“Aaah… he was such a gentleman.” Eugenia sighed sweetly for the umpteenth time that day while resting her head in her hands.
“You are still fawning over that messenger boy?” Medusa was lying on her side, leaning her head on one arm and watched Eugenia with a bored expression.
“I heard so many gallant stories about the great and swift Hermes, but he was not just kind, but also humorous!” She smiled like a little girl.
“He is also a deadbeat father.” Medusa said with a dismissive grin.
“We all have our flaws. He is just a free spirit!” It was hard to shake her out of her happy daze.
“You really are just a blind maiden with a girlish crush, hm?” Medusa couldn’t stand looking at it anymore and turned her head to the ocean.
“I-I d-don’t fancy him that way!” She stuttered in embarrassment.
“Could have fooled me.” Medusa muttered under her breath.
“I am just so honored! I met two gods face to face in my life. I am not worth such happiness.” She folded her hands together and smiled warmly.
Medusa huffed in response.
“But I know that I only met them because of the people around me. The great and wise Athena came to me, because of my parents' devotion and I could only meet Hermes because he delivered a message to you.” She turned to Medusa and lowered her head. “Thank you.”
“You are a strange one. Thanking your captor for keeping you in this place. Was meeting that womanizer worth all the hardship?” She wondered with an unreadable tone.
“I don’t know. But right now I am happy and that’s all that matters.” Eugenia’s positivity returned with a vengeance.
“Really…” The Gorgon rose from her relaxed position to prepare for some quirky lecture from the girl, but then got her tunic stuck on a rock. She pulled up with her unnatural strength so quickly that the fabric tore in an instant. She stayed completely still, watching the tear in her sleeve with a forcefully neutral expression.
She slowly turned towards Eugenia to see if she had noticed anything, but the girl seemed too lost in thought. Safe for now.
“You are a priestess and yet meeting the gods is special to you?” She didn’t miss a beat in the conversation to play over her clumsy accident.
“Yes, it is my duty to speak to the gods in the name of people in need.” Eugenia nodded. “But all I have to do is convey prayers and wishes. I don’t actually have a conversation with them.” She confessed.
“They never respond?”
“People make offerings and ask for support. Then if the gods have time or deem the person worthy, they will help them!” She explained with a raised finger.
“Is that so? How do they do that?” Medusa raised a brow.
“Er, for example, there was that old baker in Lamia who wanted to make rye bread that would make his daughter get better. She was very sick. He was desperately serious; he even came all the way to my temple after all. He made offerings to almost every god with a temple in the area.”
“And his daughter got better after eating the bread.”
“Yes! It was a miracle.” Eugenia was beaming a smile at the memory of that day. Perhaps because she felt that she had contributed to saving a girl, no matter how minor her part was.
“She could not have gotten better on her own?” Medusa raised a brow.
“Maybe? But it must have been the gods’ work! He prayed to so many after all.”
“So if I go to every temple in the world and make an offering I will get my wish granted, guaranteed?”
“N-no… If you make a bad wish then the gods will surely not listen.”
“What other examples are there?” She started to enjoy seeing Eugenia’s flustered expression.
“A wrestler wanted to win a tournament, so he asked for a boon from the temple of Hermes.” She spun her long hair around one finger and tried to remember more local stories.
“And he won?”
“He got second place.”
“I suppose he was not worthy of the first place then.”
“I don’t know about that…”
“Is there also a story about a gambler who prayed for great gains in his dice game? Or a tale of an old wife that wanted to conceive a child and suddenly managed to become fertile again?”
“How did you-?”
“Those are self-fulfilling prophecies.” She felt a sense of amusement from the foolishness of humans.
“What does that mean?” The girl asked with a tilted head.
“People want something to happen and ask the Fates or the gods to make it possible. Those wishes are all achievable by humans themselves or perhaps sheer luck. If their desires are satisfied they then attribute it to the gods or destiny. If it goes wrong they assume they did not pray strongly enough or it was their destiny to fail.” Medusa explained with a shrug.
“Why are you so cynical?” Eugenia pouted, probably because she could not really deny Medusa’s words.
“You would not be able to take the truth.” She replied honestly while crossing her arms.
“Maybe I am not as weak as you think.” The priestess stood up and walked over to the perplexed Gorgon. “Isn’t the truth that you are just afraid of telling me?” She reached her hand forward - and then grabbed the torn sleeve. So she had noticed after all. This girl was perceptive in ways she couldn’t always see.
