liestookmydoubts

[liestookmydoubts]

V. Beside Conversations

The horizon seemed to stretch out endlessly. The wind shifted. Somewhere behind them, in the courtyard, the flickering light of torches cast moving shapes along the walls. They stood together in silence, listening to the murmur of voices, the distant laughter of men who did not belong to her, who drank her wine and handled her linens as if they were their own. Salt clung to the air, thick in Penelope’s throat, and the moonlight made the cliffs look like the jagged edges of a broken thing—splintered, but standing still. She had stood still for fourteen years, waiting. The man beside her had never been still a day in his life- not when he had shown up to court her cousin, and not when he appeared broken on her shores.

Diomedes, son of Tydeus, leaned on the stone railing, his fingers tapping idly against the weathered surface, calloused and restless. She had noticed that about him—how his hands were never truly still, how his body was never entirely at ease. So she prays for him often as an afterthought to her pleas, and so the gods hear, though destiny remains unknown. "Telemachus will have to face them eventually," He said at last. "You know that as well as I do."

She turned her head slightly, watching him from the corner of her eye. The moon carved sharp lines into his face, accentuating the roughness of a man who had once been king and was now little more than a soldier without a war to fight in. She wondered about her husband, if he had been affected in a similar way. Odysseus had always been a little rough around the edges, perhaps even sharp to those with careless hands, but never had he had the cruelty that she could now see in Diomedes' eyes. Was she wrong to feel such fear in the face of his return, lest the man who shows up on the shores not be the same man who left? "I do." "Then let him learn."

She turned to him now, her gaze steady. "You think I deny him out of foolishness? Out of softness?" Diomedes answered, his tone softening, though the edge of his words remained. It seemed to her he didn’t know how to wield a dull blade. "None of this nonsense, woman. But if you keep him in this cocoon, in this false world of comfort and peace, he'll never be ready. He needs to see it. He needs to understand it- the grey eyed maiden will guide him.” Her jaw tightened as her eyes flicked over to the distant shore, where the glistening moonlight turned the waves to silver. “This grey eyed maiden of yours is the reason I lost my husband.” Briefly, she wondered if her husband's eyes still shimmered like the waves, or if there was an off chance that this ruby was clear beneath its bloodied surface. The possibility that this wasn't the case filled her with a warmth that flooded her veins with a sense of muted emotion. "You’ve stayed here, in my house, for months now. A king who once led armies. A warrior who was once unstoppable, if I am so inclined to believe the stories that have made their way across the seas. But you’re here, with me, hiding from your own ghosts. What is more merciless than the sea, which takes the lives of so many? No, I will not let him go, decisively so.”

Time glides by without a word, and is lost to them both, never to return. So much that the sound of footsteps was faint at first, a soft rhythm against the stone floor, but it grew clearer as Telemachus approached the balcony and interrupted Diomedes' attempt at formulating a response- though she highly doubted that he would've come up with anything regardless. He and her husband were like two sides of the same coin, but their differences were vast, and Diomedes his tongue would always remain leaden and stupid in his mouth. Her son's figure emerged from the shadows, tall but hesitant, his posture still a bit uncertain, like a young lion still learning to navigate the weight of its own paws. Much to her regret he resembled his mother more than he did his father. Perhaps it was better this way, or she would not be able to face her own son quite so confidently.

Penelope’s eyes softened when she saw him, but there was a quiet sadness there, too. Her son had grown in these years, but so much of his childhood had been lost to absence—her absence, his father's absence, Ithaca’s endless waiting, stretched between hope and fear. “I—” he began, but the words felt awkward, like a weapon he hadn’t yet learned to wield. His gaze flickered briefly to his mother, who stood silently beside Diomedes, as if waiting for him to speak, but she said nothing. She didn’t need to. She already knew, and oh did she dread what was to come. The boy kneeled- because he really wasn’t anything more than just a boy- before them, his head hung low. “Mother, I would like to pick up my training again.”

Diomedes studied him for a moment, his mouth turning down slightly at the corners. The boy’s eyes were still too soft, his stance still too untested. But there was a spark there, something familiar. "You think training is the answer, then?" Telemachus nodded slowly, his jaw setting firm. "I know you fought with my father.” “You’re not your father," Diomedes said, his words coming out harsh, underlaid with an edge of steel and general distaste at the prospect that this boy could ever resemble the man whose dagger he knew almost too well. “And you won’t become him by trying to be him.”

