Trace the epic journeys of limestone and stardust,
Gods and titans,
In this greek mythology inspired bedtime story.
Sleep and Sorcery is a folklore and fantasy-inspired sleep series.
My name is Laurel,
And I'll be your guide on tonight's fantastical journey.
Sleep and sorcery is one part bedtime story,
One part guided meditation.
And one-part dreamy adventure.
Follow along with my voice for as long as it serves you,
And when you're ready,
Feel free to let go of the story and relax into sleep.
This story contains a built-in meditation for surrender.
In tonight's mythology-inspired bedtime story,
You have angered the gods and thus been turned away from every known harbor.
Weary,
You arrive on the shores of a floating island,
As mysterious as it is welcoming.
Something about the island is familiar to you.
But you do not yet understand why.
As you search for a safe place to rest,
The island's ecology begins to communicate with you.
Telling the story of how it came to be.
In time,
It's revealed that the island is not a lifeless landmass,
But the new form of a primordial deity.
One with whom you share a deep connection.
If it form the one landscape that we,
The inconstant ones,
Are consistently homesick for,
This is chiefly because it dissolves in water.
W.
H.
Auden.
In praise of limestone.
When you are adrift,
At sea,
For countless days and countless nights,
The body adapts even the bodies of titans.
All your vastness,
All your gravity means little to currents and trade winds,
Even you who always valued stillness.
And solidity,
Your feet on hard and stable ground must surrender to the unpredictable patterns and tempers of the ocean.
It has been so long since you set foot on sand or soil.
Afloat on your raft of timbers and reed knots,
That you have come to accept this as your fate.
Like the halcyon birds who build their nests and raise their young on the quiet stretches of sea in winter's peaks.
You will build your home and family here.
You will drift on forever.
A wolf on the water.
There is peace in this,
You think.
You can learn to love this life.
Is this growth you wonder?
Or the evidence of lost hope.
Before you were cast away,
Set adrift.
You feared the sea.
The vast unknown expanse of the domain of Oceanus,
With its tempests and menagerie of sea beasts,
You preferred to interact with his tributaries,
The small,
Clear rivers,
The forest pools,
And placid lakes.
You are a grandchild of Gaia.
And Ouranos.
Earth and Sky.
And it was your grandmother's nature with which you most identified.
You have always felt most at home,
Most alive.
With your feet plugged into the soil.
Safe in the knowledge that your ancestor lifts you up.
That she is ever present.
Rising to meet you and pressing gently back upon your heels.
Your sister,
On the other hand,
Inherited your grandfather's devotion to the sky.
She was always the most spectacular of the two of you.
Asteria.
She of the diamond eyes and midnight hair.
Was the very center around which the cosmos spun.
All planets and stars and celestial bodies knew their role and rank based on their proximity to her.
She was the note by which the music of the spheres tuned itself.
But she was petulant,
Too.
And prone to knocking stars out of the sky when they disappointed her.
This earned her the styling by which she was forever best known.
The titan goddess of falling stars.
You wonder if there is something in the lofty nature of those skyward gods that predisposes them to the accumulation of power and influence.
It is a pattern among them to behave like reckless children,
Stirring up storms as it pleases them.
Cleaving trees with lightning.
Rearranging the stars.
They take whatever it is they want.
Caring not for what they destroy in the process.
Ouranos,
Your grandfather was jealous,
Paranoid,
And obsessed with his own downfall at the hands of the next generation.
So he tried to destroy his own children.
His son,
Cronus,
Did the same in turn.
He devoured his sons and daughters one by one.
Until they rebelled.
And the Olympians,
The offspring of Cronus and Rhea.
Led by the Sky God Zeus.
Have demonstrated the same tendencies to cruelty and destruction.
This is not to say that earth and sea are innocent of any crimes or acts of petty impulse.
But as the earth shudders,
She also shelters.
Her disciples bring forth fruit and grains by their special relationship to season and soil.
The sea is tempestuous,
Yes.
But he is also the source of the land's keenest nourishment.
These titans have always conducted themselves,
At least,
With a modicum of responsibility and stewardship.
Whereas sky-gods rain chaos upon all.
You try not to hold their missteps against your sister.
She was young,
Hardly more than a godling when last you spoke.
