today is not a good day
Today is not a good day.
There is no cycle to them, no pattern to when they will occur; just warnings, sometimes. Increased nightmares, tossings and turnings and whimpers when she actually can sleep, but more often than not it’s just edgy pacing.
Today is not a good day.
It would be unfair to blame Milliways. Unfair to blame the patrons who flinch and look away, unfair to blame the patrons who look her in the eye and smile, unfair unfair unfair but it doesn’t change that she does, or did.
Today is not a good day, and blaming Milliways for it passed some hours ago.
Today is not a good day.
Today is not a good day for anyone; thunder in the air, loud-to-the-point-of-pain as the heavens crack and lightning turns the cliffs to day even as the clouds turn the coast to night. The nomads and villagers gather their animals, pitch their tents, hold their children close and pray that it doesn’t strike here, not here. Not this tent, not that boat, not that tree because autumn has been so very dry and if the grass took fire…
Medusa, ever-proud ever-headstrong ever-reckless, is watching the storm roll in, and normally it would be enough. Scream to the uncaring sky (why should he care? She isn’t his, not his grandchild like those thrice-damned Olympians), scream out her horror and grief and rage and frustration, scream out her own voice which tells her all the what ifs.
What if she hadn’t called Athena a coward.
What if she had fought harder, gone for his throat with her claws instead of holding back (Olympian-Lord of the Seas-Rules Father), what if her wing hadn’t been broken, what if she hadn’t hit her head, what if she hadn’t just…just lain there and let him because it all hurt so much, what if she’d been sensible for once and worn a full-length dress instead of her short tunic
What if she had never gone there in the first fucking place?
But today is not a good day, and today it is not enough to ball her fists and scream.
Today is the kind of day where the guilt is frustration and disbelief and why hurts too much to say although it’s on her tongue and chokes her voice. Today is the kind of day where everything is hot and furious and pure blind rage.
Today is the kind of day where Medusa’s mind, never human and far more cruel than her smile suggests, plots and plans so vividly that she can taste his blood in her mouth. She can feel it on her hands as she twists them, deep, into his chest. She can feel it as she rakes her claws down his limbs, as she tears him apart and asks him how it feels.
(today is not the day that she is insane enough to try any of it, if only because her terror still outweighs the hatred)
Today is, in fact, the kind of day where her sisters stay away for fear and love of her, and the kind of day where her snakes remember being slashed and cut and torn and stay very, very still in case she does it again (and they and she, for it is the same brain and same memories and same self, don’t want to die, no, no, not from self-inflicted, if unthinking, blood-loss, not like last time so nearly-
No) and the kind of day where, well, screaming just isn’t enough.
So today, on this rather bad day, Medusa throws herself off the cliff and lets the wind catch her wings. Gorgon, daemon; the storm itself can’t hurt her and she rides it, letting herself be tumbled and spun and thrown further down the coast until -
Until there.
There.
There she hovers in the wind, feathers a frantic music no one hears but her, and there she spies what she wants. A shelter, rough and rudely made but as she hovers lower and the lightning flashes she can see more people than tent. Not a lot, but she’s only one and still mortal, she doesn’t want a crowd.
She just wants to do this:
land and walk and the sheep and goats don’t notice her, yes they do, sixth sense but she cuts the rope with her claws and there is yelling and shouting and cursing and yes, she can see but not well, not enough for the curse to work, it’s well enough to lunge forward at the man and feel his blood on her claws and his choking scream it’s enough
for it all to start
screams and shouts and curses whirl and duck and lash out with hands and feet and she doesn’t laugh oh no she just grins bright and terrible in the white light and those two are turned to stone where they are marble marble of the finest quality it’s chaos as she launches herself into the air chaos as she dives forward and scores someone’s back and it’s chaos so they hit each other in the dark like it’s any other battle and yes when the clouds roll back they are dead stone and corpses and blood on clouded marble
and she laughs
Today is not a good day, but it is not a terrible day. A terrible day is when her sisters find her and she says nothing; just looks at them expressionless and silent and their Meda isn’t there. Today is just a bad day, so when Stheno and Euryale find Medusa she’s crying.
