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The shade of the poetess, Sappho, has not made herself known to the residents of the Crossroads since the fall of the House of Hades. That does not mean that her presence is not felt among the Crossroads’ residents. She is most difficult to ignore on the nights when the moon is full – but, no. No, that’s not true.
Sappho and that longing that comes with her walks with Melinoë every time she steps from her tent and casts her gaze into the starry sky.
(The poetess annoys Homer endlessly.)
“Ughhh,” Dora whines, throwing back her head as Melinoë pauses and sighs. “You know, I thought this thing between witches and the moon was, you know, exaggerated or something.”
“I couldn’t possibly know what you’re talking about,” Melinoë says – and she’s almost not lying. It’s not easy to see the moon through the encompassing canopy of the trees, but if she squints, she can make out the fine lines of its creases and pock marks. “Sister Selene has been an ally of all sorceresses since before the Age of the Gods. It’s impossible to understate how essential her support has been to the development of our craft.”
“Ughhhhhhhhhh. Not what I meant, Mel.”
Melinoë turns back, drawing her eyes away from the waxing crescent to frown in Dora’s direction. “Then what did you mean?”
Dora looks at her from the shadows, her typically-bored expression tinged with something just a little bit dry and knowing.
“Melinoë?”
Her Headmistress calls from the cauldron, interrupting before Dora can sentence her to death by a thousand sarcastic cuts. Melinoë trips away from her tent, wiping her confused frown from her expression before Hecate can see it.
She means it, is the thing. She has no more of a thing with the moon than any of the other sorceresses she’s so lucky to know. Melinoë bows to Hecate and makes her rounds through the war camp, determined not to let the words take root in her mind.
She succeeds until confronted with her Keepsakes’ case, where Selene’s Moon Beam sits in waiting. Running a finger over its tassels threatens to evoke something in her that she dares not think about; something cool and shivering, like the feeling she might get if she dove into a still lake in the depths of winter.
Melinoë drags her hand away for the Beam, taking a shuddering breath as she does. When she departs the Crossroads for the strange pressure of the surface, it’s with Apollo’s Photon tucked into a pocket of her reagent purse.
(She does not feel the Moon’s gaze upon her; cannot interpret the flickering of the evening light as the twinge of sadness and longing that it is.)
Yet even with the light of the sun keeping her company, dimmed though it may be, she cannot keep her thoughts from the moon for long – in no small part because every sorceress she encounters seems to challenge her efforts to do so.
*
It starts with Lady Medea. Melinoë stumbles upon her pharmacy uninjured but covered in a fine sheen of sweat, having fallen into a trap set by the uniquely-evasively Heracles – which is to say, the Greatest of Men challenged her to a contest of arms, and it being so early in the evening, Melinoë couldn’t resist.
“Take not another step toward that river,” the lady commands, freezing Melinoë in her tracks. “Come. A sorceress’s sweat can have incredible impacts on her curses, and I’ve had little opportunity to test what might happen if I imbue my gifts with materials such as yours.”
“I suppose it’s not the strangest reagent I’ve heard of.” Melinoë steps where she’s bid and catches sight of the image that rests on the liquid surface of Lady Medea’s cauldron. It is the full moon. Baffled, she looks up – and yes, it is as she thought. Selene is waxing, and yet here she sits, full and round as she is on the brightest of evenings.
She is so distracted by the impossibility that she almost jumps when Lady Medea swipes a vial across her brow.
“Have I surprised you, sorceress?” the lady asks, no small amount of amusement warming her harsh voice.
“I – I am well aware of the extent of our craft, but I must admit, I’m at a loss. What are you doing, Lady Medea, if I might ask? I’ve never seen a distortion of the moon quite like that.”
Melinoë’s sweat disappears into the cauldron. The drops barely disrupt the reflection – or is it a refraction? – of the moon on the surface.
“I have not caught the attention of the Eye of Night for some time,” Lady Medea says, though she speaks now more to her cauldron than to Melinoë. “I would speak false if I claimed not to covet those tender gifts she finds it in her heart to give when she is at her fullest. Seeing you utilize them against that cyclops at the edge of the city has been...inspiring.”
Melinoë – considers this. Blinks. Feels the way the words grind against the natural rhythms of the world and cannot help but frown.
“You want to channel Selene’s hexes at their full strength all the time?”