Who knows what she might have grown to be?
If she might have matured into a tempering force among the sky gods.
You like to think she would have.
It's this version of her.
This theoretical version that you miss most now.
The comforting hand she might have been.
The swirling embrace she might have lent you in this time of abandonment.
And greatest need.
Sisters have a way of speaking the language only you can hear.
But where your sister once bound the stars together in the firmament.
Now there is only the dying light.
Of supernova.
You do not know what became of her.
Only that Zeus was responsible.
You do not even know if gods can die.
You find it strange that you are longing for your sister in this moment.
When she's never seemed further away.
You do not long for your mother,
Phoebe,
The radiant goddess of prophecy.
For her words would hardly be a comfort.
You cannot envision a fate that would console you now.
Nor do you long for your grandmother,
Gaia.
Whose shores have all shunned you.
It's a betrayal.
You could not have anticipated.
That the earth,
Which once so tenderly cradled you,
Kept you warm and safe and solid.
Now closes her ports at the Olympian's commands.
Gaia kneels to Hera now.
And Hera will never let you set foot on dry land again.
Only Asteria.
Who also fell to the Olympian's wrath.
Could give you words of solace now.
You would forgive her everything.
You would put all your childhood rivalry aside.
If only she would wrap you in her starry embrace.
And make you a note in her celestial harp.
You turn your eyes to the stars now.
To the distant cloud of dust and fire.
Your sister once made her palace Where are you,
My kin?
You plead with the stars.
Are you also adrift?
When no answer arrives,
You sigh.
You curl up on the bobbing raft.
Adrift on a sea that glitters with the reflections of infinite stars.
And you imagine you are resting in your sister's arms.
At the swell and trough of the ocean's waves.
Are in fact the rise and fall of breath.
In her belly.
You imagine that you are not alone.
And you close your eyes.
Convincing yourself.
That this is what peace feels like.
As you sleep,
Softly bouncing on the merciful current.
Storms gather.
But you will never see them.
For Boreas,
The North Wind,
Has been watching over you.
You have many allies and advocates you cannot see.
You dream that you are sliding down the strands of stars that bind the galaxy together.
Meanwhile,
The winds conspire to keep you safe.
They steer you out of the paths of tempests.
Guide you over gently breaking swells.
And ease your passage through the wandering rocks.
You dream of the earth quaking and coming apart beneath your feet.
Then miraculously repairing herself.
Meanwhile,
As the slipshod reeds that tie the timber of your raft together,
Loosen and threaten to break,
The oceanids,
Nymphs,
And daughters of the sea rise from the depths to retie them.
The ocean is kinder to you now than you will ever know.
When you awake,
It takes some time to remember where you are.
Before you open your eyes.
You calibrate the rhythms of the water beneath you.
Calming your mind against the strangeness of the sensation.
You feel utterly disoriented.
And this does not improve once you open your eyes.
For as morning came,
It seems the dawn brought with her a shimmering shroud of mist.
To cover this lonely patch of sea.
Like crystals the drops of mist capture and diffuse the light of the uneasy hour.
It could be sunrise or midday.
For all you know.
When you were young.
And loved by your family.
And not subject to the wrath of childish gods.
You were often called the Veiled One.
It was a style you resented,
For you never chose to drape yourself in shrouds.
It was the shadow cast upon you by your sister.
And the meek restraint you showed in comparison with her bombast,
Which earned you that reputation.
Now,
The curtain of mist flutters like a veil in the breeze,
Twisting on the surface of quietly lapping waves.
And something beyond.
To the east,
You think.
Hides behind it.
It is only a shadow.
Gray and looming at this distance.
You've learned not to hope when you sight an unfamiliar shore.
The goddess Hera has ensured that all of Gaia's lands should cast you away on sight.
Still.
You cannot stop your heart from leaping at the sight.
At the possibility,
However unlikely.
Of planting your feet in the ground like roots.
Finding relief.
From the undulation.
Of this watery,
Womb-like world.
You squint to make out the fuzzy outline of the hulking shape through the fog.
And then,
As the current,
The unseen hand that has delivered your raft to waters unknown,
Draws you nearer the silhouette.
The mist begins to part.
As if a drape is being pulled from a grand window.
