Description

Her gaze wandered across the Aegean in sleepless sorrow, traveling back and forth across the vastness of the unbroken blue. Her eyes swallowed the sapphire-infused distance, which was smeared with formless, fog-like textures. She remembered waking briefly at night. The moon had slowly risen through the sky, bruising unsightly entrails before telling her that she was severed even from herself. She imagined her beauty as a separate entity springing up from the tremulous, heat-drenched air. Her beauty now stood before her, and she felt herself as being utterly intangible, a mere shadow of her admired solidity dying and drifting by the second. It was the beauty they craved, it was the beauty they viewed as their prized possession, the shadow said. The beauty frowned and said, No, shadow, it was me they wanted, for my beauty is their weapon. Now, her beauty was gazing mockingly at her, the shadow of herself. She felt herself shrink under these eyes, eyes she no longer recognized as her own. Then Helen moved upon silence, and Paris entered to see her. But it was not her she saw, for he merely saw her beauty. Helen screamed, but she realized that she was just a shadow. Her voice remained inaudible, and she heard her beauty speak. Then Helen felt herself receding from the scene of air-deprived silence, feeling herself merge with a sea of inaudible echoes moving beneath the tangible sea.