It was my first lesson. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.

That is one thing gods and mortals share. When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.

All those years I had spent with them were like a stone tossed in a pool. Already, the ripples were gone.

You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.

You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite.

I had no right to claim him, I knew it. But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.

I ran my hands over his ribbed scars, easing him as I could. The scars themselves I offered to wipe away. He shook his head. "How would I know myself?"

But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.

Odysseus' favorite task was the sort that only had to be performed once: raiding a town, defeating a monster, finding a way inside an impenetrable city.

So many years I had spent as a child sifting his bright features for his thoughts, trying to glimpse among them one that bore my name. But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself.
"You have always been the worst of my children," he said. "Be sure you do not dishonor me."
"I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out."

I reached across that breathing air between us and found him.

I listen to his breath, warm upon the night air, and somehow I am comforted. He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.

I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.