Home > Work > Ariadne
1 " They should remember it everyday, when they look into their smiling faces, and be thankful that their bones are not scattered in a Cretan dungeon.""Oh, of course they should", I hastened to agree. "But you know what people are like..."His brows few together, confused. "What do you mean?""Well, they forget what could have been and focus only on the irritations of today. "
― Jennifer Saint , Ariadne
2 " We might only have a mortal lifetime, but it will belong to us, and no one else. "
3 " Was this my punishment? To live the reality of my dream and find out that its glittering beauty faded to nothing when stepped close? "
4 " Asterion. A distant light in an infinity of darkness. A raging fire if you came too close. A guide that would lead my family on the path to immortality. A divine vengeance upon us all. "
5 " A precarious position for a human to be in. Gods might enjoy mortal skill in hunting or music or weaving, but they were always alert to hubris-- and woe betide a human whose skills came close to those of the divine. Something that immortals could not tolerate was to be inferior to anyone in any respect. "
6 " I would not let a man who knew the value of nothing make me doubt the value of myself. "
7 " I would be Medusa, if it came to it, I resolved. If the gods held me accountable one day for the sins of someone else, if they came for me to punish a man’s actions, I would not hide away like Pasiphae. I would wear that coronet of snakes, and the world would shrink from me instead. "
8 " What I did not know was that I had hit upon a truth of womanhood: However blameless the life we lead, the passions and the greed of men could bring us to ruin, and there was nothing we could do. "
9 " I had been a fool to trust in a hero: a man who could only love the mighty echo of his own name throughout the centuries. "
10 " You told me once that one lifetime of human love was worth the loss. "
11 " I danced for the end of everything I knew and the beginning of everything I did not. "
12 " Mortals may age, but the gods are prisoners of their own infantile whimsies, never capable of change and never knowing what it is to love because they dare not risk the suffering of loss. "
13 " Because if I had learned anything, I had learned enough to know that a god in pain is dangerous. "
14 " The stories of Perseus did not allow for a Medusa with a story of her own. "
15 " Was this my punishment? To live the reality of my dream and find out that its glittering beauty faded to nothing when I stepped close? "
16 " It was the women, always the women, be they helpless serving girls or princesses, who paid the price. "
17 " No longer was my world one of brave heroes; I was learning all too swiftly the women's pain that throbbed unspoken through the tales of their feats. "
18 " The gods do not know love, because they cannot imagine an end to anything they enjoy. Their passions do not burn brightly as a mortal’s passions do, because they can have whatever they desire for the rest of eternity. How could they cherish or treasure anything? Nothing to them is more than a passing amusement, and when they have done with it, there will be another "
19 " I wonder if the heroes the bards sang of that evening knew before they triumphed what they would become. In those crucial moments when a fateful decision was made, did they feel the air brighten with the zing of destiny? Or did they blunder on, not realising the pivotal moment in which destiny swung and the fates were forged? "
20 " It did not feel momentous, yet when I tore my eyes away from his I found that nothing looked quite the same, as though the world had fractured and sheared away from itself to reshape in almost - but not quite - the same formation. As though I had looked at a waterfall and realised with a faint jolt that the water flowing over the rock was ever-changing, that it would never be the same water again. "