“I do.” Lady Medea’s expression does not change, but they are covetous words. Longing words, though not, Melinoë thinks, for Selene, herself – at least, not until Lady Medea lifts her eyes from her cauldron and casts her gaze skyward. What softness Medea still bears is highly cultivated – another aspect of all her cruelties – but the expression with which she gazes at the Titaness’s distant chariot seems less calculated than all her others.
(And Melinoë has no power within her to see the future, but she is not so blind to dreams. There is the hint of something to Lady Medea’s longing, something binding, with ropes and bound hands and...whimpering.)
“She who has witnessed all of my endeavors knows my heart, sorceress,” Lady Medea murmurs, ignorant to Melinoë’s sudden flush. “Do not frown at me so. If she wanted to stop me from trying my hand against her nature, she would have already.”
And Melinoë, for all her training, has no rejoinder to offer. When Lady Medea offers her a curse for the evening, she accepts it with all the grace she can muster before fleeing for Ephyra’s city center.
When Selene herself appears, offering a hex and the same power that Lady Medea covets – that of the Path of Stars – Melinoë finds herself too tongue-tied to ask why the lady does not have access to it, and why she does.
*
Madame Circe’s relationship with Selene is far more...well, there’s no other word for it: natural, than Lady Medea’s. Less coercive, though Melinoë would never say as much out loud.
On another evening, when Melinoë can find the time to sit with her on Aeaea, she finds herself giggling along with the Changeling Sorceress’s many fond sighs and affectionate stories, all while the waning moon lingers overhead.
“You should have seen us in our younger days, my pet,” she teases, all while her hands effortlessly pluck reagents from the ether. “I’m well surprised that your Lord Dionysus never took it upon himself to join our escapades – there was far more dancing naked in the rays of Selene’s light then than there is now.”
Melinoë flushes from the tip of her head down to her toes while Madame Circe laughs. Behind her, her pen of pigs seems to chuckle in tandem with her.
“But I – did that. Help?” she tries. “With your channeling?”
The look Madame Circe offers her is one part amused and two parts pitying. “I suppose it could have, if we’d thought to do something more productive with all that excess energy,” she says. Her cauldron heaves a heavy sigh, its steam hissing in the cool air of the Rift. “But we were young and in love, and young folk in love don’t tend to be the brightest. By my memory of it, we simply thought that the lack of clothing and noisy songs were the best way to get the Titaness’s attention.”
It feels like a subtle dig, though perhaps not against Melinoë herself. Even so, she doesn’t dare accuse her mentor of such an underhanded slight.
“You were in love?” she asks, instead.
Madame Circe’s smile dips back into true fondness. “Madly,” she says, winking in Melinoë’s direction. “But we had our time, pet, and while I remember it fondly, I find what Sister Selene and I have now to be far more in balance with the whims of the world.”
The cauldron belches one last time, leaving Madame Circe to make a noise somewhere between a cat’s purr and a bird’s chirp. Melinoë frowns after her, as pink as the sunrises she’s never actually seen. There’s a glimmer of Selene in Madame Circe’s pot, much like in Lady Medea’s – Melinoë can see her if she squints – but there’s more of her in the surrounding water. There’s even moonlight collected in the dew beading on the grass outside of Madame Circe’s home.
Without so much as a thought, Melinoë reaches down and runs her fingers through the blades. They are cold to the touch, despite the warmth of the island. The sensation drips down to her core.
“I suppose that’s enough reminiscing for the evening,” Madame Circe says, dragging Melinoë’s attention back to this island, this moment. “Come, pet. Choose your gift – it’s time to leverage nature to your advantage.”
Overhead, Selene continues her midnight ride, too far into the evening to lend her support – and too far away to tell Melinoë that, if she asked, they, too, could dance like the witches of old.
Alas. This...thing growing between her and Melinoë, unspoken though it is, is all a matter of timing.
*
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, Sister,” Melinoë says, glancing up through Erebus’s trees toward the new moon, “but the Shades I’ve spoken to at the Crossroads – they seem to think that you’re the goddess of the moon as well as the hunt. None of them seem to know a thing about Sister Selene.”
Melinoë has never seen Artemis, the Mistress of the Hunt and Silver Sister, look embarrassed before. Silence takes the glade they’ve found themselves in, broken only when Artemis fires a wild shot into what, when Melinoë looks at it, only appears to be a shadow.