“Do not be ridiculous.” She averted her face as she let Eugenia fix the sleeve quietly.
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“Lady Medusa? Where are you? I want to wash our clothes, so could you hand me your chiton?” She called out to her sole companion on this island, but there was no sign of the snake woman. Usually Eugenia could hear her slithering body or her low breathing as she slept in her lair, but today there was just nothing.
A low breeze grazed her neck and made her shiver for a moment. There was some strong wind today. The air was unusually humid too. The occasional lapse of sunlight on her skin meant that there must have been clouds gathering as well. Would this mean the first rain shower since she arrived here was about to come?
She instinctively moved behind a fallen in wall to shield herself from another gust. This was the northern side of the temple where she rarely ventured. There was nothing here except ruins and some old gate as far as she had explored. Most of their time they spent either in the southern temple yard or at the cliffs, so this was a fairly unused space for the two of them.
Eugenia’s sandals scratched across old marble and dust that had been piling up from the worn down bricks. There were just too many holes around, so no matter where she stood, she would get assailed by wind. It made her want to curl up in the animal leather blankets back in her personal corner of the temple.
Her hands went along the walls to guide her, as the wind picked up and interfered with her hearing. Suddenly she touched upon the gate she had discovered previously. There was something odd about it though. She had thought it was just a remainder of the northern entrance, but actually, there were walls on both sides of it. Those walls lead further outside the temple.
“A separate building?” She could barely believe it. Something had survived all this decay and destruction? If only she was strong enough to move the heavy wooden door…
“There you are.” A voice appeared right behind her, making her nearly jump out of her sandals!
“D-d-don’t surprise me like that!” She held her pumping heart in shock. It had stopped for just a second. Eugenia wasn’t used to getting surprised as she could usually hear anybody approach from far away. Now that she listened she could hear the flapping of wings under the wind.
“You are like a frightened hare. Weak.” Medusa replied unsympathetically and then settled down on the ground. “Poseidon must have stubbed his toe or something; he is currently tossing like an injured bear, moving the clouds and waves with him. Storms usually do not get close to the island, but there will most likely be some rain.”
“That’s good for the trees. They must be dying of thirst.” She replied absentmindedly.
“Why are you rubbing that moldy old thing?” Medusa couldn’t help but wonder, watching the girl press against the gate with all her might.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“I’m not rubbing it! I am trying to open the door.” She huffed from the exertion.
Medusa smiled wryly. Then she broke the moldy wooden beam, which had locked the entrance, asunder with her snake tail and Eugenia fell forward straight into the room as the door swung open. As the girl ate dirt, Medusa slithered inside and took a look around. What she saw surprised even her.
“Pfftt! Ew… That was so mean!” Eugenia wiped her mouth and face and complained to the distracted Gorgon.
“There was a place like this, hm?” The snakes on her head turned in every direction and extended their tongues to smell the unusual stale air.
“Huh?” Eugenia rose to her feet while still wiping her face. As the door fell shut behind them the room suddenly turned incredibly silent. There was a low sound of an air current that went through the large room, but it didn’t do much about the suffocating atmosphere.
She stepped forward and felt the soft crunch of grass. There was a low rustling of leaves ahead. With every step she took she could feel a hint of sunlight on her face, as if she was walking through gaps above her.
“What is this place?” She could sense all these things, but they didn’t make sense to her.
“If I had to make a guess: this is a garden.” Medusa replied curiously.
Indeed, the large room was long and wide enough to fit several trees and wildly growing weeds. There were even some bushes. The walls were overgrown with old vines. All of this had somehow survived the decades inside a closed off space.
“A garden?! Inside a building?” The girl was even more taken aback than her. “Is there soil? Water? Sunlight?” She moved her head and hands around frantically to search for the essential things needed to keep a garden alive.
“The ground is not tiled, it is all dirt.” Medusa rubbed her tail across the dry earth. “There is some odd indentation in the ground… Water is gathering inside it.” She leaned down to look at the long canal that went outside through a wall. “The sunlight is coming from the ceiling.” The snakes shielded her eyes from the blinding light that came out of the gaps above.
“The ceiling? But I can’t feel any wind coming from the hole?” Eugenia was utterly confused.
“There is no hole. The ceiling is made of something see-through.” Medusa had never seen something like this before.
“Is it glass?”
“Can you support an entire ceiling with glass?”
“I never heard of a ceiling made of it.” Eugenia cupped her mouth and raised her head as if to look at the glass ceiling. “Why don’t I feel that much sunlight then?”
