The Mediterranean air doesn’t taste like anywhere.

It isn’t just the salt on your tongue, the heavy fragrance flowering the air. It’s the whispers of memories of history, that which lingers from great love and war, lost to all but few who still hear the silent cries.

Cora didn’t know the myths and stories as well as she'd have liked, but she knew great passions left footprints that time could not erase. Certainly that was true of her own experience, leaving behind everything on this trip but her regrets, and what little she could fit into her rolling suitcase. Closing her eyes to the wisps of sea mist spraying over her, she feels the energy on this ship, relentlessly advancing into the maleficent waters which engulf her.

Tonight it felt like the Gods were fighting.

Cora feels the electricity tingling along her skin, raising the sensitive hairs of her arm without hint of a storm to mask the brilliant stars.

“Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go...” Cora mutters, not to anyone who needed to hear. She could feel some of the ship’s crew watching her as she looked out to sea. Great big oafs, their prodding eyes asking unwelcome favors. She realized what they must see: a girl barely twenty years old, thin and wilting without sun, hair tangled in the salty humid air, and a thin skirt, damp and clinging against her skin. And to make it worse, she was alone and muttering to herself at night, an easy target that no one would miss.

“Which of you is the man my father plans to fire when we land?” Cora calls out loudly to the shadows. She silently congratulates herself when her voice doesn’t crack.

“I’d imagine the one who wasn’t good to his daughter." One of the three men laughed darkly. He was more handsome than the other two, which is to say: his flat, broad features inherited from the lumpy brown potato in their family tree was a generation farther removed.

That might have given him the misplaced confidence to add in a deep, graveled voice: “I’m good for a few things, but sailing isn’t one of them.”

“Good for nothing I need, I’m sure. I was getting by fine on my own,” Cora chides.

The sailors laughed, but there was no joy in it.

Cora felt embarrassed and vulnerable, wishing they would go about their work and leave her alone. At the same time, she didn’t want to be too rude and make enemies. They’ll be stuck together on this ship for the next week, after all. And potatoes were no doubt nutritious and good for you, in their own way.

“I’m Nikolaos. You’re Cora,” the sailor said with some concentration.

“Yes. Okay.”

“Your father wanted you out of Athens. Thought the city was a bad influence.”

“Maybe I was a good influence on the city. Did he ever think of that?”

“I didn’t mean to startle you. I just thought you’d want to come below deck before the storm.”

“You feel it in the air too? But I can see a thousand miles out here, and there aren’t clouds anywhere.” Cora scanned the darkening horizon to confirm, quickly looking back to Nikolaos when she realized his eyes never left her.

“Not a rainstorm. We have all kinds of storms out here.” The man grinned broadly, causing his eyes to disappear into the underbrush between his heavy black eyebrows and his bristling beard. The sailor couldn’t have been much older than her, but his weight and size looming over over her made him feel much older. The sea had not been kind to him, but Cora would do her best.

“What other type of storms are there?” Cora asked uneasily.

Nikolaos scratched his head with a hairy knuckle, glancing over his shoulder to find the other crewmen had abandoned him.

“My Uncle once said ‘Whenever something is meant to be one, but is broken in two, there will always be a storm.’ I think it’s true for us, when one heart is divided, and true for the Gods, who shouldn’t be fighting like they are tonight.”

“Your Uncle sounds like a wise man,” Cora said. Her inner hedgehog bristled, then relaxed, reluctantly letting down her defenses. “I wish my father had sent me to stay with him, instead of my Aunt Zoe across the sea. I hardly even know her, except a few parties where she pinched my cheeks and called me names. I would have slapped her, if she’d been a man.”

“You almost slapped me,” Nikolaos laughed, the stars of his eyes twinkle in and out from the forest.

“I still might,” Cora said, deadly serious. “Why do you think the Gods are fighting tonight?”

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“Over you, I’d guess.”

His words hung unsupported in the air for several cold seconds. The heavy pressure in the atmosphere was growing. It felt as though the distance between the sky and the sea was squeezing down to a point, merging into some primordial element which both were born from.

“Or you know, Poseidon could be angry,” Nikolaos added hastily.

“It’s been a thousand years since anybody’s been afraid of Poseidon. How’d you piss him off?” Cora expected another hearty laugh from the big fellow, but instead he appeared as shocked and offended as though she really had slapped him.

“I would never.” The sailor hardly dared to breathe. Then coughing and muttering to himself, he cast another glance over his shoulder to make sure the other crew were gone. The voyage was hardly a vacation: she was trapped on her father’s freight ship. She didn’t even know what they were hauling, and made a point of not asking, since nobody had asked her whether she wanted to go.

It wasn’t a huge ship, but Cora had spotted at least a dozen of sailors while she was boarding this morning. They all must be below deck now. They showed respect for the storm without clouds which brewed moodily over the black choppy water.

