Lysistrate Ⅱ

She has had the golden mark ever since she was born. A long time ago, she had asked her mother why. She did not get an answer, but instead was given a bracelet to wear around her wrist, to cover up the mark. She was never told why, nor did she ask again. She had assumed it was a curse only she bore.

Yet here, standing in front of her, was a young man with the exact replica of her mark.

"Why?" She asks first, "Why isn't yours covered up?"

"Why should it be? You don't have yours covered, too."

"I did," Lysistrate seethes, her hand tightening on her knife, "I gave it to a little girl whose whole family was murdered by your people."

Lysistrate misses the days when Troy wasn't taken. She regrets the way of how she didn't believe in Cassandra when she tried to warn them of the huge wooden horse that was eventually wheeled inside the city gates. She regrets how she pushed Cassandra away when the other priestess had tried to warn her of what would happen during the night.

But it is now all too late, and just before she had escaped to the huntress's temple, she had given her last possession of hers to a young girl of five, who had visited her often. Amarhyllis was her name, and she had always worn a bright smile. The five-year-old had come to her weeping for the first time, for her parents were both murdered right before her eyes. Lysistrate had given Amarhyllis her own bracelet as a token to remember her and the more peaceful days by.

Stelios blinks twice. Lysistrate cannot tell what he is thinking right now, his eyes impenetrable. Then he whispers, softer than the pads of the fox as it stalks its prey.

"Have you ever had this call in your heart, a trail that your heart wills you to follow?"

Lysistrate nods, confused.

"Have you ever had dreams of darkness and golden vines, of dreams with burning fennel-stalks and an eagle?"

Lysistrate nods again, this time, listening intently.

"Have you ever seen Olympus itself, not grand nor great, but only a speck in the fabric of time and space, and have you ever seen it weave in and out of view like a shuttle, creating a tapestry that we would never dare imagine but in dreams?"

Lysistrate lifts her eyes up at him. Of course she has had those dreams. Those, and much more. She sees visions of the future, and she has already seen past the death of Agamemnon. She has already seen the rise and fall of the great legacy Aeneas will achieve. She has already seen the founding of new lands, north and south and east and west. She has seen metal birds that soar across the skies, tubes that shoot to the moon. She has also seen wars that ravage lands and devastate populations. She has also seen plagues that inflict hundreds and hundreds of thousands of death. Yet they say she is blessed with the gift of Apollo, and they send her to stay at that temple of his. Her mother had it right, and she knows deep down, that this is an unbearable curse.

"It's a curse," Stelios echoes her own thoughts, "I have them, too." The boy meets her eyes, and his blue eyes doesn't look like what she imagines, a raging ocean devouring innocent sailors. She sees the clear blue skies that comes peacefully.

"Do you know what's going to happen next?" Lysistrate speaks again, her mind numb. She does not know what to do. She does not have a drive to do anything, because she does not have a goal. All she has left is her knife, her chiton, and the boy who now stands in front of her, calling himself Stelios.

"I don't know. My comrades..." He trails off, biting his lip and looking back at the flames dancing on tattered roofs. "You're right. They plan on keeping doing what they're doing, and I don't know how long it'll last."

"Have you ever wanted to leave?" The question was out of the blue, but Lysistrate doesn't care.

"What?"

"We could leave the city and your men. We could go west, over where the sun sets. I have a feeling we'll find something over there."

Stelios only nods, but Lysistrate could see a new gleam in his eyes.