The next day, we heard that Asterion had been killed.
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Theseus and the remaining sacrifices would sail back to Athens. But, Theseus, that traitor, had told my father that it was me and Daedalus who had given him the sword and thread. Traitor, and partial liar. He commanded my father to give me to him. As if I was a bag of goods. So I was handed over to him, with his stupid smirk. Asshole. I tried to take Phaedra with me but, of course my father wouldn't allow it. He wouldn't even look at me.
Yet as soon as I went onto the boat, I found Phaedra, hiding. She, however, was angry with me. She thought that I wanted Theseus for myself, and had planned to keep him for myself. I didn't even try to argue with her - she knew that I wasn't interested in, well, that sorta thing. And by that sorta thing I mean men. As we set sail, I looked up to Daedalus' tower in time to see him and Icarus fly out. I saw some guards try to stop them, but they were mostly too mesmerised to do anything. And I saw Icarus fly higher, and higher until it seemed the sun would swallow him. And in that final moment before he fell, he looked almost like a God, the brilliant sun shining through his wispy, blond hair, at peace. And I saw him fall. The burned wings cradled him as he fell onto the crashing waves. In the background, I could hear his poor father shouting, and trying to search for him between the waves. What a death to have. Soaring the sky, feeling the heat on your back, finally free after being imprisoned for so long, only to be stripped of that freedom, to fall gracefully onto the cold waves, never to be seen again. To feel what it is like to be a bird, only to be stripped of your wings, forced to be a fish who couldn't even swim. I made myself turn away. There was nothing more to be done for them.
I always did wonder about what happened to Daedalus. If he ever recovered from losing Icarus. Or if he continued to search those waves, lost, with no meaning, until the sea claimed him as its own.
Eventually, we arrived on the island of Naxos. I'll spare you the details on what happened on the boat - just a lot of my sister being annoyed at me and Theseus sending me looks that made me make sure my door was locked and barricaded. When we arrived on the island, it was dark and we decided to sleep.
The next morning I woke up to find everyone gone.
YOU ARE READING
My Side - An Ariadne Retelling
Short Story"Isn't hatred just the absence of love, and evil the absence of good? Isn't it common knowledge that, if you isolate someone for too long, starve them, they forget how to be what we call human? They are reverted to animals - reduced to nothing, livi...