Had Penelope not known any better, she may have mistook the blatant bitterness for something born from friendship. But she knew the stories. And most of all, she knew her husband. When Menelaus had come by to visit, as per her cousin’s request, he’d ensured her that if push came to shove and Odysseus had met a truly tragic fate, then Sparta would happily welcome her. Yet there was this strange spark to his eyes when the words left his lips, that Penelope would only decipher long after they had returned to Sparta; it was a kind gesture, certainly. But deep down she knew it was not because the king had many a concern for Penelope herself nor her son, but rather because this was the only way he could think of to repay Odysseus for his deeds. Initially, she assumed the situation with Menelaus was just a part of another of Odysseus his elaborate schemes- but then Diomedes came along, and she knew for a fact that her husband never deployed the same trick twice. But whenever she grew apprehensive, Diomedes would be there, whispering against her skin the endless words of praise that fell from Odysseus his lips for those ten years of his absence, that the only reason he could justify such a war was that he would have done the same if it had been Penelope behind those walls.

For that, she was grateful. Grateful to have someone to share her grief with. Grateful for Diomedes’ wife, who had driven a king from his rightful throne, as twisted as that may sound. Even after Phoebus dipped beneath the waves to take his place at the Olympian feast, she couldn’t shake the awareness that everything about Diomedes was all wrong. His hair, the wrong shade of brown. His fingers, too rough with calluses. His frame, just a little too broad. A poor imitation- enough to send ice lacing through her veins and coat her tongue with the acrid sting of guilt, but she couldn’t find it in herself to push him away.

There was nothing of him in the way they clashed, almost desperate, as if trying to claim something neither of them had the right to take. Nor in the almost too tight grip he had around them both, only spit to dull the burn so pain gradually morphed into pleasure. His touch was nothing like Odysseus’—nothing like the patient, knowing hands that had traced her skin in the quiet of the night. Just as the cold golden glow spilling across the floor now, filtered through hastily parted curtains, was nothing like the soft moonlight that once slipped through the leaves outside her window when Odysseus came to her, silent-footed and sure. Those nights had been spun from satin sheets and stolen hours, a slow unraveling, the careful study of a body alive beneath his hands. Diomedes was a shadow in his place, and no amount of grasping would make him real. He’d be enough- Odysseus had made her promise to remarry if he were to never return, and that was her first mistake; knowing that he’d be enough. An awful thing to think, but a truth she held to be self-evident from where she stood, watching how her son idolized him as they went through the motions of the blade together.

.. ..-. / - .... . .-. . .----. ... / .- / --. --- -.. / --- ..- - / - .... . .-. .

[liestookmydoubts]

Tiresias wanting to map out Hermes' facial features by touch everytime Hermes comes back in case he missed something or in fear of forgetting how Hermes looks like,,, Tiresias being touchy is everything to me

UGH they make me sick

[liestookmydoubts]

my designs for eros and psyche

don't know why but the belief that butterflies are actually just the souls of the deceased doesn't sit right with me. those things are kind of scary up close...

[liestookmydoubts]

artemis and apollo design sketch :]

[liestookmydoubts]

IV. Bedside Conversations.

Hatred could never bear a torch to the wildfire that was adoration. It was never an issue of the body being delicate, rather the heart being hardened to stone. And yet what she could make out from Helen's words was that her heart was not made of stone, nor was it made of metal. Her heart was flesh, alive and beating. She simply seemed to run from the concept of love, out of fear of something that may destroy her. Cassandra could not console her, she could only listen to those quiet words that were spoken- those words that fall too easily off her tongue, like they mean nothing, like these aren't words, just something that sounds like them, just an illusion of letters strung together into a sentence.

