Page 78 of Styx

When Asteria’s lonely daughter

asks me about her mother,

I will pretend that I did not know

how she created the fox.

But the truth is I was there.

I walked with her into the woods

that day. I followed Asteria and

I watched her pluck a dying star

from the night sky. I watched her hold

the fiery thing in her bare hands.

I found her the bones of that long-dead

creature she asked me for.

I saw the way she tenderly placed

the beating heart and lungs of the star

inside that perfectly preserved dead thing.

I took her hand while we waited.

And that fox made of fire and stars

came to life and blinked before us.

Long tail leaving sparks everywhere

as it swished and moved.

When we walked out of the woods together,

the fox at our heels, Leto spied on us and asked

how we had done it. And we swore her

to the same secrecy we had sworn each other.

No one could ever know.

Sisters

I had always been mistrustful of sisters.

Perhaps it was because of my own.

I had only ever known sisters

to be constantly cruel to one another.