Page 137 of Styx

told them that we would never say.

We would always choose each other first.

And so, hand in hand, Asteria and I

left the palace of Coeus

to finish tending to everything

we had made, our secret gifts.

The Beginning and the End

It was the cave that we visited first.

Our sanctuary where everything had begun.

The place where my eels swam.

Where Asteria’s glowworms shone.

Where I had made crabs and we

had made starfish together. Everything breathed

here inside the dark and luminous light.

Tenderly, I raised my eels in small

saltwater circles in my hands and took them to

the wide waters of the sea to set them free.

Asteria gently filled her hands with

the glowworms that shone, and said a prayer

allowing them to breathe easy in the wide seas.

There was ritual here. In releasing all we loved

into the oceans: the starfish, the eels,

the crabs, and the glowworms. We knew

before we had finished, this was the end

of everything we had known as

our favourite hiding place and sanctuary.

Everything we had known of our girlhood.

The Starfox

She was Asteria’s, made from fire and the burning heart of a star. She was built from chaos and the sky and all things living and dead. She was fire, but she was also the love and the secret of creation we shared with each other. Asteria wanted so much to bring her with us. A glowing starfox moving across the skies, showing us the way. But I asked her, how would we explain her to Pallas and Perses? What answer would we have to give them of her origin? And Asteria was broken-hearted, but she understood. It was time for the starfox to have a new home, for others to look after her instead of us. So, to my youngest Oceanid sisters, who were still kind, whose competitive attributes had not overshadowed their soft nature, we gave the starfox as a gift. I knew one thing about Oceanids: we cared for all things living, nurtured them well. My littlest sister had turned her wide, luminous brown eyes to me and asked, But what about her mate? Does she not need a friend? Asteria, whose heart was already in pieces, immediately went into the deep woods and returned a while later with a bright rose-and-azure-coloured starfox. As we watched the two foxes play with each other, bright amber-and-rose embers sparking from their tails, we had held hands and tried to remember that here, in every ending, there was a soft, small beginning. For everyone who cared to see it, it would serve them well. Asteria and I made a promise to each other then. We would not practise magic in front of our consorts. No one must know of this secret power we held. This was for us, and only ourselves.

Dawn