SemperIntrepida

Market day. We've been up since dawn, packing bundles of cheese into damp clay pots to keep the heat out. Our satchels bulge and sag with the weight. The morning milk-pots have been overflowing with milk from dams who've spent all spring feasting on rain-

Spring drips along in strings of soggy days. The incessant rain leaves the goats restless and grumpy in their stalls, and the sun only appears as a tease. I should be grumpy too, hobbling around with a bad ankle, forced to rely on your help. But we've reached

The sound of an axe bangs through the yard on a cool, grey morning. Above me, the clouds are a carpet of dappled wool, and I frown as I study them, tasting rain and salt. I check my satchel—an old barley sack tied to a leather strap—and sling

I've learned to enjoy the silence and stillness of solitude in the years I've worked this farmstead on my own. But now I must share my sanctuary with someone I despise. I must figure out what to do with you.

Now that your fever has broken, you spend the day deep in slumber, catching up on the rest you didn't get in delirium. The hut thrums with the threat of your presence. I keep my eyes on you and a hand near my knife whenever I have to

The gods are fickle. The gods are cruel. And yet there is one law they all agree on, the one that can't be broken. Xenia. Visitors must be welcomed with hospitality. A simple law, as such things go. But does xenia apply to an old enemy who appears

I take the papyrus that contains my freedom, the purse full of drachmae and jewels, and go home. Mykonos has changed in five years. The salt-stained docks creak under the weight of people and cargo, and the agora has spilled into the surrounding streets, its merchants offering honeyed wine,

Sleep forsakes the damned. What good is slumber when the Underworld is filled with the eternally awake? Restlessly, I drift across the long hours of night, trapped in the grey mists between Erebos and the earth. Restlessly, I twist in bedsheets that entangle my limbs. You've abandoned me

You don't bring me a contract, but I am your wife. There's no announcement, no ceremonial greeting at the hearth, no feast. I've no family to give me away; you seem to have no family to welcome me. No need to sweep me into

We don't speak of that moment on the balcony. I act as if it never happened. I never took control, never made you so vulnerable—and you act as if that's the truth. But your moods swing like an anchor-stone at the end of a