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.