Status Updates From A Memory of Wind

"If it was necessary that you kill me, did you have to use a wedding as your ruse? Do you see how cruel it was to promise me all the treasures of womanhood that I would never possess?

Perhaps you thought you were marrying me off, after all, one way or another. As I if were Persephone, spending my youth on the arm of Hades. But there will be no spring for me."

"How easy it is to be a thing but not feel it."

Did it ever occur to you that a daughter might hesitate to accede to her father’s whims? Did you ever think a girl might, from time to time, have desires that outweighed her sense of duty?

How easy it is to be a thing but not feel it.

"But that’s how life is. There’s stasis and then there’s change, and then before you even know what the next stasis is, it’s gone, and all you can do is try to remember it.”

Sacrifice your daughter or sacrifice your kingdom.

I imagine what you did on that night when I paced the palace corridors, my perceptions vanishing like stars winking out of the night sky. You presided over the war council in Aulis. I imagine you standing with the staff of office heavy in your hands—heavy with wood, heavy with burdens.