Or a lacy veil peeled away from the face of a dowager.
The scene before you becomes clear.
It is framed by the encroaching cloud-like walls of mist,
Which gather at the corners of your eyes.
But also blur the meeting place of land,
Sea,
And sky.
An island.
Which seems,
By the illusion of the mists perhaps,
Almost to hover above the waves.
To drift ever so slowly like clouds in a spring sky.
It rises from the water and the mist.
With chalky white cliffs and green forests.
There are summits,
Slopes,
And beaches.
The landscape curves in a way so pleasing to the eye.
So comforting.
The rounded levels remind you of your mother.
A reclining form in profile.
Silhouetted against the sunset as she once lay at Delphi.
Drifting toward the shore,
You have the strangest sense of homecoming.
Coming home to a place you do not know.
Of Never-Known.
Something in you.
Something older than Olympians whispers to you.
That this island will not turn you away.
That this place will not conjure up forceful waves to expel you from sight.
Or burden its shores with jagged rocks you cannot hope to pass.
What is this mysterious isle to which the winds have guided you?
Is this as you silently wish?
Some secret sanctuary.
That Hera does not know.
A hidden place,
Emergent,
Risen from the sea for the purpose of sheltering lost souls like you.
The island's lush form expands to fill the whole of your eyeline as you approach a golden beach.
Your heart races.
With every bit closer,
You come to the shore.
Your confidence in its welcoming nature wavers.
So even when your raft reaches the shallows,
Even when it collides with the crunch of soft sand.
Even as you begin to pull yourself onto the beach.
Still,
You wait to be tossed back into the sea.
Your legs shake as you try to stand.
Warm sand sticking to your damp ankles.
You feel like a fish,
Learning to walk for the first time.
You are heavier than you remember.
All this time afloat.
You haven't had to hold yourself up.
You haven't had to balance.
You tip forward and pitch onto your knees.
The ocean water laps at your toes.
No heretofore invisible barrier stops you.
No tempest rises to drag you from the shore.
You kneel in the sand.
Weary of body and heart.
For the first time in who knows how long.
You breathe air that is not ripe only with the scent of salt.
But with grasses and cypress.
You cannot get enough of it.
You weep and laugh and lay your body down entirely.
Water still tickling at your feet Dry sand scratching against your arms and scalp.
At last,
You think.
Your drifting is at an end.
For some time you lie here and relish the exquisite stillness.
Loath to lift even a finger.
But the tide soon encroaches,
Brushing now at your knees.
And you reluctantly decide to stand.
And venture into the heart of the isle.
You begin your march into the shaded woods.
Leaving your raft in the dry sand.
You hope you'll never need it again.
Sweet is the perfume of the jubilant yellow flowers which bloom by the dozen on twisted vines.
There are birds here whose songs you've never heard before.
There are fine fruits,
Hanging heavy and ripe on the trees.
Which burst with brightness on your tongue,
Sating your ravenous hunger.
Yet for all the exotic and unfamiliar plants and creatures you encounter.
There stirs in you some ancient memory.
Some innate knowledge from before the time of titans.
It's as if the landscape unfolds before you.
As if you participate in its creation with your every step.
Spinning it like a thread from your dreams and memories.
Such a thing is not impossible,
You suppose.
You are,
After all,
Of divine stock.
You could well have had a hand in the making of this island.
The concentration of your will and desperation for safe harbor might have been enough to conjure it into being.
And yet,
You sense in this place another kind of intelligence or presence.
Something separate from your mind.
But somehow magnetically bound to you.
Sand shifts to soil beneath your feet.
It is soft and springy,
With mosses that creep along the rocks and open patches.
When the sun,
Unobscured here by mist,
Breaks through the trees.
Tiny particles glint and shimmer in the black dirt like diamonds.
Or stars.
You stop now and then to savor the stillness.
You close your eyes and breathe in the wisps of curling wind.
You dig your toes into the topsoil.
And in the delicacy of the moment.
You can feel it.
Faint but unmistakable.
A steady,
Rhythmic pulse against the soles of your feet.
A vibration.
Like the sensation of a tiny pebble being cast in peaceful water.
Emanating from the center of the island.
This drumming taps so gently at your arches.
Rippling through your whole being.