Cassandra could not turn this into something beautiful, yet she is the one who knows the pieces Helen is too scared to reveal and too terrified to embrace. She watched her shrink, watched her disappear piece by piece. Watched how she traded away her pride for a love that doesn't belong to her- a placeholder for something Helen did not believe in. Cassandra couldn't turn this pain into poetry, can't make this heartbreak sound like healing, because there is no elegance in being only partially loved, no silver lining, nothing that makes this worth the pain. She sees how Helen waits, how she will keep waiting for a love that's never coming. The door stays open, the candles burn low, and Helen lingers, hoping Paris will see her for more than what comes between her thighs. She never wanted to be forgettable, she thought she was more but her name gets faint every time it carries on the western wind- Helen of Troy. Only in her dreams is she loved the way that she loves and it is far from how the poems would describe it- It is desperate, unadorned, and far from poetic.

Her head rests in Helen's lap, gazing up as she observes her lips move to form words, though Cassandra could not have recalled what had been said up until this point- from this angle, she swore she could see that familiar sadness swirling within Helen’s eyes when she had asked the seer if she ever wanted to have a daughter- Cassandra wondered if it was because of Hermione. Was she wrong to take such a guess? Only one could know for sure, and she cared little for the reply. Quickly jumping between topics and musings regardless of their morbidity.

The golden light of the late afternoon filtered through the silk curtains of Helen’s chamber, casting dappled patterns on the cool stone floor. “You always look like you’re waiting for something,” Cassandra starts a few moments later. “It’s Paris, isn’t it?” Her tone was neither accusatory nor curious; it was matter-of-fact, as if stating the color of the sky. She only posed it as a question as a formality. “You’re waiting for him to become the man you dreamt of when you followed him here.”

“Paris…” Helen began, then trailed off. “He is what the poets write about, isn’t he?” Her lips parted as though to answer, but instead, she sighed and glanced away toward the shadowed pathways of the palace halls. Cassandra followed her gaze, tracing the invisible path Helen’s thoughts seemed to wander. The silence stretched between them, heavy with things unsaid. “But the poets don’t know him.” She let out a breath, her fingers idly twisting in Cassandra’s dark hair. “They don’t know the way he speaks when he’s weary, how quickly his gaze shifts when he’s searching for something better. They don’t know that he calls me his queen in the same breath that he speaks of other women.”

Cassandra’s eyes never left her face. “And yet you stay. That either makes you a fool or something much worse.”

“You think too much,” Helen murmured, shaking her head. She reached for a goblet of wine from the low table beside them, fingers curling around the delicate metal. “Or perhaps you simply feel too little.”

Cassandra huffed a quiet laugh, sitting up and throwing her arms around her companion in a gesture of fondness. “You say that like it’s a failing.”

Helen studied her, searching for something in her expression. “Maybe it is,” she said at last. “Maybe it isn’t.” They sat in silence for a moment, the golden light shifting, deepening as the sun lowered toward the horizon. From somewhere in the palace, the distant sounds of revelry drifted toward them- music, laughter, the clinking of cups. The world moved on, as it always did. Once she was able to see beauty in the light dipping into the waters, but now she has grown acquainted with the burn that came with it

And even she could not understand the depths, the intricacies, the weight of Helen’s name, of her choices, of her existence, how settled heavily on her chest like a boulder that rested there. Helen turned her gaze toward her, eyes darkened with thoughts too heavy to bear alone. Cassandra watched the way Helen’s fingers tensed around the silken folds of her chiton, the way her breath shuddered in her chest, uneven and raw. It was rare to see her like this—stripped of the armor of allure, the goddess-made queen reduced to something achingly human.

“You look tired,” Cassandra murmured. Her voice barely carried in the dim-lit chamber, but Helen heard it nonetheless. She exhaled softly, her hands stilling, her shoulders shifting in something like defeat. She let her fingers brush against Cassandra’s hand, hesitant, uncertain, before lacing them together in a grip that was equal parts fragile and unyielding.

“Should I not be?” Helen whispered, a bitter smile tugging at the edges of her lips. “I think I have been tired since the moment I first saw the Aegean from my balcony in Sparta. But no one ever asks, do they?”

“No,” Cassandra admitted. “They only ask if you were worth it.”

"And was I?" Cassandra did not answer. She could not. Instead, she reached for Helen’s hands, smoothing over the tension in her fingers, the calloused places where desperation had taken root. Helen did not pull away. Quietly, almost as if Helen had not even entertained the idea of the question slipping out, she asks, "Do you think the gods can still hear me?”

Cassandra knew the gods did not listen. Not to her. Not to Helen. Not to any woman left to wither in the wake of men’s desires. “Does it matter?” she asked instead.