And covered in blood only partly her own.
There is no cycle to them, no pattern to when they will occur; just warnings, sometimes. Increased nightmares, tossings and turnings and whimpers when she actually can sleep, but more often than not it’s just edgy pacing.
Today is not a good day.
It would be unfair to blame Milliways. Unfair to blame the patrons who flinch and look away, unfair to blame the patrons who look her in the eye and smile, unfair unfair unfair but it doesn’t change that she does, or did.
Today is not a good day, and blaming Milliways for it passed some hours ago.
Today is not a good day.
Today is not a good day for anyone; thunder in the air, loud-to-the-point-of-pain as the heavens crack and lightning turns the cliffs to day even as the clouds turn the coast to night. The nomads and villagers gather their animals, pitch their tents, hold their children close and pray that it doesn’t strike here, not here. Not this tent, not that boat, not that tree because autumn has been so very dry and if the grass took fire…
Medusa, ever-proud ever-headstrong ever-reckless, is watching the storm roll in, and normally it would be enough. Scream to the uncaring sky (why should he care? She isn’t his, not his grandchild like those thrice-damned Olympians), scream out her horror and grief and rage and frustration, scream out her own voice which tells her all the what ifs.
What if she hadn’t called Athena a coward.
What if she had fought harder, gone for his throat with her claws instead of holding back (Olympian-Lord of the Seas-Rules Father), what if her wing hadn’t been broken, what if she hadn’t hit her head, what if she hadn’t just…just lain there and let him because it all hurt so much, what if she’d been sensible for once and worn a full-length dress instead of her short tunic
What if she had never gone there in the first fucking place?
But today is not a good day, and today it is not enough to ball her fists and scream.
Today is the kind of day where the guilt is frustration and disbelief and why hurts too much to say although it’s on her tongue and chokes her voice. Today is the kind of day where everything is hot and furious and pure blind rage.
Today is the kind of day where Medusa’s mind, never human and far more cruel than her smile suggests, plots and plans so vividly that she can taste his blood in her mouth. She can feel it on her hands as she twists them, deep, into his chest. She can feel it as she rakes her claws down his limbs, as she tears him apart and asks him how it feels.
(today is not the day that she is insane enough to try any of it, if only because her terror still outweighs the hatred)
Today is, in fact, the kind of day where her sisters stay away for fear and love of her, and the kind of day where her snakes remember being slashed and cut and torn and stay very, very still in case she does it again (and they and she, for it is the same brain and same memories and same self, don’t want to die, no, no, not from self-inflicted, if unthinking, blood-loss, not like last time so nearly-
No) and the kind of day where, well, screaming just isn’t enough.
So today, on this rather bad day, Medusa throws herself off the cliff and lets the wind catch her wings. Gorgon, daemon; the storm itself can’t hurt her and she rides it, letting herself be tumbled and spun and thrown further down the coast until -
Until there.
There.
There she hovers in the wind, feathers a frantic music no one hears but her, and there she spies what she wants. A shelter, rough and rudely made but as she hovers lower and the lightning flashes she can see more people than tent. Not a lot, but she’s only one and still mortal, she doesn’t want a crowd.
She just wants to do this:
land and walk and the sheep and goats don’t notice her, yes they do, sixth sense but she cuts the rope with her claws and there is yelling and shouting and cursing and yes, she can see but not well, not enough for the curse to work, it’s well enough to lunge forward at the man and feel his blood on her claws and his choking scream it’s enough
for it all to start
screams and shouts and curses whirl and duck and lash out with hands and feet and she doesn’t laugh oh no she just grins bright and terrible in the white light and those two are turned to stone where they are marble marble of the finest quality it’s chaos as she launches herself into the air chaos as she dives forward and scores someone’s back and it’s chaos so they hit each other in the dark like it’s any other battle and yes when the clouds roll back they are dead stone and corpses and blood on clouded marble
and she laughs
Today is not a good day, but it is not a terrible day. A terrible day is when her sisters find her and she says nothing; just looks at them expressionless and silent and their Meda isn’t there. Today is just a bad day, so when Stheno and Euryale find Medusa she’s crying.
And covered in blood only partly her own.