Again.
And again.
The truth of it comes to you as an inner knowing.
Profound and unshakable.
This island has a heartbeat.
And if it has a heartbeat.
It stands to reason.
That the island must have a heart.
A greater mystery is waking all around you.
This miraculous refuge that has risen from the sea to take you in when all the shores of the earth were closed to you.
It is more than an island.
Your heart swells with a determination to understand its secrets.
If this is to be home or hideaway.
You wish to know its story.
You reach the apex of the slope and emerge from the trees onto a grassy plain all abloom with bright red anemone.
You keep your footsteps light for a family of deer are grazing yonder.
And you do not wish to frighten them.
How strange to encounter creatures you know so well on this remote landing.
When you had a home.
The deer were a favorite of yours.
You admired their caution.
There's stillness.
Just now,
The doe among them senses your presence and picks up her head.
She becomes perfectly still.
Holding you in her gaze.
You halt,
Folding your legs taut like straws in the ground.
Your muscles locked and tense as hers.
Even from a distance.
There is something in the doe's eyes that sparks your mind.
A kind of longing.
As if more than a doe is staring out through those eyes.
You behold each other for several moments.
Breath hold.
Like beings who only know each other from dreams as the island's heart beats through your feet.
And the drumbeat skips.
Then returns to its steady rhythm.
And then.
.
.
All muscles relax.
Softening as the dough returns to grazing.
Having evidently marked you no threat to her faun.
From here at the island's highest point.
You can look out over the forest and cliffs to see where land meets ocean.
A curtain of mist is still pulled tight around the landmass.
You wonder where in the wide world you are.
You approach the cliff's edge and observe the white chalk from which it is formed.
The rock bears the signature of higher tides and flood lines.
Jagged grooves weathered into the surface.
You run a hand across the chalk.
Noticing how unusually soft the stone is.
Underneath your hand,
The crumbling limestone is warm.
Somehow alive.
You recall the myth of limestone's creation.
Or even gods of myths.
Of the countless,
Miniscule,
Imperceptible,
Primordial beings who drifted in the sea before its waters were harnessed by Oceanus.
Planktoes,
The stories called them.
The oldest gods.
Wanderers those tiny,
Interlocking bodies who,
In death,
Settled on the seafloor in helical patterns,
Collapsing into each other and forming new structures that hardened and stood sentinel.
These new cathedrals of stone.
Mighty as they seemed.
Still yielded to the water.
And now you cast your eyes on the mist-shrouded horizon.
Straining to waken a sense of direction.
Wind shakes the grasses on the high plain.
And the slope almost seems to rise and fall like a mother's breast as she cradles a sleeping child.
This is an island with breath.
Eyes affixed to the shoreline below,
Watching the micro-shifts in the waves as they roll in and out of contact with the cliffs.
Another revelation rises.
At once.
You understand how this island has thwarted the vengeance of Hera.
Who commanded all the lands of the earth to shun you.
The island you realize.
Is untethered to the sea floor.
Just as you were for all those days and nights aboard the raft.
The island is adrift.
This is why you found each other.
You and the island are like sisters.
Bearers of a common destiny.
To drift.
To wander like the old gods.
Like stars,
Unbound.
The blood-red anemone flowers seem to bend toward you as you take leave of the cliffs.
Down the slope you go.
And the blossoms open just a little bit more.
Angling their heads as if they are watching you.
Plumes of pollen rise from their hearts and cling to your ankles as you pass.
You have the sensation of a tugging at your heels.
As if a child holds tight to your leg.
Begging to go wherever you go.
The island's heartbeat grows stronger against your soul's.
You must be approaching the heart of the island.
The centerpiece of its mystery.
You have the growing sense that some force Some intelligence is trying to reach you through the heartbeat.
Through the dough.
Through the limestone and the flowers.
Only you are not fluent in this being's language.
If only.
You can learn to translate.
There is,
At what appears to you,
The very nexus of the island.
A single olive tree.
Vast of trunk,
Gnarled and twisting with grey-green leaves and shining fruit.
The nearer you come to this tree.
The more powerfully the island's heartbeat thrums throughout your body.
It is an ancient thing,
This tree.
Contorted as if caught within a frozen cyclone.
