ren’s Reviews > Stone Blind > Status Update

"Atlas can eat whatever he chooses whenever he likes (he is the king, after all), but it is always the apple he waits for each summer, like a child. He employs men to watch the trees and nurture them all year round. As the summer days lengthen, he goes to visit his trees first thing each morning to examine their burgeoning fruit."

"Perhaps you are wondering what the shepherd did to deserve such an abrupt end? What do any of us do? What did I do? He was in the wrong place and met with the wrong man. Could I have averted my gaze? you're thinking. Could I? Yes, probably I could. But obviously I didn't. But couldn't I have saved him from Perseus and his nasty little temper?"

"I hear him - Perseus, now a double-murderer - gasp as he sees how swift and lethal I am. He stuffs me back into his kibisis and I feel a huge surge of energy. The shepherd is dead, all thanks to my power. How can I not revel in this strength now that I have it?"

now she understands euryale better

"When did my eyes last look into the light? I feel warm and alive, though I know I am neither. I see everything at once: the vast sky, the rock-strewn ground, the fluttering trees. I feel the warmth of the sun and the cooling breeze and the fingers of Perseus gripping my snakes and brandishing me like a torch.
I see the shepherd.
He sees me too. For a moment, our gazes meet, and his face forms a frozen mask of fear."

"I can feel Perseus growing irritated and am wondering why he asks for help when he is so ungrateful about receiving it when he shrugs his shoulder so the strap of the bag slips down and he reaches inside. I see his fingers grasping at my snakes and I know what he is about to do and I think he is being extraordinarily petty."

why can't the snakes bite (and poison) his hand? maybe the shepherd could help the head

"Me? I don't care is Perseus lives or dies, let alone where he is trying to get to. What difference would it make? If he opened the bag now, and I turned him to stone, what would happen to me? I'd stay here in exactly the same condition. If I don't turn him into stone and he reaches his destination, it's the same, isn't it? I am still the Gorgoneion, Medusa is still dead."

"Perseus complains all the time, about how much the bag weighs. There isn't even anyone else to listen to him. He just moans into the breezes about how heavy and awkward it is. What I would like to say to him is that if it is so inconvenient carrying someone's head around in a bag, perhaps you should think about that before you decapitate them. So I do say it.
He doesn't respond and I assume he hasn't heard."

"I left behind the mortal body that had made me weak and vulnerable and I escaped into what, exactly? A new life? Please, this isn't life. It's death. You can't have forgotten how Medusa was sliced in two by this man, this hero. Now she is dead and mourned and loved by her sister and I am, well, I am this: the stolen head. This hidden trophy."

"The flute, then, was inspired by the Gorgons. Specifically, it was inspired by the sound Euryale made when they found the body of Medusa. Piercing, atonal, bellicose. Athene had never heard anything like it. How could she make such a sound on the battlefield? She experimented for days. But even with all her divine power, and all her cleverness, she couldn't come close."

"Euryale flies over us, I feel her quickening wings - she is so close I could reach out and touch her but I can't, of course. And then she is gone, and I will never see my sister again, or hear her, or be held by her. Sthenno is still on the sand, I think, because I hear her keening cry and I know that she is holding my broken body and cradling it in her arms. I wish I could comfort her."