I would I had an arrow to pierce the heel of slow-dragging time... No hero, he, to be brought down so gracelessly, and as no hero, must be brought down indeed.

Like so many other days, Briseis is to be found walking the edges of this lonely sea, her bare feet leaving a silent trail for a short length behind; every so often, the wavelets wash around her ankles and erase all trace of her presence. If she were to be swept up into the heavens, stolen from this desolate earth, the sea would soon destroy all ( Read more... )

There are bones that lie still in the ruins of Troy. There are children who were made orphans, women made widows, and there are houses, half-burnt, half-wrecked, entirely empty. There is a city made cemetary by these kings of Greece.

(and one man, whom I cannot banish from my mind...)

It is sunset, and the sea is molten gold with the sun's reflection. Alone, still, on this distant beach, Briseis sits. Just above the reach of the questing waves, her knees pulled up to below her chin and arms wrapped round her legs, with her rough garb and unbound hair, she is more the picture of a sullen child than a queen in her own right ( Read more... )

The setting: a beach, nothing more nor less. It has the usual elements - a sky as vastly curved as an upturned, diamond-bright bowl; a sea that stretches on into blue and white eternity; and sand, sand, always the soft yellowing sand ( Read more... )