“There are wooden covers over the glass. They left some gaps, though.” Medusa felt weird having to explain this unfamiliar construction to a human. If anything she would have expected Eugenia to be more used to it.
“Why would they have constructed it this way?” Eugenia moved through the garden and spun around to take in all the sounds and smells. “If you let the sun shine in through glass that would seal the heat inside. It must be very hot in here without those covers!”
“Is that so?” This reminded her of the burning glass the girl had used before.
“But glass is so expensive, why would they build it like this?” She was as fascinated as a child with a new toy and she hopped around carelessly. Inadvertently she tripped on a vine and then caught herself on one of the walls. “I’m fine!” She declared while pulling herself up.
“I did not ask.” Medusa replied with dulled eyes.
“Good thing this wooden handle was here…”
Clack.
““Clack?”” They both repeated the sound in unison.
As the lever was turned the entire room began to tremble. Before they could flee for safety, the ceiling began to move. Actually it was just the wooden planks. Medusa got an unexpected dose of burning sunlight to the eyes and had to cover them briefly to adjust as the snakes hissed. Eugenia didn’t suffer the same fate for obvious reasons, but breathed in some of the dust and dirt falling from the old ceiling.
“What – cough - what now?”
“Do not ask me, foolish girl.” Medusa smacked the snakes with her hands and tried to regain her vision.
Soon enough both of them realized what had occurred. The wood covers had retracted and now the glass ceiling, albeit a bit dulled from dirt and stains, was letting in the full power of the sun. The rise in temperature was immediately apparent. Now that the light fully shone upon the interior garden, things became a lot more colorful. The trees and grass were showing signs of dehydration, but they were far from dead. The occasional rain water coming in through the canal must have been enough for these southern plants to survive.
“Amazing! One lever can move the entire ceiling like that.” Of course Eugenia was impressed by the construction.
“Who would have thought this kind of thing was here the entire time?” Medusa looked over the room with an odd sense of nostalgia.
She had never once entered this place in all the decades of being imprisoned here. For her, there was simply no need to explore anything. Rather she had never felt any drive to pay attention to anything around her. Maybe Stheno would have found this place eventually, but she was too busy coming up with terrible songs at the beach, while Euryale was even less inclined to move than Medusa, so she would not have stepped in here at all.
In all the destruction that was wrought upon this place, why did this garden get spared?
“Lady Medusa, look! There are berries!” The girl called out and dragged her away from her inner world. When she looked over she was met with a mind numbing sight.
“What if they are poisonous?” Medusa asked with a deadpan voice as she watched Eugenia stuff her face with berries until her mouth was colored red.
“Huh?” The blank expression she gave in return told everything about her careless attitude! “Bwut - gulp - this is a garden, so they wouldn’t grow poisonous stuff here, right?” She retorted as if Medusa was being silly.
“We will see about that soon enough.” She replied with a sigh.
Eugenia seemed to finally feel a tinge of anxiety now. She held up the remaining berries with both hands and then stretched them forward to Medusa.
“I am not going to eat them.”
“Tsk.” The priestess clicked her tongue and put them back on top of the bush.
“Why you…” Her brow was twitching at the nerve of this girl.
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“Carrots!” As they explored the garden they soon realized that it was apparently made mostly for food growing purposes. There were barely any flowers in here, but very tiny vegetables and some pitiful fruits. Even the trees outside were carrying better yields. That much should have been expected considering nobody looked after this place in more than a century.
“What are those?”
“You never ate carrots?” Eugenia seemed surprised and pulled out a weirdly shaped almost curled up vegetable. It had an earthen color and seemed to be dried up. “This one’s no good anymore, but they are really good for your health and taste great in broth.”
“You humans will eat anything that grows out of the dirt it seems.”
“This garden is a treasury.” Her milky eyes were almost sparkling.
“There are no riches here though.”
“You can’t eat gold.” Eugenia replied with her tongue stretched out playfully. It was still red from the berries.
They were almost done exploring the room when a tapping sound started to envelope the place. The pitter-patter increased more and more and eventually long streams of water splashed across the glass ceiling. The rain had arrived.
“This sound, it is so calming.” Eugenia was sitting on the ground and listened to the rhythm of the shower outside. When rain hit glass it sounded much different from coarse stone or wood. This was nearly melodic. Watching her sit there with closed eyes as the music of nature enveloped them sent goosebumps across Medusa’s skin.
