surrounded Ogygia. Drake, with his roguish grin and quick wit. Hacksaw, strong and loyal, with hands that could bend steel but touch me as gently as if I were made of glass. And Odysseus...
No. I wouldn't think about him. Not now. Not when the wound of his departure still felt as fresh as the day he left. You never forget your first I guess.
I stood abruptly, startling my servants. "I'm going to take a bath in the lake," I announced, more to break the melancholy silence than out of any real need to inform them. "Please fetch fresh clothes and a towel for me."
They nodded eagerly, two of them scampering off towards my cave-home. One tripped over its own invisible feet, tumbling into a graceless heap on the grass. Despite my mood, I couldn't help but smile. They might not be the most competent help in the world, but they did provide some much-needed comic relief.
As I made my way to the lake, I tried to focus on the beauty around me. The air was sweet with the scent of cinnamon and apple blossoms. A light breeze rustled through the leaves of the cypress trees, carrying with it the distant sound of waves lapping against the shore. It was beautiful, peaceful, perfect, and sometimes, I hated it so much I could scream.
I reached the lake, its surface as smooth and reflective as a mirror. For a moment, I studied my reflection. I looked the same as I always did, eternally young, with almond-shaped eyes and features that the poets once called timeless. But I could see the weight of millennia in those eyes, the loneliness that no amount of magical gardening could ease.
With a sigh, I reached for the clasp of my white gown. A bath would do me good, wash away some of this melancholy along with the dirt from my gardening. But before I could undo the clasp, a voice startled me out of my thoughts.
"Whoa, lady! Don't do that in front of me!"
I spun around, clutching my dress close. My heart raced, not with fear, but with a traitorous hope. A voice that wasn't one of my servants could only mean one thing, a hero had arrived. But I saw no one.
"Lady, I'm down here."
Confused, I looked down. What I saw made me question whether I'd accidentally ingested some of Circe's herbs. My shadow wasn't my shadow anymore. Instead of my familiar silhouette, there was the shape of a boy. But not just any boy, this shadow was colored. Streaks of orange, red, blue, green, and purple danced through what should have been plain darkness.
I'd seen a lot in my thousands of years of existence. I'd witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations, watched gods and monsters clash in epic battles. I'd even seen Drake try to serenade me with a lyre he clearly had no idea how to play. But this? This was new.
"What are you?" I asked, my voice stammering, as Iooked at the shadowy-boy? below me.
I felt my cheeks flush. Here I was, a millennia-old immortal, blushing like a schoolgirl because a talking shadow had almost caught me undressing. If Hermes ever heard about this, I'd never hear the end of it.
Still I couldn't help but wonder if this was the gods' latest joke, sending me a shadow for company.
Odysseus POV
You know those dreams where you're falling and falling, and just when you think you're about to hit the ground, you jerk awake in a cold sweat? Yeah, this was nothing like that. This was worse.
The World Records book had slammed shut on me like I was some cosmic bookmark, and now I was being dragged through... well, I'm not sure what to call it. I couldn't see, I couldn't focus, I couldn't move, it felt like I was stuck.
Then the stickiness, changed to spinning, whirling my head over and over and over and over. Again I couldn't focus, I couldn't think, I couldn't do anything.
Then the feelings changed, the spinning changed to sinking. I sunk and sunk, like I was in a tar, tendrils of darkness kept in tugging at me, forcing me down, I fought against them as hard as I could, but I kept on sinking and sinking.
Deeper and deeper, I felt as if my mind was being split into fragments, millions of them... no billions of them. Each small each distinct, yet all myself, I couldn't grasp it, it was too much, too much, much, much, much. My mind was split, disoriented, it continued to divide, divide, divide and divide. I couldn't handle it.
Just when I thought I couldn't take anymore, when I was sure my sanity was about to snap like an overtuned lyre string, everything stopped. The chaos, the splitting, all of it, gone in an instant. Instead, I felt myself focus on a single point, one fragment of my shattered consciousness.
When my vision finally cleared, I realized two things. First, I couldn't move. At all. I could sort of... squirm, I guess? But it felt like I was formless, shapeless, yet somehow contained. Like someone had taken my essence and poured it into a very oddly shaped bottle.
But all of that paled in comparison to what, or rather, who, I saw in front of me. A girl, maybe 15 or 16 years old, with caramel hair braided over one shoulder and dark almond-shaped eyes. She wore a simple white gown that somehow made her look even more stunning.
Now, I'm not usually one to get caught up in looks. When you've seen Nyx (and trust me, that's an experience), most other beauty kind of pales in comparison. But this girl... she had a timeless quality about her, like she'd stepped out of some ancient painting but was somehow more real than anything around her.
It took me a moment to realize that she was about to start undressing, which, given my current predicament, seemed like a really bad idea.
"Whoa, lady! Don't do that in front of me!" I called out, only to realize that my voice sounded... weird. Echoey, like I was shouting from the bottom of a well.
The girl spun around, her eyes wide with surprise. But she was looking right through me. Great. Not only was I some formless blob, but I was also invisible. This day just kept getting better and better.
"Lady, I'm down here," I said, hoping she'd look in the right direction this time.
She did, and her reaction was... well, about what you'd expect when someone realizes their shadow has started talking to them. Her pupils dilated, her lips parted in shock, and when she spoke, her voice was a mix of confusion and awe.
"What are you?"
Great question lady, was the only thing I could think.
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