The gods are sometimes merciful, but they are never kind.
I do not begrudge you your cunning, o my mother, nor your bloodlust. Child of another cradle, what was I to you? Lions, they say, will likewise build atop a child’s bones, and rabbits in a fury consume their young; so I have been told, and with my own eyes have I seen. Understanding is not forgiveness, as you know, but what of that? You won your prize, even if the knife slipped sideways at the fatal moment. Child-rearing Hera, protector of women, what whimsy took your heart that day? To save the daughter from the mother, and the mother from the daughter? But alas, my hands grew weak and my eyes grew heavy, and I slipped from Allmother’s ram, down through the sky, past cliffs and clouds, down to the winedark sea.
There I should have died, but a gift given cannot be returned: I was doomed to be saved. The sea gave way before me, bore me away to his drowned kingdom within the unlit depths, to kneel before before his throne, the upstart king, and his court of luminescent slaves and eyeless singers. He took me as his own, child that I was, not as a bride, nor even as a cupbearer, but as a toy, a bauble, bright as that traitor fleece, an idle plaything against an unproductive hour.
Here I shall remain, o my son, breathless in this airless kingdom, but you shall not. I give you to these currents and to fate; may you find a better life than you deserve.