golden wings melt like blue slushies // JJ Maybank

-Family Line-

The buckets filled with ice and drinks only had expensive wines and colourful fruity things that certainly weren't juice. This was a huge venue. They had to have something here for her, so Icarus straightened her jacket and headed inside.

There were even more rich people mingling around in the empty rooms, save vases of roses and ugly paintings. Although, she did spot a Greek vase, and when she peeked around the corner there was a painting of a beautiful lady on the seashore. There were shells in her hair and rolls on her stomach. Aphrodite.

She couldn't help the pull in her stomach, and Icarus wandered down the empty hall, peering at the old oils perfectly placed on rolls of paper and parchment. Medusa wailed with coils of scaly green next to a sword wielding hero, who's face had been tainted with water damage and age. Icarus had never been given an explanation for her name, and she had a niggling feeling that her mother hardly even knew why either. Maybe it had just sounded nice on her tongue, but the memory of her mother's words now made her stomach curdle.

A man chained to a boulder was having worse stomach related problems, namely his liver, as it was ripped from his twisted body. Icarus averted her eyes from the gruesome sight and went to leave, to find orange juice of maybe a lemonade, but her eyes caught on a painting that covered a wall itself.

It was lit up as if it was the Mona Lisa, but it was so much more than a smiling woman. At the end of the hallway, pinned to the wall, was a dusty rendition of yet another Greek fable.

Three naked women, nymphs, probably, perched on a seaside clifftop. The rocks were almost hidden by the lush colourful plumage of bird wings and bloodstained silks. Only these failed wings and tattered cloth's didn't belong to a bird. They belonged to the brown skinned, dark-haired boy stretched out.

Stretched out as if perhaps, he had just fallen to his death.

Icarus stared up at her namesake as pale girls cried over the painting's corpse, wreaths in their light auburn hair. Her chest hurt as she looked down at the little tag next to it. Herbert Draper's 'Lament for Icarus' [1898].

"A beautiful one, isn't it?"

Her heart skipped a beat, and Icarus whipped around. She was afraid she'd gone to the wrong hall. Maybe she wasn't supposed to be in here, wherever this small section of art and elegance. "Uhm, sorry. I just found this-"

"It's Greek, you know." The woman had her hands folded over each other, perfectly round pearls adorning her veined wrists. She smiled, in that mysterious way certain old people could, like they knew the secrets of life. For some reason, she wasn't dressed to the highs like everyone else, just a plain skirt and shirt.

Icarus faltered. "Yeah, I do."

"My daughter loved this one," the woman continued, gazing up at the boy draped across in death. She smiled, lines crinkling on her tanned face, and turned to Icarus, smiling like she was sharing a secret. "It isn't quiet my taste, but I see the beaty all the same. I was never that enraptured with art, so I donated our gallery here after..."

"It isn't supposed to be beautiful, it's a tragedy." Icarus shot back, then shut her mouth quickly. "I mean, that's just what I think."

"Who said tragedy cannot be devastating and have grace at the same time?"

Icarus squinted at the painting, there was a sort of refinement to the scene. The fire in the background, the lyre that the crying nymphs lamented the young boy's fate with. It made her want to dance and cry and maybe shed blood with her tears. "I suppose it is pretty."