But through the gaps in its trunk and above ground roots,
You can see that the heartwood is all worn away.
The tree is hollow.
Yet sturdy still.
The roots reach and arc into a wide opening.
Like a mouth.
And darkness holds within.
You crouch to inspect the yawning roots,
Bracing yourself on the olive wood.
Such an aliveness this tree holds.
You can feel and even hear the rush of water through the root system.
Like Ichor,
Marching through your veins.
You can feel the tree drinking.
Growing.
And from the dark place within.
There is a steady stream of cool,
Salt-tinged air.
What lies beneath the olive tree.
What hidden world is waiting?
The pounding in the earth entices you forward.
You will not turn away from wonder yet.
And so,
Cautiously clinging to those roots you can reach,
You lower yourself into the darkness.
The abyss beneath the tree.
You must maneuver carefully in the dark.
But there are ledges of soil and stone to reach for.
Down into the island's core you go.
You have the strangest feeling of being swallowed by the island.
Ushered down its throat.
You recall your uncle Cronus,
Who swallowed his own children.
They emerged as the new gods.
Will you be reborn from the darkness as the Olympians were?
Or do you slide toward something older?
Wilder.
Weirder.
The channel soon widens and there is the faintest suggestion of light.
You can get to your feet and walk,
No minding your head.
Roots give way to rock and your footsteps echo subtly.
The drip of water,
Like the tinkling of little bells,
Land lightly on your ear.
Or the plucking of strings.
Music in any case.
Further down.
Toward the light.
You can even hear the thundering oceans.
This cavern,
It seems,
Opens to the sea.
There is a piece of old magic you remember now.
Straining to observe your surroundings with only the hint of misty daylight beyond.
You learned it from your cousin Hyperion.
Who lit the very fires of the sun.
A spell to conjure fire from earth and air.
The olive tree's roots penetrate even here.
And you feel along the walls for dead wood that may protrude.
You wrench free a piece of dry and mangled root and strike it hard against the stone wall.
You are no great commander of fire.
And it takes many tries to make a spark.
Your sister would have lit it with no effort,
You think.
But in time you do succeed and hold a torch before you.
Casting a halo of light across the limestone cave.
The amber glow reflects in pools of water that gather around you.
And ricochets off the dripping rock formations.
This calm luxuriance of blissful light illuminates a crystalline pavilion.
From the ceiling hang dripping cones of near-translucent rock.
Like narrow fingers plunged into the earth from above.
And corresponding forms rise from the floor in a gesture of yearning,
Of reaching for their counterparts overhead.
In some instances,
The kiss appears complete.
And a column forms.
Adorned with the appearance of melting wax.
It makes you think of those earliest titans from whom you descend.
Earth and Sky.
Who rose out of the consciousness of the infinite planktos.
And longed for each other.
The above and the below.
How they reached out to bind themselves together.
What a love that was.
Generative and calamitous.
And it also makes you think of your sister.
The goddess of falling stars.
How you,
The veiled one,
Sheltered under Gaia's trees and envied Asteria's power.
It wasn't fair.
You never had the chance to know your sister.
Only to fear and despise her.
That envy too is a kind of longing.
The below for the above.
And maybe she envied you,
Too.
There is a pool before you.
Wide and deep as far as you can tell more than a mere puddle at least.
You come to sit beside it.
You have the feeling that this is the very center of the cave.
The island's navel.
The place you've been slowly sliding toward as the heartbeat draws you inward.
The island has been trying so hard to reach you.
To speak to you.
Perhaps here at the center.
You can decode its language.
The light from your torch makes shadows bloom.
Kaleidoscopic on the cavern walls.
All around you drip the musical drops of water.
Resounding.
The island's heart beats in time.
It is uncanny.
But for a moment you cease to be you And you see either into the deep past,
Or the distant future.
These are your mother's hereditary gifts.
Are you remembering her?
Or are you seeing a glimpse of a future generation?
Your own children and grandchildren.
Torchbearers,
Fiery ones.
Prophetic bards.
Moonlit Huntresses You hear their stories whispered.
See them dramatized on the cavern walls,
In the flickering shadows.
You see yourself clinging dearly to the ancient olive tree.
You see a girl with three faces.
