Page 207 of Styx

as though, even as rumbling rolled

across an uncertain posterity,

she understood what she must do.

I Often Wondered If a Time Before This Existed

That a time where there was peace,

where we didn’t hear cries and screams

from the skies, was simply a dream.

Pallas would visit my bed so little now,

his once-bronzed body forever covered

in the soot and charcoal of the forge.

The less I saw him, the more I resented him.

No Goddesses had been called to join the war yet,

and neither had any of us nymphs, of course.

We were relegated to the task of raising progeny,

of keeping the home and hearth safe,

of tending to the wounded.

And there were so many wounded.

The first time I saw my brothers return,

their bodies cut to pieces by adamantine,

some holding their severed legs

in their hands, others holding

their own heads, I wondered

whether immortality was a punishment,

and whether the mortals were more fortunate

for they knew the sweet endless peace of death.

No prophecy or dream could have prepared us

for the unfathomable horror of divine war.

She Appeared One Day from Nowhere

I was resting after the birth of my third child,

Kratos – my child of strength.