It was early September, newly autumn and well before winters bite. No clouds shrouded the stars where we lay and watched the heavens.
“Are they still up there?” Melpomene, the oldest of us, asked.
“Yes,” Urania replied. She looked at her compass, then at the stars. “Up there, past the Forge of Hephaestus.” She pointed to a group of stars clustered like sparks from a celestial anvil. “They’ll keep traveling unless some distant sun claims them.”
I listened to my sisters talk as we sat in the coolness. The stars precessed, twirling around our heads like a mobile. From Taurus, to Aries, to Pisces, we lay and watched the ages unfold and wondered what dreams would come true when we reached Aquarius.
“Some of them must still be alive. They must be,” I demanded.
“Oh Thalia! So dramatic.”
“But they must be. Not all of them are gone. They still fly on, Urania said so.”
Urania shook her head and frowned at me. To be young is to be chided by ones siblings. Sometimes it is in word, other-times just a look. I bit my tongue. A super-nova made the sky brighter than midnight should be. I almost believed I could see our brothers, ancient astronauts journeying to distant galaxies.
“Urania, why were there no women with them? To care for them, soften their violent rages or tend bruised wounds?” I asked.
She never answered.
Erato strummed her kithara, the strings were tuned a little looser than when she played officially, at court. The melody was warm and soothing, it rippled in the shadows of night and lay across us as a comforting blanket. I dozed while Hebe’s silver face drifted low across the hills, but my sisters lay and talked. Clio told tales of journeys made in future times, when the Gods have passed to myth. In my sleep I heard and dreamt of ebony heroes defying the whim of caprice and following paths my brothers forged through heaven’s gates. Even in my dream I knew this would be true, that when music, and comedy, and dance, and tragedy, and all my other sisters, as well as my own mirth, are no more than words then what shall remain will be the defiant actions of humanity.
I awoke with dew moistening my cheeks. The moon had sunk to her place of repose. Meteorites streaked across the carapace of earth, flicking in and out of existence with flashes of incandescent brilliance. Calliope found it enough light to write by, her script flowed in loving loops across the scroll.
“What are you writing, sister?” I asked, and shuffled over to lean against her warm shoulder.
“A eulogy, a memory, a hagiography. You tell me.”
She held the vellum open and I watched the words form. Worlds were created and grew from the smallest of jottings. Deeds undreamed by Gods and their brood were accomplished by the clay which dried so quickly in the harsh heat of life. Like me, my sisters were fascinated by the deeds of those we inspired. Though I think they forgot that we had kin who travelled and deserved our remembrances.
Sometimes I forgot them myself. But then I looked at the stars and I didn’t see the home of immortal fame; I never tasted, even in memory, ambrosian draughts. I saw the smiles, I felt the tickles, the hugs and kisses, of my brothers. Their bristles scratched my cheek when they donned their garb of silver and gold, and bade us goodbye, before climbing aboard their crafts and clawing up into the blue, blue sky.
But that was long ago. When the world was young and sweet, before the bitter tears of loss and sorrow coalesced into salty seas. When there still was hope and not only of the sunrise today, or tomorrow, but hope of history unfurled in glory.
Dawn began to rise. Slim fingers of paleness on the fringe of a still dark sky. In our glade my eight sisters and I would go about the day. Zeus would watch, his eye unblinking as it gazed lasciviously on the forms he gave to inspire the mortal heart. It was no laughing matter. I drew myself up and looked around. My sisters carried on. Some slept, some played, some wrote, some prayed. None watched as I withdrew to hide in grottos unknown. What mirth remains I left freely, to be made into whatever so the finder wills.
text by stuartcturnbull, picture by GDJ via Pixabay