A doorway spun of stardust and spider silt.
What are you trying to tell me?
You ask.
Your voice ringing back to you from the ceiling and stone.
Your torchlight glints off the surface of the pool.
You cannot see the bottom.
The water is dark.
A void like the wide expanse of night sky beyond the reaches of gods old and new.
Your own reflection is hazy as you peer over the edge.
All dark.
Until.
.
.
A spark.
Like a torch in the water.
Deep in the water.
Like a star.
Flickers on and soon comes another.
And more.
Near and far.
Shallow.
And deep.
Bright.
And dim.
One by one they blink into being.
Speckling the black pool with tiny,
Impossibly bright lights.
You touch the surface of the water cautiously,
Rippling the pool.
The stars within waver.
Then return to stillness with the surface.
You look to the ceiling of the cave.
Almost expecting to see the night sky above as reflected in the water below.
But there is only limestone.
When the water is warm.
The same temperature as your skin.
It wants you to get in.
You cannot see the bottom.
There may be no bottom.
Perhaps it is a tunnel to the stars themselves.
Inverted.
Drawing you through the belly of the earth and ocean into the sky.
You have drifted on the water for so long.
Having just found stillness,
Shelter,
Safety.
How can you risk leaving the dry ground again?
Is this a leap you're willing to take?
But you are not a child of the earth anymore.
Gaia has forsaken you.
The island is the only intelligence you can trust.
And you realize now that you do trust the island.
It reaches out to you through the eyes of the deer.
The softness of chalk.
Anemone pollen.
And the twisted roots of the oldest olive tree.
It calls to you in the pulse of the soil.
The breath of the wind.
You thirst to understand what message this island has for you.
And perhaps water.
Is your common language.
And so extinguishing your torch,
So only the distant light from beyond the cavern.
And the sparkling luminescence of the starry pool remain.
You inch yourself toward the surface.
Your feet slide in first.
Luxuriating in the warmth of the water.
With no evidence of any nadir.
You fear sinking.
But as you steel yourself to submerge completely,
You find your body floats.
Without effort on your part.
All stiffness.
All aches begin to melt away in the water.
And you swim.
Among stars.
You discover that you can lie back.
And float easefully on the surface of the pool.
Surrendering the weight of your body into bliss.
This is a process.
After such long travels,
After sustained tension and fear and rejection.
Letting go takes effort.
And faith.
One muscle at a time,
You relax.
You relax for the first time you can remember,
Since you were just a godling.
Bit by bit.
You soften.
Into the water.
You lose track of where your titanic self ends.
And the warm accommodating fluid begins.
It is tranquil here.
Womb-like.
Water cradles your head and neck.
Floods your ears,
Reducing all sound.
You breathe in.
Salt.
And stone.
And out.
Start us.
And torchlight and in.
Water.
And earth.
And out.
Air and fire.
Within you,
The alchemy of breath.
Titanic.
Shifting.
Transmutation.
Translation through this floating and blissful submersion.
And you begin to construct a new language.
Breaking down.
Purifying.
And reassembling the component parts.
Of every communication.
You've tried so hard to receive.
You find common grammar.
Syntax,
And lexica.
In the strangest of places.
The porous cavities of chalk cliffs.
The skeletal snow of the planktose.
The space between the tines of a stag's antlers.
Like a tuning fork.
Or witching wands.
You breathe in.
The environment.
The sensations,
Interactions,
And personal histories.
And you breathe out.
A creation myth.
In your new shared language,
Which is vegetal and salty.
Slippery and ancient.
Weathered and emergent.
The island at last speaks.
I was in the foaming froth of the primordial ocean,
She says,
Her voice earthy and bubbling We were a multitude.
We were legion.
We were planktose.
But before that.
.
.
We were stars.
We were supernova.
Thrust across a great and glorious expanse.
You were there too.
But you were not you yet.
New gods are made of the ashes of the old ones.
A part of me stayed there.
In the stardust.
The densest part of me.
I gathered up mass.
Pulled others toward me.
Grew myself.
And my orbit.
Will the rest of me?
Fell across the tear-stained sky.
We wandered in search of a home.
We drifted.
And then we were passengers on the ocean.
And then we were snow.
On the sea floor.
And then.
.
.
