pamalicio.us - Grasp the subject, the words will follow

I am stuck in prologue hell. You can read a REALLY ROUGH version of it and tell me what you think.

She was sitting in Hyde Park feeding macadamia nuts to the furry little tame gray squirrels. Bits of shell lying around her on the ground and the squirrels were paying court to her as if she were Victoria in the flesh. I had recently been chastised by my fellow muses and by Zeus himself for spending too much time in the mortal realm with this charge. Knowing my place was in Olympus was not enough to keep me from spending my days and nights watching and inspiring her.

I watched as she laughed robustly at the tiny creature who was tickling his way up her skirts to reach his prize. Her fire red hair while enclosed in a cap which was the fashion of the days Victoria reigned supreme splayed out on the sides in tendrils softly framing her face. She was at her most happy when in the park. She enjoyed watching the aristocrats ride their horses and carriages up and down the dirt and mud paths. Silks of every color and the look of supreme boredom reigned on those faces. She always wondered if the nobility would be more happy if they came off their mounts, or out of the carriage to feed nuts to the squirrels. The fountains spraying blue water from the mouths of babes. Green lush grass and gardens of pastel colored flowers surrounded her, hoards of master gardeners in the Queens service tended every inch of the park down to the prized black swans, these images were inspiring me. To do what, I had no answer.

So I watched and I continued to watch. I stood by her side with my invisible hand on her shoulder while she toiled for the words to best get her point across. I observed her burning pages and sobbing as if a plague had set upon her house when her words didn’t flow as planned. She had the madness. It was the first time I had seen this in a woman. Muses know that only charges who are afflicted with the madness can achieve true greatness and her works were to be praised for all of eternity.

She was moving now, pulling the strings closed on her blue silk purse that matched her perfect little shoes and the silk of her dress swaying back and forth. She had a small build that was apparent even under all of those skirts, freckles sprinkled lightly over the bridge of her nose. A row of perfect teeth and eyes as green as a the cat of a witch. She skipped past the line of hackney coaches waiting at exit on the side of the park where the river flowed. I loved the days when she took her time walking home from her leisure hour. I watched her pet silks with loving care at the outside market, browse books from a variety of authors on the street in front of book shops where the men shooed her along while they smoked their pipes in the doorway. It was at this time I enjoyed lingering with her the best. The look of hopefulness in her eyes when she stood with her fingers lingering on a volume outside of a shop filled me with pride. She was going to achieve so much and at only eighteen years of age she would be my greatest achievement. I then had a vile human feeling, I thought it was a gift at the time but I understand now why humans say pride is a sin. It allowed me to ruin everything I hold dear.

As I sit on Olympus now I think of her. I can’t see much of our purple peaks from my small window. It lets the fresh air in and I cannot escape. So I think of the temple where my family will be gathering to discuss my heresy. I think of Calliope in her blue robe. Poseidon and his barnacle covered hair. I think of my brothers and sisters who are awaiting the outcome with fear in their hearts. What I have done is a travesty and I will have to be made example of. I am ashamed that all I can think of is the fact that it pains me to the brink of madness to know that her name is one that will be passed over in history. Her works will not see the morning sun and it is likely that I will see the sun no more as well.

I am a prisoner awaiting trial. My grandfather Zeus will decide my fate and no amount of paternal love will keep him from his duties. I must be punished and that I understand. I crossed the line the day my Lillie’s flame was extinguished so violently. I should have followed the rules. By breaking them I caused more trouble than I could have foreseen. I think not even the oracles could predict what was coming and how it would effect Olympus as a whole.

My memory plagues me night and day with the images of Lillie’s death rolling through my mind like waves crashing against a rock bringing in the tide. Lille was walking in an alley on Fleet Street, a favorite walk for anyone writing anything from a newspaper to a book. Fleet street housed all the printing presses and anything important had been printed here since Henry VIII himself had his works against heretics published and earned the Defender of the Faith title from the Pope. Taking her favorite alley short cut into Cheapside where her family of cloth dyers dwelled in a two story set of flats. She stopped at the stoop of a beggar, the old woman wasn’t long for this world and what was a pence for a pint to ease her suffering body and soul? This day as she drew her silken purse out from the folds of her belt, two short men with flat foreheads stepped from the other side of the alley and came at my Lillie with a break neck pace. Registering the look of shock now plaguing the old wench’s face, Lillie turned around just in time to see the attacker shove his cheap iron knife through her silken blouse in between her ribs and grab her purse. In one swift movement these would be assassins stole more than a purse with a few pence. Practiced as they were the murderer and his friend reached the street and with that accomplishment safety in the crowds doing their daily shopping. Scarlet quickly erased the whimsical sky blue of Lillie’s silk shift. The color of rage, life, and death was flowing from Lillie and it was at this moment I knew she was sentenced to die for six pence.

In my despair I appeared for the first and only time in this realm and I let my lovely Lillie see me for what I was. Her look of shock shook me for a moment. I know what I must have looked like to her in my white robe, black hair and eyes the color of her blue silk purse that cost her this existence. I assumed I resembled a rogue angel, an avenging angel sent to right the wrong done to her. I knew that my Lillie was educated in all myth and lore. It didn’t occur to me she would know me for what I was. I knelt on the filth covered red brick floor of the alley and pulled her into my arms with the wench who caused it all glaring at me as if I were an apparition. Knowing the wench would forget as soon as she had her next bottle of Rhenish, or that no one would believe her tale of the man who appeared out of no where. I spoke my only words I had ever said to her “Lillie my love what can I do to ease your suffering”?

She looked at me as if I were a demon come to claim her soul bound for hell. The look on her face plagues me in my sleep and I will never forget the only words she ever spoke to me. The last words my Lillie spoke in her human life. “I curse you muse. You are here to watch me die, but lift a finger to preserve me did you not. I call upon the mother of your race Mnemosyne to curse her children and all their kin to a plague of nightmare and never ending sleep”. Lillie sighed her last breath and I was left holding the corpse of the first human to ever stir a feeling in my chest. Lillie always one for the extreme, that is part of what made her so brilliant., but even I had to wince at the naming of the Titan who birthed our race. Saying a name gave a deity power and I knew not yet that a curse of blood and death even from a mortal was enough to make a sleeping goddess rise.

I wept for her as I would grieve the death of my own sisters and brothers. I wept for I knew my time had also come to an end. I am weeping still in my solitary space. When I returned to Olympus cursed and broken I would be tried for my heresy. And so it shall be.