Helen’s lips parted, but no words came. Only silence, the kind that felt heavier than sound, heavier than sorrow. And then, before Cassandra could think better of it, before she could stop herself from stepping into the ruin of this moment, Helen leaned in.

“You should hate me,” Helen murmured, though she did not let go.

Cassandra tilted her head slightly, a sad smile curving her lips. “I do.”

Helen’s breath hitched.

“I hate you for what you’ve done, for the ruin you’ve brought upon us all,” Cassandra continued, her voice quiet but unwavering. “But I pity you more.” Helen was many things, but never pitied. Clearly, the idea that it was even possible startled her, as her eyes widened just a fraction before her gaze was drawn downward to where Cassandra’s lips were slightly parted. Cassandra herself remained unperturbed, for she was always steady, even when burdened with truths no one else could bear. Helen had told her she envied her for that, for the strength that came not from war or gods, but from knowing oneself completely, even in ruin. But Cassandra did not know love—not the way Helen did. Not the way that turned women into ghosts, lingering long after they had been forgotten by the ones they bled for.

Helen’s fingers moved before her mind could stop them, tracing the curve of Cassandra’s jaw. Cassandra caught her wrist, but did not push her away. instead her thumb brushed against the inside of Helen’s palm, a fleeting touch that sent a tremor up her spine. There was no poetry in it, no divine orchestration, no grand proclamation of love. Just warmth—Helen’s breath against Cassandra’s lips, Cassandra’s fingers tightening ever so slightly around her wrist, as though she might pull away, as though she might stay.

[liestookmydoubts]

III. Bedside conversations.

Someone entered the room while she paced by the high window. A faint breeze stirred the heavy curtains, carrying with it the salty tang of the Aegean. The candles cast long shadows onto the walls, like dark tendrils that engulfed the palace-

"Do you not feel it?" She says abruptly, her voice breaking through the uneasy quiet that had fallen over the room. Her twin brother remains still, gazing silently at a candle to his right as if the answers were hidden within the gentle blaze. "I have felt it," he said at last. "But what would you have me do, Cassandra? What can any of us do? The Fates have spoken- their will is clear."

She stepped toward him, movements sharp, her frustration like a palpable presence crackling in the space between them, which only served to drive him further away. Sometimes she wondered if she truly did scare him, despite his claims otherwise. "Helpless? Is that all we are? Mouthpieces for the gods, muttering warnings no one heeds?"

"I ask again, what would you have us do, sister? Chain Paris to the palace walls? Tell father to forbid him? You know as well as I he would not listen. Do you truly think you or I- or even father himself- can wrest him from the hands of Lady Aphrodite?" His brows are tinged with a strange sense of weariness while he speaks, almost as if he had been practising for this exact conversation for quite some time now. Typical- seers always knew what to say.

"So we must stand by and let him bring ruin to our people? No. No! You could stop him, Helenus. Speak, and they shall listen- they trust you over me, you just have to-"

"This is not the time for envy. I would trade my clarity for ignorance if it meant peace for Troy, but this is not my silence- it's the will of the gods."

He would never be able to see past the gods. Somewhere in his heart, it still held true that the god shall not reject his humble servants. She'd known this even before the moment he had willingly given himself to Phoebus- every shape that is born bears in its womb the seeds of change, but Cassandra could not water that seed, lest she pry open his ribcage and nurture a flower with his warm blood-

"If none of us will stop it, then why do they show us at all?" Cassandra murmured, voice underlaid with an edge of sandstone; both brittle and coarse.

Helenus pondered as he stood, searching his mind for the words that he would let spill from his lips like unmixed wine. "..because even the gods need witnesses."

Cassandra was left dumbfounded. Was this blind devotion to the gods truly what could sustain a being? Flesh required blood in its veins, marrow in its bones. For a soul, well it required something profound to cling onto. She could see the way he turned to the gods, simply for the reason that he feared mortal ties, and he was fighting himself for freedom, when freedom could be found in simple things just as much as divine knowledge may bestow upon the most wretched fool. She was quite confident her brother knew the answer well, and simply refused to acknowledge it. Such was his way, and even her own twin brother would not listen to her.

.-.. . - / -- . / .-. .- --. . / -... . ..-. --- .-. . / .. / -.. .. .

