𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐖𝐇𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐏𝐔𝐋𝐋𝐒 * / @fallofparis
there is something divine inside her, and it rots and roils as spoiled pig flesh in the sun.
she cannot sense it as she walks the length of the lighthouse, this thing placed within; it comes not by her father-god at the dawn of life but another deity entirely at the birth of this day. it is but the smallest of beasts a goddess might place down the throat of a maiden, but in its littleness it has used her ribs like stepping stones, her throat a ladder, before ascending to the place behind her eyes. it leaves in its wake a sludge of acid, helen feeling the discomfort of what can only be assumed as mortal sickness.
so usually the sun is an ally to her, but today it leers over her shoulder with yellow teeth and burr-tongue, breathing spice into her eyes till her sight froths with sea-foam. she raises a hand, means to look at apollo’s great burning emblem to ask after his intensity, but the shine is so vicious she can only bare the orange shadow it casts through the meat of her palm. her body pours salt and honey.
there is a man of some eminence behind her, a king or prince or bearer of other such title studded into his skull at lucky birth, boasting of his ships in the harbour with such self-satisfaction it seems he must have fucked the floorboards himself to birth them. his descriptions are lost on helen, who makes only pallid offerings of smile and senseless hums at his mentions of speed and size, efficiency in untested acts of war.
if he takes notice of her leave from his side to the raised wall, she sees not his shadow follow after her. her stomach rolls with the sea and pain crosses her in the way of a feather, tickling from ear to ear till it spawns dead center. her breathing grows shallow, and she clutches the waist-height wall as if to twine her spine’s strength to the stone as weak saplings are tied to stick.
“i fe— i fe-el —” she speaks with all the strength to be held in her hands, but the truth of the matter is no one asks how helen of sparta feels. the rest falls from her mouth as the world spins.
the world churns and churns, and then for one bright, lurid moment, is pinned to her so clearly she becomes the epicentre of mortal realm. with strange clarity she sees a figure in the clouds, bare-breasted and bright-eyed, watching on — then all vision falls way as cliffside beneath her, a pair of mighty hands held over her heart till it ceases its struggle. her body sags and loses itself over the wall of the lighthouse.
helen plummets to the water below, down to the teeth of a dozen starving rocks.
the sea, finding it likes the taste of princess (as it does all maidens), swallows her.
it shall not spit her back up.
Like the memories before this, the details develop in bursts.
A man and woman are swirling like dust motes in a shaft of light, both tiny flames in the belly of a lighthouse. Her presence is a fine wound, agile and elusive as a reverb on glass making sound for the sake of science.
Has Man ever controlled water? He’d asked. Before anyone had answered: The answer lies at the heels of Poseidon.
Lining the sea’s deep-seated belly remains Man’s attempts; shipwrecks splintered into halves. Drowned men that have died, barnacles that grow between skeletal scaffolding and bottom feeder fish that make homes inside skulls. Lawless seas stake claim to Man’s treasure, devours their pearls, rusts their gold, decomposes their silver, all pulled out by hook and line centuries later. These are the remains of Man’s control. But it is Man’s lines of defenses (hosts of cavalry, infantry, ships) that lent recognition of a different sort of expression in Paris. It was the gaudiness of one’s precision, calculation, flawlessness, power. It turned the first will from the domination of other men (as prince) to the domination of nature. Having always been moved and spoken to by wind, seawater has become an eager playmate behind each a gust of wind that shifts the sails and rides over currents. Paris is at once master of sky and sea.
Paris is not so quick to note her departure; but when he does, he takes decisive steps to not trail so close behind her voice hardly audible over the rolling tides crashing over the walls of the lighthouse. Rather, it is from the top of the stairs that he watches her tremors at the edge of the parapet. She is sustained upright by the will of a silver wind chime.
“Helen,” He’s quick to note weakness, especially when weakness makes itself known. “No.”
Seeing her disappear didn’t struck his eyelids, but the point in the middle of his body that opened up like a fan, leaving an agitation, a trepidation, like wings beating in his chest. “HELEN—”
So deep and dark the breeze does blow, and so sweet the blossoms torn with it. He has thrown himself down there too, with the bottom feeder fish, with the midnight nightmares, where an echo is nothingness and nothingness is an echo. He descends into the far edge of the rocks from where he had hit his head, scrambling to the surface in a haze with blood spooling over his brow like a hemorrhage.
That silhouette, like patient moonlight, casts out to him from darkness. Paris claws at it, tightening his fingers around its soft glow, holding her to his chest when he’s pulled her to the surface.
Like a pinwheel startled into oscillation, he was reduced to the exact distance between the outside of the wheel and the eye of motion, doing everything in his power to stay out of reach of quiet. Better to be breathless, better not to breathe, he knew, than to have the them settle into silence — anything but silence, anything but alone, anything to keep the chorus roaring, louder and louder. He wraps his hand over her jaw in an effort to draw out all the seawater from within her, anything to hear a sputter, a cough, a cry, anything.
“Helen, please, wake up!"
