The Prayer to Iorene

Twenty years ago, Ascepiter's unearthly balletic performance as the iconic goddess of youth and beauty stirred passion in the gods, shook the vaulted ceiling, and left her a living legend. With her own youth long fled and divine husband's love straying to a mysterious new member of the ballet company, she finds she cannot beg for the love of a god as one might their mortal husband's. But carnivorous bloom though she may be, the new "Iorene" has no intention of being so easily seduced, and has her own chthonic reply to power.

Inspired by songstress Dolly Parton, "The Prayer to Iorene" is a short story about two women of different generations negotiating their future while the very gods they portray are under protest.