“Apollo probably played another trick on him,” Nikolaos said in a hushed voice. He leaned in while he talked, close enough to casually brush through a tangled strand of Cora’s hair. She recoiled instinctually, but stayed close, needing to know more. “The two of them have been fighting most nights this week. Sometimes, if you close your eyes on a night like this, you can make out the words of Gods in the wind.”

Cora closed her eyes, drinking deeply of the night. The waves lapping rhythmically, the breeze rustling through the sails, the creaking wooden boards, and there -- somewhere in the midst of it, from nowhere and everywhere, the sound which was not a sound, and yet was all of them combined to whisper the words for her:

“I won’t go this time."

So the sea seemed to say. If ever the wind ever were to speak a lie, it would be that cruel mockery of what she wished inside.

“Don’t go,” Cora whispered back.

“I thought we'd both go downstairs, but I’ll stay if you want,” Nikolaos replied eagerly.

Cora felt the warmth of his breath on her face. Her eyes flashed open in time to see him leaning close to her again.

“I wasn’t talking to you!” she nearly shouted to be heard over the imagined whispers of the night.

“You’re a real brat, you know that?” Nikolaos raised his voice in return, a threatening growl. “I’m the only one out here being nice to you. Your own father didn’t want you around. Who are you too good for?”

The wind whipped through the sails with more intensity, rising to match their tone. The water lashed more urgently against the side of the boat, but Nikolaos didn’t seem to notice anymore. His face was flushed, his bright eyes all but vanished within his scowl.

“Watch your voice with me. Poseidon is listening,” Cora said sternly. She pushed away from the railing of the boat, and made to move toward the stairs leading below deck.

Nikolaos stepped in time with her, an unwelcome dance in rhythm to block the way with his broad chest and crossed arms. “You know nothing about the old Gods. Don’t speak their names like that.”

“Why not? Are you scared of them, like you’re scared of my daddy?” Cora taunted. She tried to duck under and around the sailor, but his grasping hands sent her lurching back. Her bare feet scrape and stumble along the tilting wooden deck.

“Poseidon! Apollo! Do you see how he treats me?"

"Not tonight. Stop it. You must stop!" Nikolaos was beside himself with agitation. His hands clamp over his ears, a vice against her blasphemous words.

"Apollo! Why do you fight tonight? I need you here with me!"

Nikolaos howled furiously. The whites of his eyes flashed feral as he lunges toward Cora.

She was ready, pivoting on her back heel to change directions, away from the stairs and toward the railing.

The big man was faster than she expected though, barreling straight toward her.

The mercy of man on one side, the mercy of Gods at the other, Cora felt her back against the barrier. The sea grew frenzied now, inoculated by unseen winds to pitch the boat back and forth.

Too much, too fast, too desperate to get away. The breath was knocked from Cora, the hard railing slamming into her back. The boat rose and fell, crashing down the other side of the mountain of water.

A giant splash. Hissing spray of the sea comes like grasping hands to seize Cora by the legs and hurl her over the side.

"Apollo don't go!" A last gasp to escape her throat before plunging down. The dark cold water swallows her and drowns her cry.

"Not this time." The words were with her, encompassing her as surely as the sea. "This time Poseidon has gone too far."

Powerful arms pressed her to him, as hard as marble. Strong and unyielding, yet the warmth of life flowed into her through his touch.

Her eyes clenched against the stinging salt, but she could not bear to feel him without seeing. She peeked through her eyelashes enough to see his radiance which shone as though lit from beneath his skin. Smooth and unblemished by mortal hurt, but withdrawn and wearied from bearing what no mortal could. His blue eyes the ocean she sank within, fair hair unburden by the waters weight. Her wonder reflected in his eyes, as though holding her, he discovered that which his immortal years taught him was impossible to exist.

An aura of safety and confidence perhaps, or pride and arrogance, written sharply across his high cheeks and rugged beard. But more than his face was the presence which dominated sky and waves. To look at him was to hate the weakness in herself which did not let her turn away. But not to look would be to surrender to his challenge, he who would disdain such weakness.

"Don't go," was all she could gasp, holding her head above the dark roiling sea.

The fragile moment breaks. What surely was his wonder turns sour with contempt. He looks away from her, the line of his jaw colder than stone, though his arms still bear her weight above the water.

"Poseidon!" the God roars, a battle hymn like percussions against Cora's brain. "Where have you gone, Poseidon?"

Then glaring down at her, with a passion and hatred she never wished to see again, Apollo said:

"I would have had him, if I'd not stopped to pluck you from his kingdom."

"Don't go." What else could the poor girl say? All the force left in her body in those words. She clung helplessly to the angry God, praying for the warmth she needed to survive.

"I should have let you drown," he said, offering only ice.