A Silver Sprig of Moonlace

The Initial Arrival

She couldn't believe it when he first fell from the sky.

A young boy, fifteen or fourteen; dark hair streaming in the daylight as he tumbled towards the water.  Smoke and the remnants of fire were billowing from his torn clothes.  At the same time, small whirlwinds of water blossomed all over his body, engulfing him in a weak but protective shield.

He was a bullet hurtling toward the water, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.  Calypso ran to him, wanting to stop his fall, but he was coming too hard, too fast...

And... thwump.  The water seemed to catch him up as he approached its surface, crashing up and around him and rolling gently as it drew nearer.  He fell, spinning in the cocoon of waves that now had touched the ocean water, still rotating as they seemed to suck him in below the surface like a gentle black hole.  The boy was sinking... surely he was drowning by now... but something told Calypso that pulling him out would only make things worse.

At long last the billowing crests subdued and she approached tentatively.  The waves seemed to subside as she approached, calling her closer, and she swept him into her embrace, feeling the fevered texture of his sinewy arms as they fell into hers.

Calypso gently lowered the boy onto a seaside cot, carefully avoiding his face.  She would never make that mistake again... not after Odysseus, not after Drake.  The sheer memory of it welled her eyes with stinging tears.

It might have been a thousand years ago, or it might have well been yesterday... Time, as always, was difficult on Ogygia...

Following the end of the first Titan War, and Zeus relished in his unrelinquished victory, he made out to punish all those who had opposed him during the war.  The Titans, and their supporting gods, and their innocent offspring, would be chained and held in separate prisons so they would not dare to challenge the Pantheon again.  Cronus, as the Titan Lord, was cast down into the realms of Tartarus, a place so shrouded in pure evil that no mortal had ever set foot upon it; Atlas, her father, was condemned to bearing heaven atop his shoulders; she, as the daughter of Atlas, was bound alone on the island Ogygia with a curse.  Every few [thousand] years or so, a male hero would wash up upon her shores, and Calypso would tend to him, and heal him until he was ready to set sail again... but the Fates made sure that, before he left, she would fall in unrequited love, a romance never returned, for the hero could not afford to stay.  And so the departure broke her heart on each reoccurence, but her Fate was sealed.

She sang quietly over his limp form, healing the cuts and burns splattered like greasy paint across his body.  He was unconscious... but she knew he would wake soon. 

The boy mumbled in his sleep, something like, "Grover... Tyson... Annabeth..."  The first two- his friends, but Annabeth... definitely a girl.  Whether he and she were already bound, she did not know, but she tried not to dwell on that thought.  Calypso knew that it was better to kill her hopes and meet a pleasant surprise than to pray to the heavens and come back to the miserable truth that would swallow her up in great, searing gasps of pain later on.  And then, unmistakably, "...Percy."

She smiled to herself.  That could only be his name, for a boy with eyes of ocean emeralds and the black windswept hair, like he'd just emerged from water's depths-

Calypso mentally slapped herself.  No, she chided.  Don't think like that.  You'll only make your situation worse.

But she had heard tales of the first Perseus, son of Zeus and Danaë, and had been born when Zeus impregnated her in the form of a golden shower into the bronze chamber where her father Acrisius had imprisonated her.  Later Acrisius locked both mother and son into a chest and set them into the ocean, but they nevertheless made it to land safely.  Perseus became one of the most acknowledged Greek heroes of all time. 

Perseus was this boy's namesake, and just that was enough to tell Calypso that he was something special- a true hero.  And how would she be able to convince herself not to meet his eyes every time his gaze found hers?

She found herself still thinking when the boy's eyes fluttered open.  For a moment he merely lay in silence, looking up at the trees and baby blue sky above him.  Then he tried to sit up, and let out an inaudible groan.

"Stay still," said Calypso.  "You're too weak to rise."  She laid a damp cloth across his forehead and poured a spoonful of nectar into his awaiting mouth.  She shook her long caramel braid out of her eyes and peered over him.

She could still see the remnants of harsh burns on his arms, and so she sang again, trying not to think of unrequited love and the curses and heartbreaks that would be so sure to come.

"Who?" asked Percy, his voice hoarse.

"Shhh, brave one," said Calypso quietly.  "Rest and heal.  No harm will come to you here.  I am Calypso."

His eyes lingered on hers for just a moment before they slowly drifted shut.  Calypso reached out a hand, stroked his forehead with her fingertips, and pried herself away.  She cast a fleeting look at the glistening silhouette that was Percy's body... then she turned, and disappeared back into her cave.

***

The cave was like the inside of an amethyst geode; emblazoned with jagged streaks of crystal- purple, green, white- but right now Calypso couldn't have cared less of its beauty.  She stormed past the dried herbs, hanging like stalactites from the roof of the cave, and the giant loom and harp, finally yanking back a white silk partition and collapsing onto the bed behind.  The curtains slammed shut with such force that they rattled on their feeble hinges.

Calypso sank lower into the cotton sheets, all anger- induced energy drained out of her, and replaced by a sadness that tore at her heart like hungry wolves, eroding her insides.

Not fair, she moaned to herself.  Not fair, unfair, unfair, unfair, unfair...

She pummeled a pillow to the ground.  It really was all Fate behind this cruelty, ripping apart her soul every time a new hero washed up upon her shores... and once he left, he could never come back.  That was part of her curse.  No man could ever visit Ogygia twice.

The only way, Calypso thought, was to fight it.  She would have to look away whenever Percy looked into her eyes; purse her lips each time a smile crept upon them; deny herself the pleasure of simply enjoying his presence, because his presence could not last, surely.  Calypso understood the duty of the heroes, and that they could not afford to stay with her, but the thought of it still burned a fiery flare inside her.

With a new goal in mind and an icy dread in her heart, Calypso tucked herself inside the white blankets and nodded off to sleep.