Chapter 1: The family

“Fuck.”

Megara had always been destined for tragedy. With a name like that, how could she not. She lifted her face from the amphora, the contents of which she had quickly dumped on her bedroom floor. She mourned her tiny colony of what would have become mushrooms. Such a waste of a project. She had even diverted a trickle of water from the aqueduct outside her window with some sculpted clay and a lot of sweat. She smeared vomit from the corners of her mouth. What did she care if they stained the black shift. It was scratchy, and she preferred a chill to prickle her skin. The gold embroidery at it’s edges were already cloudy with earth.

She stood, and checked her reflection. Her eyes watered with the force of her stomach emptying. Her hair frazzled. She looked terrible. Megara tugged on the rope she fashioned to her makeshift water gate, and caught the trickle of water meant for the amphora. She splashed the water on her face and then trudged to her vanity and thumbed her mixture of olive oil and charcoal. She set it back down without applying any, thinking it futile. Instead she sluggishly procured her mixture of olive oil and honey and massaged it into her cheeks and forehead.

Her maid lumbered in, “Megara, come.”

He was a barbarian, an unlucky pirate from the Mediterranean basin sentenced to work for my family. My mother assigned him to me with a wink and a pat on the rump.

“Really Boukris, after a decade of friendship you could say ‘please’.” He had already turned his back to her, knowing she would follow him without protest. The irritation seemed to reverberate from him, regardless. So, she followed,. Pleased with his mood. He was so moody, and it was so fun. Irritating him was just enough to shake her out of the shame spiral she had started down the minute she realized her condition. Condition was such an innocuous way to describe the parasite now growing inside of her. It already seemed to feed off of her lifeforce, draining her of all her energy.

Boukris led Megara to her father. Creon managed to frown at his daughter without disturbing the pace of his rant to Haemon. Meg passed Haemon slamming a hip into him as she passed, whispering “Family loyalty or deference to a god?”

“The latter, I’m afraid,” her brother said with an exasperated sigh. He was lazily tossing a mouse by it’s tail. One he no doubt plucked from the banquet table, rotting with food from our last event. Megara noted the magots homing on the skull of the goat, the mice picking at the leftover cheese, green with time. The larger animals had come in the night to collect most of the fruit, but what was left was sickeningly sweet in its decay. This was one of Creon’s lessons. You must experience that which you waste, for waste spoils and reeks of a stench which we can only name Gluttony. The mouse slipped through his fingers on the next toss. Basil slipped from Meg’s ankle and snatched the mouse before it hit the ground.

“Stop teasing him!”

“He’s a snake, not a damn piece of jewelry!” Heamon shot back with equal fervor.

“Well, a creature is allowed to be two things.” Meg said, tossing him a coquettish glance. She took a few steps toward her Basil, and her matronly glare seemed to summon him back to her. Basil took his place on her ankle with a slow, circular slither.

“Children!” Haemon and Meg only looked at each other. Megara sunk into her chaise on the floor, and settled in for one of her father’s diatribes. Picking at a stray gold thread, she let her mind wander to the matter of her parasite.

A baby wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. She was already trapped in this gods-forsaken palace until she turns of age. She could have the baby, and her mother could claim it as her own. Boukris’s wife might want a babe to care for, and she wouldn’t mind keeping it close. She dug her fingers into the earth of a pot she kept in her shadowy corner of the central court. Her horticulture projects always looked strange, out of place against the very square, very uniform pavers of the palace. Often she had to make rounds around the palace, setting them upright. Out of necessity, she had tucked them into every shadow, and as such most people tripped over them, never expecting anything alive in this place. The soil of her corner stayed fluffy, from being frequently turned over by her fingers as she thought. And she thought often.

A pointed cough from Boukris shook her from her thoughts. She hurled a clump of dirt at his chest, and hissed “Don’t you have a ship to pillage or something you terrible oaf?”

“Rich, from the girl who took 3 years to learn the abacus.” a rumble spilling out of his very large chest.

She wouldn’t show how he riled her, so she lazily picked at the dirt under her fingernails. “Maybe it had more to do with my teacher than my aptitude for numbers?”

“Maybe.”

At that, her eyes snapped to his. He never gave up so quickly, his wit was the only thing that made him more than her shadow, instead a mentor. She was disappointed in this bought, and slipped fast back into thought, so fast she almost didn’t catch his whisper “...not.” She growled. The childish brute had all but stuck his tongue out at her.

“Meg-ar-ah! If you insist on ignoring me, maybe spending the day with your Priestess will humble you,” her father barked. He tended to enunciate each syllable when he was furious with her, and so often. “And for godssake, change your clothes!” he added. It seemed to Megara that he didn’t actually hate her uniform. She had taken inspiration from his soldiers. She thought he probably even liked the blood-red fabrics best, since it reminded him of his enemies lost to his wars. No, he objected just to piss her off.

“Oh father,” she drawled, “If it pleases you, I fall to your feet for your benevolent release of me.” At that, both Boukris and Haemon choked on air.

“It would hold more weight should you actually fall to my feet one of these times.” Creon turned to ignor his daughter. He returned to preach to the progeny left in his good standing.

Megara accepted her father’s dismissal and snuck behind the façade of the shrines, bathed in smothering sunlight, and into the shadows of the rooms behind it which contained the temple repository. Through there she moved into the stairwell at the back, which led to the crypts below. As the cool air washed over her damp skin, she released a breath. She lazily dragged a palm against the square stone pillar in the middle of the crypt as she circled it. Her fingers tracing the carvings of the double axe, the symbol of the chthonic gods. She stopped at one of the covered basins beside the pillar, toeing it open as she reached through the slit in her achiton for the dagger strapped to her thigh. It was a peculiar make, of bronze instead of arsenic and copper.

She scrapped the dagger across her inner thigh. Savoring the burn, Megara straddled the basin, which received the blood now readily dripping from her leg. As she did this, she unbuttoned the fabric at her chest, exposing her breasts to the chill of the subterranean air. Megara mumbled her pleas into that air until her thigh clotted. She sighed, buttoning back up and turning to the presence she couldn’t see in the dark corner behind her.

“Exposing yourself was a nice touch,” the Priestess patronized. “Though why you prefer to pray like an acolyte... The blood speaks loud enough for the gods to hear.” Telestai could be insufferable.

“I figured I’d go all out this time, dire straights and all.”

The priestess waits patiently for Megara to elaborate, not willing to let on her amusement.

“Ah, only the contemplation of my own mortality and how it relates to this vast and unsavory land.”

“So nothing serious,” the Priestess chuckles. The snake draped around her neck and down her exposed back gives a hiss as she walks closer. The ones circling her arms only spiral at an increased pace. She stops just behind Megara. The priestess drags her nose against Megara's neck with a wave of tingling, marking Megara with chalk priestesses powder their faces with. Megara involuntarily leans back into her, relishing whatever good fortune comes with being a favorite of the church.

The priestess turns Megara to face her and buttons her again, dragging her knuckles against the soft flesh there.

Megara tries not to react to the touch, knowing that the priestess only plays with her in this way. Knowing that the priestess will never accept her advance. Megara does enjoy this play, though. She's grateful for the death of an acolyte, bringing about a period of mourning amongst the priestess in which they forgo a shift, their upper body covered only by a belt knotted at the front in the sacred style. Her snake presses against her exposed breasts, accentuating them in a dangerous way. Her breasts are powdered as her face. Her skirts merely flouncing layers of linen, more simply adorned than the other women of power.

The priestess acts unaware of Megara's thoughts and steers her by the hip to the stairs. “We'll pray outside today,” she says punishingly.

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