[liestookmydoubts]

Odysseus' beef with Neoptolemus will never not be funny

[liestookmydoubts]

II. Bedside conversations.

Menelaus could feel it as they returned to the Achaean camp; their hopeful, fervoured eyes. Their hateful, censorious gazes. The night, which seemed to slowly fade away, had plunged into the waves, from which the next dawn emerged from the same waters. But there was her gaze, too, Helen's, and it was like a dagger sinking in between his ribs. She didn't blame him for the destruction that had been caused, and he didn't blame her for the many sleepless nights. He could tell she wanted to return the bright and blinding smiles, but her own were muted and controlled in comparison. He'd tried to soothe her, kissing the tension in her brows as she ached. As they both ached, it seemed.

He couldn't ease the frown off her face as the wretched son of Achilles rampaged the lands that had so readily defended her honor. There was no reasoning with that kid, lest one was willing to risk a spear through the narrow space between their ribs- and so his Helen could only watch as the role of concubine was thrust upon the still grieving wife of Hektor.

Neoptolemus was little more than a weapon, one refined and sharpened to infinitesimal precision; a sword bred for war. He sought only one thing; revenge. And yet- he didn't even seem to know what it was he ought to avenge; he hadn't known his father, the young prodigy that had willingly joined this entire mess of a war. All he had were the often exaggerated stories the men passed around; perhaps his mother had shared some of her own experiences, but somehow Menelaus had a hard time imagining Deidameia had alot of good to say about Achilles. Cleaving Achilles. The bitter taste abandonment left on your tongue wasn't so easily washed away with honeyed words- Menelaus would know, he mused

Back in Sparta these thoughts persisted, even as a flash of curly blond entering his chambers caught his eye. A familiar warmth embraced him from behind, and silent tears wet the fabric of his chiton and clung to his shoulders.

More and more often she'd come to him crying. When prompted for a reason, she merely shook her head and kissed him- it was a much too effective distraction for Menelaus to bother trying to raise the question again. Not when his tongue counted those faint few freckles on her thighs that usually showed more in the summer, and not when the calloused pads of his fingers trace over each vertebrae of Helen her spine as if trying to count them. And especially not when his mind starts to drift, and suddenly the plush skin of her thigh has a scar wrapping around-

Even when they returned to Sparta, she would come to his room with tears streaming down her beautiful face.

Until one night, about 3 months since their return, as they lay in silence on his bed, merely gazing at eachother, does she finally speak.

"Menelaus," she says,

"Darling," he automatically replies.

And for a moment, whatever it is she has to say seems too much for her to bear- and her eyelashes flutter gently. She leans in to kiss him, but this time Menelaus ushers her back. "My love," he calls out once more, admittedly firmer. He knows Helen's weaknesses, and the tricks she deploys to cover for them. He won't let her hold back this time. "If there's something you must say, then please just say it. I fought a war for you- won't you, if even just this once, humor me?"

Something within his words made it so her eyebrows met just a little closer on her forehead. Her hand touches upon his collarbone, searching. "You have a soft heart," Her hand is placed on the left side of his chest, as if to touch this softness with her own hands. He wondered if she could feel the way it pounded as if trying to break out from his ribcage- "I don't know what you mean."

"You don't have to."

Menelaus had taken the opportunity to kiss her the way he had been itching to. It wasn't the most eloquent response, but it was the one he decided upon. "I want to," he spoke into her open mouth, "I want to understand you, Helen."

And moreso, he wants to understand why his thoughts keep drifting to a rugged land, too cramped for driving horses though it is hardly poor, under Mount Neion's windblown robe of leaves.

"And what would you do with understanding?" Helen asked, her voice a soft murmur, tinged with something Menelaus could not quite place. Was it resignation? Hope? Helen cupped his face in her hands, her touch so light it could have been the wind. For a moment, she was still, her fingers tracing the hollow of his throat. Then she closed her eyes, as if summoning courage. “Do you?” she asked softly. “Do you truly want to understand me, Menelaus? Or are you hoping to bury the war beneath layers of affection and pretend we can be as we once were?”