We were chopped.
And rugged cliff and mountain.
Reaching back for what we'd lost.
You were there.
I watched you from afar.
We were not ourselves yet.
But we were changing.
When earth and sky converged,
You and I sprang forth from the collision.
We who were once many.
And one.
Or rent asunder.
And between us all stretched threads of longing.
Heartbreak.
Envy.
Fear and violence.
We longed to reunite,
Yet feared the explosive potential of that reunion.
We who were once supernova.
We who were once planktose.
Became titans.
From the ashes of the old gods,
Rise the new ones.
Our bodies age and calcify too.
Gaia groans under the weight of creation.
Uranus cowers at the sight of his own offspring.
Some springs,
Seeds,
Bear rotten fruit.
The Olympians.
They are poisoned apples,
Every one.
But they are made from the same stuff.
As we are.
I once enjoyed hurtling through the void.
Bound only to my flock.
A murmuration of stars.
We flung forth.
Holding our patterns.
And proximity.
Only to each other.
We had no allegiance except to each other.
That was a fierce love.
Which holds such mighty beings in place.
I cast the unworthy out.
I regret this.
Sometimes.
And you.
I regret our distance.
I regret the shadows I cast upon you.
Sometimes I tell myself I did it to keep you safe.
Hidden.
Unseen.
But this was never true.
And I did not keep you safe,
Did I?
Nor could I protect myself.
Once we were supernova.
Once we were planktose.
Once we were snow.
We know how to change ourselves,
Yet I watched as you fled.
Clinging to our grandmother's soil than the timbers of a small raft.
Do you not know?
But you are a raft.
That you are a bridge.
That you might be an island if you wish.
I became a bird.
I was always a child of the sky.
But so did he,
Zeus.
He became an eagle and chased me to the palace of the winds.
They could not shelter me.
They serve Him now.
So I remembered.
I recalled when I was planktose.
When I was a star.
When I was frothing foam and heat.
When I was solved.
When I was chalk.
When I was porous limestone.
When I was grass.
When I was dear.
When I was pollen.
When I was Olive.
And I reached out for the above.
The below.
And I became vast.
I filled my belly with breath like a sail,
And I caught the winds that serve Zeus,
And I made them serve me.
I clung to the tides.
Which now serve Poseidon,
And I begged them to carry me.
And I forswore Gaia,
Who serves the Olympians.
And I willed myself to float.
And I kissed my own daughter goodbye.
My Hecate.
For she is one of them now.
I will see her again.
I inhaled and I expanded until I was an island.
With soft hills and limestone bluffs.
With salt caves and herds of deer.
With blood-red flowers and old growth forests.
I unfurled into something enormous and unclaimable.
I became an island.
With a heartbeat.
And breath.
I am unmoored.
I drift.
I wonder.
But I will hold you.
Always.
If you wish it.
I will never let you go.
Our mother whispered one last prophecy into my ear.
Before it grew an olive tree.
That I would be a sanctuary.
That I would be a holy place.
That gods would be born on my shores.
That my new name would outlive my old one.
Asteria.
You whisper to the rocks and rushes with tears in your eyes.
Not Asteria.
The island answers back.
Delos.
The Floating Island.
Your sanctuary.
Your sister.
Your sister,
Veiled by mist.
The way you once were.
By her heavy shadow.
Your starry sister,
A landmass.
And steadfast you.
Adrift.
Delos is a star.
Fallen into the sea.
A refuge for the banished.
Birthplace of Huntress,
Moon and music.
A convergence of prophecy and yearning.
Held in the cradle of her starry waters.
You are reborn.
Not as one of the new gods.
But into the mystery of the oldest.
You never lost each other.
You are always bound.
A flop.
A murmuration.
A drift.
Even when you were earthbound and she was in the stars.
Now.
At last.
You speak a common language.
Her feet abide,
Not in one place.
But on the tide she swims even as stalks of asphodel.
Wherever the south wind or the east wind blows.
Wherever the sea carries her.
Let it now carry you.
Wind swept and stern,
Are you set in the sea?
Island.
And wrath.
We've beaten.
Mist shrouded.
And forever embrace.
Breathe in.
And stone.
Breathe out.
Towards life.
And stardust.
Good night.
