27. The Secret
The Secret
The voices in my head
were whispering again,
they needed my guidance,
they wanted me to hear them,
they needed their prophecies—
‘Asteria,’ my mother spoke over them,
just before I left, ‘remember
to return before Nyx flies
to paint the sky dark
so the stars can shine.’
I sighed. ‘But, Mother,
are the stars not my realm?
Should I not stay to watch
them blinking and study
their glimmer and glow?’
My mother brushed
my dark curls away
from my face to look
into my violet eyes.
‘Please, Asteria.
We are visitors in this palace,
and I would like you to spend
more time with your uncles
and aunts and cousins
while we are here.’
I would have pleaded more,
but I could see my younger sister,
Leto, watching me carefully.
Disobedience was not
a lesson I wanted to teach her.
So instead, I swallowed
my displeasure and nodded
at my mother. Before she could
ask more of me, I turned
and left our shared chambers
inside Oceanus’s grand palace.
As I walked those gilded halls,
my nymph cousins called to me,
their riverbanks rich with flowers
as they sat laughing and sharing secrets.
But I simply waved to them
and kept going, quickening
my pace. Ever since we had arrived
for Kronos’s grand decree,
I had been having dreams.
And the more dreams I had,
the more I needed to be alone.
I could not tell my mother,
or my father for that matter.
My parents were, after all,
the God of Intellect
and the Goddess of Prophecy.
They would make this larger
than I needed it to be,
or see it as a premonition
and I did not desire that yet.
I needed to know what it was
that I had seen and only
the water could tell me that.
So I made my way to
the one place I knew
I could be away from prying eyes
and be at peace. My own secret.
The little cave I had found an era ago,
which provided the solace I needed.
But when I jumped over
the craggy rocks covered in moss
to the familiar mouth
of my beloved sanctuary,
a cold surprise awaited me.
Someone
Was
Already
There
Asleep.