Her words were not an accusation, but a plea—a raw, unfiltered truth that caught him off guard. Menelaus exhaled deeply, his thumb brushing away a tear that escaped down her cheek. “I fought a war for you,” he repeated, “but I never expected to come out of it unscarred—inside or out. I don’t want to bury anything, Helen. I just want us to find peace.”

Helen leaned her forehead against his, golden hair spilling over his shoulders. “Peace,” she echoed, as if testing the word’s weight on her tongue. “You make it sound so simple.”

“It’s not,” Menelaus admitted. “But nothing worth having ever is.”

[liestookmydoubts]

Bedside Conversations.

Contrary to the popular saying of the eyes feasting first, it was the ears that knew of the terrible news first.

Her hand shakes.

She feels a sting in the corners of her eyes as an ache makes itself known between her third and fourth rib.

The walls had fallen.

It is silent within the palace.

Outside, the fire rages.

How long has it been? It changes nothing to know.

The repetition of apologies feels like a futile prayer, offering no redemption. Her apologies long exhausted, now linger as ash in her mouth, leaving the bitter taste of wrongness on her tongue, circulating through her veins like the flaming arrows of Phoebus in a shallow grave.

A grave she made by her own hand admidst the chaos of the fires.

Anger and shame, had driven her to curses of death, but never had she actually meant for it to come to this, kneeling by his arrow-pierced body after some Trojan soldiers had managed to drag it inside the palace.

She didn't know their names- they'd be dead soon enough.

Kneeling next to the bringer of war, as Hektor had so eloquently put it; unskilled and cowardly.

Some would call him Alexandros, defender of men, and yet, ironically, his only accomplishments are in the art of escape- still, as she traced with her hand the contour of that face lacking in robust physicality, as if even war itself has treated him kindly, she found herself longing to see those eyes, those utopian eyes—the caged window that traps in a sun on the verge of supernova- if only to close them again herself. Her own flutter like a cautious butterfly's wings as the pads of her fingers come to rest on the pale lips that used to kiss her to sleep.

She should be screaming as she embraced the beloved body, pulling her hair and desperately clutching and bruising her own upper arms which were not deserving of such treatment- and yet, there was nothing. She wasn't a musician grieving the death of their muse, and neither was she enraged as that young Phthian prince had been- All was silent, and the world seemed to blur as clouds cast overhead, the westward wind breaking the air in periodic gusts.

His death made her realise her sense of self is in shambles- and that it had been ever since people started calling her Helen of Troy- she sees that there's no one left who knows what her real name is; Helen of the lovely hair, they call her. White-armed Helen. Helen, queen among women. Hateful Helen. Never just Helen of Sparta. Even Paris, whose infatuation had lead them all down this path, never called her by her given; always his darling, never just herself. Even hearing someone say 'Helen' made her feel as if it no longer belonged to her. It was but a distant concept of the woman she left behind in the hollow and broken countryside of Sparta; wholly unworthy.

Briefly, her mind wanders to what may have become of her sister- word had reached her of Iphigenia, of what the Achaeans had done to appease the gods, and her heart seemed to dissolve to ash in her mouth. The world tints red at the edges, though shame set in quick to chase the storm. It was her fault, wasn't it? Even her cousin has had to feel the consequences of her foolishness; while she hid beyond the walls of Troy, Penelope had to wait patiently as her husband(an ever cunning man, she must admit) fought alongside her own to siege the city.

She'd seen him, Odysseus, for how could she not? The reigning king of Ithaca had stood out like a lost dog amongst the suitors- and not only because of the scarred tissue that wrapped around his calf and crept up his innerthigh like a snake. She had found herself observing the way the subtle lines glistened and bend on his face as another scheme materialized behind those mismatched eyes. Watched him, as he climbed onto Penelope's balcony the night after Tyndareus had called upon all who ruled the lands. She wondered if Penelope still weaved tapestries the way she had so loved to do, even as time graded on her hopes to spend her life with the man she had foolishly given her heart to.

Maybe Menelaus would allow her to visit. Maybe.

.----. --. --- -.. ... --..-- / ... .- ...- . / -- -.-- / ... --- ..- .-.. .-.-.- .----.

[liestookmydoubts]

bricheese

One day, I'll have a collage of what I imagine everyone looks like

But for right now, I am content ignoring all information that Homer gave me about Briseis and just do it myself/hj

Hey.. maybe in some lights her hair may look black?