Amalfi

Chapter Two: More Than a Nightmare

Τὶ καινὸν εἴη τεθεαμένος; Γέροντα τύραννον.
"What is the strangest thing to see? An aged tyrant."

- Θαλῆς ὁ Μῑ́λητος (Thales of Miletus)

Chapter Two

That morning, Amalfi had known something was off. She'd known it as soon Pistacia asked to accompany her on her morning rounds.

Pistacia wasn't an early riser by choice. Granted, neither was Amalfi. Until recently, there'd been nothing dire enough to pluck the pair from sleep before the sun was supple, its rays fully stretched, long and loose across a lazy landscape.

But who could've blamed them for their sleep back then? Harboring pleasant drowsiness from late nights spent under a giggling moon, slumbering long after the first drops of light appeared, then passing the day recovering from being chronically symptomatic of youth—it was all an understandably easy song to live by. Their evening hours had always preferred to be drizzled with honey mead and white fig wine, and they'd usually obliged. These types of fun were found only by surrendering to the flighty craze of youth, the insanity of the seasons, and the restlessness of living; they did not follow the rhythms of a rather strict sun.

Amalfi missed those days. Blank sundials had once watched them all night, while the nymphs tempted even themselves, cooing at boundaries til softened. They'd always found a place among the chattering clusters of lively women, nestled snugly between hills and jealous tides, singing and preening for the sheer fun of it all. In that unbothered time—coming from the skies, the seas, and everywhere in between—fellow nymphs had flocked to paddle glistening lagoons, laugh at peeping stars, and dance in the hollow base of each mountain's throat. Nature had always liked to glow her brightest when her children lived without worry.

But given the events of late... well, things had changed. Amalfi now worried, and so did the others. There was no flocking, or singing, or laughing. There was no giggling moon; instead, it bit its grieving tongue each night and flooded craters with horror. Guilty to illuminate the ravage of a land once peaceful, Selene now wrung celestial hands when not driving her chariot. Her brother, Helios, burned great with worry whenever he heard her weeping those concerned storms above earth's mourners—so lately, the sun burned too bright more often than not, and the living suffered for the loss of the dead.

Amalfi and the others would often hear the moon wail at her newfound loneliness, too. Still, there was no reprieve they could offer. They hadn't meant to abandon her. It was simply that nymphs were no longer dancing, they were hiding. They were dying.

And Amalfi was greeting grief every day. Like an old friend one wished not to know, it was a horrid exchange, and she had to seek other allies wherever she could.

Amalfi had taken to spending her mornings step-in-step with each bleary-eyed dawn, instead. Though sunrise was impassive to anything other than its task, Amalfi liked to take note of the shifting state of her home while she journeyed. She would survey the wobbly knees of the once-quiet region; spending precious moments counting what loved ones remained, and dreading a shift. She'd learned to cherish the feeble number before it gave way under pressure, because it often did.

Amalfi's walks kept getting harder. When every new, tender dawn didn't match her devastated community, simply artful skies over fresh pain, it felt cruel. Anguish kept stacking higher. Sorrow kept burrowing in guts, in chests, in skulls. Fear kept growing, a weed too stubborn to be defeated, infecting the roots of their community until wilting the hardiest evergreen, throttling the sturdiest bloom. It was the cultivation of suffering by forces outside of their control. Amalfi knew Fate's heavy hands had always wrenched change from every far corner of the earth, stripping time bare with tools lent by the four winds, but this? There was no rest for her. Even when mourning became habit, it didn't get any easier. It just became familiar. It clogged her veins and bore heavily on her shoulders; nymphs were not meant for this.