enter my domain, beloved, and see the gorgon. you descend the chasm on wings. I do not look up, I dare not turn my gaze.

I am cast in shadows by the moon. I hear your talons clack on stone.

my gaze is forward fixed, and I am looking back over my shoulder at you. I am hiding my disgust behind my hand, I am smiling at a secret joke. my minds are all too many to count.

you whisper, my messenger, and speak truth about the world. it reflects itself in the gorgon, who was the priestess, who makes herself the hated thing.

I remember those assassins who raised you in their house. who met justice by your hand, at my behest.

Priestess:

Place your knife between these vertebrae. Cauterize the wound, and let no blood touch the earth.

Messenger:

I carry no blade. Are you disappointed?

Priestess:

I took the warmth from your skin, I embraced you as you died. Take your vengeance, which is just.

Messenger:

Why destroy the heretic whom we have already found, knowing she will lead others?

Priestess:

I thought you might like to torture me. I would love to destroy you, thus.

Messenger:

Is all remembrance as torture to you? Did you never learn to mourn?

Priestess:

I will not be compromised. You should have fled.

the gorgon’s eyes burn pale with rage, they weep red with pain. but I am not compelled, nor petrified.

now I feel no guilt. no fear. I see her through a hundred eyes. I fan my snowy feathers. when I leave, she will follow where I guide.

where she once saw only ruins, and her deserved judgement, does she see her deeds as well?

she slithers up the crumbling cliff-sides, many thousands of these paths failing, a froth of vanishingly unlikely events, which her path abhors. she will succeed, in time, and be gone from this place.

she could never have escaped, for she no longer could bear to try.

my goddess, my monster, my love.