“Never mind,” she says, nerves creeping up her throat; it’s like being a nymph again, all this awkwardness. “Just – forget I asked; it’s so good to see you –”
“Now, now,” Artemis chides, regaining some of her smug superiority. “You asked a question, Sister Melinoë. Don’t let your advantage slip away.”
“You just – you seemed uncomfortable.”
Artemis pins her with a look. “You have interrogated fiercer foes than I. Your prey’s distress should not overtake your determination.” Not that I’m your prey, the night air around her bites.
Melinoë does not bow her head, if only because Artemis’s smug discomfort is, somehow, easier to bear than her hypothetical disappointment in Melinoë’s lack of nerve.
“Did you – I know the Shades are not the most up to date on the nature of the world, but I don’t understand how they could have come to such a gross misinterpretation of your duties. Do you?”
“It’s true that the Shades don’t understand the intricacies of our work,” Artemis allows with half a shrug. Her bow sits comfortably on her shoulder, and there’s a splash of blood on one of her cheeks – not her own. “But in this case, they’re almost correct.”
“What?”
Artemis’s discomfort fades as she offers Melinoë a knife-like smile. “I’m not surprised Selene never told you. The Fates did try to declare me the goddess of the moon, you know – but when they did, our dearest Sister fought back.”
“I – she did?”
And while Artemis herself doesn’t explain, a tapestry makes its way into Melinoë’s tent in between her many encounters with the surface and the world below. It is. Informative. She studies it for longer than she cares to, ignoring Dora’s snickering, and then stuffs it unceremoniously under her cot in hopes that no one will ever find it.
The tapestry is obviously one of Arachne’s, for it is among the most beautiful things Melinoë has ever beheld. The many phases of the moon surround the edges, though they are bound with an intricate array of hunting knots and flanked by a litany of arrows. In the center of the tapestry sits – well, kneels – Artemis, with her headdress knocked askew and golden ichor coating her face. Selene stands over her, flanked by the darkness of a new moon, and holds the goddess’s face in her palm. She looks every inch a conqueror; a Titaness of the days long past.
Neither she nor Artemis are wearing armor, let alone any other clothes. Melinoë chooses to interpret this as an artistic choice on Arachne’s choice and does not think about the implications any further – and no matter what her headmistress says, she is not luminous with color (longing, want) when she steps out of her tent.
(There is a note that comes with the tapestry. It is unsigned, perhaps for the sake of the deliverer’s safety, but it reads:
To the best of my knowledge, the Lady of the Hunt is unaware that such a record of her exchange with her now-Sister exists, and I would like to keep it that way.)
“This is getting ridiculous,” she does not hear Dora mutter behind her. “Horns, why don’t they, I dunno, just talk to each other?”
“There is a rhythm to these things, Lady Dora,” she doesn’t hear Moros reply. “At least, so I am told.”
*
On one of the many evenings when Melinoë straightens her spine, equips her armor, and flings herself into the world beyond the Crossroads, Hecate moves with some silent grace toward the comfort of her war lodgings.
The house that now lies abandoned behind the salt bathes is spartan, but it is not heartless. As she divests herself of her hat and other trappings, cool moonlight graces one of the unblocked windows. Hecate keeps her mask in place, if only to obscure her smile as Selene comes to her door.
“I had wondered when you might come calling.”
Selene hovers near the threshold, as though unsure as to whether or not she has the right to enter. She does and always will, but Hecate appreciates the deference, strange though it may be.
“Enter, Sister. You have nothing to fear from me.”
Selene crosses, then, filling the home with her dim glow. The light outside the window is diminished; the moon in all of its glory is new tonight, allowing for a visit so direct as this.
“I would never fear you, Lady Hecate,” Selene says, her voice as ethereal and reverberant in this shared space as it is on the nights she flies overhead.
“But you’ve not come for your usual reasons, I imagine.”
The Eye of Night does not flush, not in the traditional sense. Instead, there’s an increased iridescence about her as she meets Hecate’s eye. “No. Rather, I come to ask your permission.”
Hecate keeps her sigh internal, intent on preserving Selene’s already-fragile confidence. It’s true, she could use the relief that her old companionship with Selene once brought – companionship won in the form of wandering hands and silken touches – but they have not been intimate like that in quite some time.
“Well, go on, then.”
Night-wrought steel enters Selene’s spine. “I would introduce Melinoë to the more...intimate elements of our craft. While the decision to participate in those rituals remains up to her, I did not want to reach out to her and offer without first conferring with you.”