This sensation really was calming. She subconsciously curled her tail up and sat down next to Eugenia. The garden was still warm from the sun’s lingering heat and although it had turned dark from the clouds above, she felt comfortable, unlike in her lair. Whenever a storm arrived she would just lie down and try to sleep through it. For the first time she felt it was nice to let the shower spill over her island.
“Oh, there is something here.” The girl touched a fallen over marble plate in the dirt. With a lot of effort she managed to tumble it over and then wiped the dirt off of the front. There were letters carved deeply into it. She traced them with her fingers to read them. “Gr.. een.. hou… se.” The unfamiliar word went over her lips.
“Is that the name of this building?” She had seen similar signs on other wings of the temple before.
“I think so. A Greenhouse? I am sure when every plant here is in full bloom this place must be exceptionally green indeed.” She chuckled.
“How could you even know what green is?”
“I just have to imagine it.” She replied undaunted. For someone who never saw colors before, the concept must have been unfathomable. Many times she must have heard people describe a meadow as brightly green and so it had become an obvious association.
“These humans astound me all over again.” Medusa had to change the topic. “Building a garden inside their buildings, whatever were they thinking?”
“There must have been a purpose. This sounds like one of the miraculous ideas that the great and wise Athena would give people in their dreams.”
“I do not see what is so miraculous about it.” She replied with spite and glared at the stone sign.
“Making a glass ceiling that can resist even storms is almost divine. I wonder which god these priestesses served.” Eugenia leaned against one of the trees and imagined what the temple was like when it was still full of life.
Medusa stayed quiet and subconsciously bit her lip. The snakes on her head drooped down to cover her face, as if to hide it from the world.
“I am surprised, though. This is your home, but even you didn’t know about this room!”
“Heh, are you saying I am clueless about my own territory? Is that funny to you?” She muttered self-derisively.
“Not at all. I am just glad that you still have new things to learn, even on this small isle.” She grabbed Medusa’s hand without hesitation. “It gives me hope that I too can still find out things about the world around me when I feel like the days become repetitive and empty.”
“You...” Although she strictly told herself not to care about this human, even though she claimed indifference on her past, that melancholic expression on her young face was like looking into an old stained mirror.
She opened her mouth and then closed it again. There was no reason to pry.
“So for the sake of discovery you should really taste these berries at least once!” Eugenia pulled away her hand and revealed some red and black berries on Medusa’s palm.
“I will not!” Medusa cracked an annoyed smile and then stuffed the fruit into Eugenia’s shrieking mouth. “You really think you can drag me to the underworld with you?!”
Despite her aggressive retaliation both of them had to laugh.
----------------------------------------
As the rain passed Medusa found herself snapping out of a light nap. She had relaxed a little too much for her own liking. Of course she was never defenseless, but who knew what Eugenia would have to say about such an act?
“Mrrrmm… fuuh…” Except she was snoring flat on her back already.
Even more impudently, she was leaning her head on Medusa’s tail as if it were a pillow!
“Why you!” She pulled her tail back without remorse and let the girl crash on the ground.
“Ouch! W-who- where- wha-?” She rubbed her eyes and the back of her head at the same time.
“The rain has stopped, so we can leave.” Medusa said coolly and slammed open the door.
“Yes? Okay.” She was still half-asleep, judging by her sluggish reactions. Before she could even steady her legs Medusa added more.
“I have no use for this place and as far as I am concerned this was never part of my territory.” She clutched the door a bit tighter. “So you can have this human made garden if you want.”
“You mean it?!” In an instant the priestess was wide awake.
“I always keep my word.” She confirmed. “Should you annoy me too much however, I may accidentally destroy this place.”
“You can never do anything nice without adding a threat, huh?” The lack of worry in the girl’s voice was a bit aggravating to the Gorgon. “I still think it belongs to you, but I will gladly borrow it.”
“It belongs to your kind.” Medusa replied with certainty. “Specifically to a priestess of hers like you.”
Eugenia’s confusion was apparent when she heard those words.
“You asked whose temple this was.” Medusa turned back a little and caught the young woman in her deep eyes. “It belonged to your mistress, Athena.”
Eugenia’s mouth was agape at the revelation, but before she could catch herself, Medusa was already gone.
The Gorgon was imprisoned on the land of her old enemy and the priestess had come to the temple of her sworn master. This forced coexistence was stained by their diverging paths, yet they still did not understand how far. And the storm would bring something that tested their fragile equilibrium.