Hecate rolls her eyes, but behind her mask, she’s smiling still. “I am not her mother, Selene. You do not have to ask my permission to court her.”
“Don’t I?”
It comes out softer than Hecate thinks Selene means it to. In another life, it would be a lever; a weakness; something to drop into a cauldron and exploit for future gain. It still could be, if Selene’s proposed introductions would splotch Melinoë’s cheeks with unwarranted tears.
But it is a question posed between ex-lovers; a question posed from one Titaness to another; an acknowledgment of power and a sign of respect.
Hecate inclines her head.
Something twinges beneath her breast as Selene smiles back at her, but it is an old longing, and one she has since moved past.
“I might recommend waiting until she has completed her task,” Hecate says as she turns to go. “Unless you think these rituals may empower her?”
“You told me yourself that it is love that drives us onward.” Selene pauses, if only for a moment. “If my love can make her sharper, what have we to lose?”
Everything, Hecate does not say. Then again, she does not need to. Selene’s pause becomes more pronounced as the silence echoes between the two of them. Then, the moment passes. She drifts away, and Hecate is left alone. The emptiness rattles around her – and she finds she no longer longs for this sort of silence, after all.
*
There is a fountain clearing at the base of Olympus. The air there is crisp and bright with the promise of snow. Melinoë stands in it now, her body aching and sore. She feels as though she’s been dipped in fire, but that’s what comes of fighting Eris and the damned Rail. Melinoë has yet to figure out how to navigate Strife’s arena without getting at least a little burned.
Fortunately, the cool runoff of the mountain, gathered in the heaven’s ornate fountain, offers a reprieve. She should not linger, but she finds herself tempted, particularly as the first familiar flakes of celestial snow start to melt in her hands.
It’s in between the landing of the first and fifth snowflakes that she comes to realize she is not in this clearing alone.
“Little star.”
“Sister Selene!”
It’s so rare to see Sister Selene in person. Melinoë beams at her, all soreness forgotten as she crosses the cold clearing to come to the Moon’s side.
“What are you doing here? Not that it’s not a pleasure to see you, it’s just – is it safe for you to be here?”
Selene’s answering smile is a beatific as ever, without a lick of judgment in her kind eyes. If anything, Melinoë would hazard that she looks...almost amused. Maybe even fond (as though the mere thought of the Moon’s fondness send shivers running from her fingers to her toes).
Who eavesdrops on their quiet conversation? Not the gods, distracted as they are by Typhon pressing at their gate. Not Hecate, pressing as she is against an aching wound, but channeling that feeling into crafts that will lift Melinoë ever higher.
If anyone eavesdrops on the beginning of the courtship between the Moon and the Goddess of Nightmares, Princess of the Underworld, it is Homer – Homer and the rest of the dead. And Homer does not tell the Princess’s secrets, but he can recount (and does, to those with the ear to listen) what is it to witness a fate-touched kiss.
Selune bends – and bends, and bends, the light moving with her. Melinoë goes up on her toes. There is no receiving. There is the brush of a hand against a ghostly arm; the caress of lips; the smearing of lipstick. There is a shifting in the tenure of the night. Night’s Eye does not turn her gaze from the world, but it becomes focused on this moment, this young woman (as though it had not been focused with some degree of favoritism before).
“Please, don’t misunderstand me,” Melinoë says in that quite grove, her breath coming quick and fast into lungs that have only so recently become accustomed to the surface air. “I am flattered, truly, but – are you certain?”
“I have always had a fondness for witches,” Selene says, carefully brushing a strand of Melinoë’s sun-dark hair away from the princess’s forehead. “And my fondness for you, little star, shines particularly bright.”
There will be time, later, for the entanglement of limbs; for the delicate balancing act required to bring a Titaness of the sky’s impossible breadth down to earth and, more importantly, a bed. There will be time later for Melinoë to turn what she knows of her own body to Selene’s; for the sky itself to shudder as she fits her mouth over the Titaness’s breast and sets her fingers to work.
For now, there is a kiss. The Moon departs, smiling, as she so oft does; Melinoë stays in the glade, staring, until she shakes herself and reminds her of her task.
If climbing the heights of Mount Olympus feels a little more like trying to breach the sky than usual, well. It is a thought that Melinoë shares with no one, and one that Homer dares not put to voice.