Arethusa

You know, somewhere in the unexplored deeps of your mind, that one day you might leave this place, and you’d like to see more of the world and know what other waters might await you there, but your life will be long and there is time to swim here yet.\n \nUntil one day your [[parents|proposal]] call you to them.

The spirit Lethe is insubstantial. Her form wavers and changes in front of your eyes, first one thing, then another, solid and translucent, flickering and faint, then strong and clear.\n\nShe is always beautiful though, to your eyes, and she seems kind. She welcomes you to her river, to your joining, with open arms and an open heart.\n\nYou will wed her, and you will make your parents happy, and your kingdom happy. You may have had other dreams once, but this is your duty and [[your choice|lethe 1]], and you will learn your own happiness with time.

<<if $met_artemis eq "yes">>And there is Artemis, and she is smiling at you, and you have never felt so happy, so powerful.\n\nShe stamps, once, and the dry topsoil shivers and cracks beneath her foot, becoming a path, perfect for a stream to run down, perfect for you to escape before Alpheus ever knew you were here.<<endif>><<if $met_artemis eq "no">>You have never felt so happy, or so powerful.\n\nThe ground around you is dry and cracked, and begging for your to cut your way across it, push through topsoil and pebbles, and run as a stream away from here. To escape before Alpheus ever knew you were here.<<endif>>\n\nYou surge and tumble and flow, and choose your own direction. Are you heading [[back to the sea|go home]] and find your family, or are you [[rushing onwards|own home]] to learn what waits over the next hill?

With a mighty surge of power that you feel rushing all along and through you, called down from the heaven and up form the earth and in from the water, you push Alpheus back out to sea.\n\nHe subsides, and knows that he cannot take you against your will. He will go back to his river.\n\nOrtygia is your island now. You have felt the life of it, and for now, you choose to stay here.\n\nYou will be its stream and its groundwater, and you will help it grow [[strong and green and rich|grow green]].

On the shores of Sicily, you see a destruction far, far beyond anything you have ever wrought. If all your petty, windblown beaches were combined, they could not match even a tiny broken shell upon the sands of Sicily.\n\nStarvation has come to Sicily. Famine, and fire, and endless suffering.\n\nIn the middle of that island, with her pain stretched from shore to shore, the great goddess Demeter. You cannot touch her - you are merely a nereid, and she has lost her daughter. Her grief would shrivel you to a speck of dried out plankton.\n\nYou have two choices.\n\nYou can return quietly to the sea and [[swim on|no artemis]], hoping that Demeter will find her absolution. Her sorrow and her quest are not yours to judge or interfere with.\n\nOr you can [[call|artemis]] upon any god who cares to answer you to help to end this horror, risking both their anger and hers. You cannot judge her actions, but you have to try to change them.

The land is different enough from the sea that it dulls your homesickness for a while. You’ve walked on the shore before, more than once, just to see what it would be like, but never this far or for this long.\n \nYou spend time enjoying the feel of sand, then stones, then grass under your feet. Grass is odd – both soft and scratchy all at once. You’ve always loved the trees, but now you are a little afraid as you walk in their shadow. There are so many, and they go on such a distance. You distract yourself by focusing on all the tiny lives all around you, like the great kelp forests under the water.\n \nAfter a long while, you are tired, and your feet are sore. It is greying-dark in the woods now, and you are struggling to make your way without falling. You make a nest amid some ferns and lie down to [[sleep|stream bathing]].

He is beautiful, and his river is great.\n\nYou are joined with him, and you learn to love him, to love your new life. You tumble with his flow, from mountains to sea and back again, watching the world go by on his riverbanks.\n\nMaybe there were other dreams once, but you have chosen this, and though you sometimes feel a little wistful for your freedom on the land and under the sea, you do not regret your choice.\n\n\n\n[[Begin again?|Start]]

<<silently>>\n<<set $met_artemis = "no">>\n<<set $met_demeter = "no">>\n<<endsilently>><center>Arethusa\nA game by <a href="http://carawj.wordpress.com" target=_blank>CaraWJ</a>\nStylesheet based on Simple Centred by <a href="http://l.j-factor.com" target=_blank>Leon Arnott</a>\n\n----\n\n\nSing, goddess, of the nereid Arethusa, born of Doris and Nereus, oceanid and titan.\n\nShe has many [[stories|under the sea]].</center>

Every day you go forth from your parents’ caves with a light heart, to experience its endlessly-changing wonders. You love the passing shoals, and darting eels, and the way the currents play with the ripples of sand in the depths. Crabs that hide in rocky outcrops, and beds of weed that teem with life and stretch of for miles.\n\nYou once spent weeks following a pod of dolphins, racing through the waves with them and playing at the surface, breathing now silken salt-water, now fresh air, your body loose and fluid and [[free|unexplored]].

You leave, and he follows you. You are fast and agile, even on the land, and you leave him behind, but still, somewhere on the edges of your awareness, he follows you.\n\nYou run. The woods are not endless, and when you burst from their cover, you feel a surge of great joy as the wide blue sky opens out above you. Storm clouds are rolling in from the Western horizon, and your skin tingles at the promise of rain.\n\nSomewhere, still deep in the woods, he follows you. There is nothing in front of you but rolling, open hills, covered in low scrub and yellowing grass, and you are growing tired. Your limbs ache to swim away, swift as a sailfish.\n\nYou need to find somewhere to [[hide|hiding]].

You seek out the river Lethe, and are struck by its presence and its beauty. The Underworld interests you - it does not at all seem the place of fear and cold that you once thought it might be.\n\nYou know what choice you will make now.\n\nYou know you will return here, so you do not linger long. You must [[see your parents first|going home]].

<<silently>><<set $met_demeter = "yes">><<endsilently>>\nYou go like a typhoon, mad rush of squalling anger. You will not be ripped quietly from all that you love. Anger pulses through you, sending shockwaves radiating through the water.\n\nAbove you, the waves churn and crash, and when you near land, your breakers hurl themselves onto the sand. You surface each time, to watch with a wild vindication as rocks and trees, sandscapes and tiny creatures of the shore are thrown into chaos by your furious spray.\n\nShoreline after shoreline meets your wrath, until you come to [[Sicily|sicily]].

You go to the dolphins, and the currents, and the tiny scurrying shrimp. You swim far and fast through the deeps and meander in the shallows.\n \nYou love your parents and you trust their judgement. But you also love your sea and your freedom and choices that are your own.\n \nYou think, diving further inside yourself than you ever have before.\n \nIs it time for a [[new adventure|lethe wedding 1]], or is your adventure here [[not yet finished|leaving]]?

You return to the Aegean, where you revel in the familiar waters that you have loved, skimming across the surface and diving down to the seabed, greeting the glimmering life that flashes past as you swim.\n\nYou go back to your parents, and you tell them that you would like, if it is still open to you, to make the choice that they gave to you.\n\nYou will marry Lethe and join your kingdom with one of the great rivers of the Underworld.\n\nYour parents bubble and dance with joy, and you are taken to Lethe right away. As you go, you wish a hurried farewell to your beautiful undersea home, but know that this time you may return whenever you wish.\n\nYou reach the ends of the sea far too soon, and are [[presented to Lethe|lethe wedding 2]].

<<if $met_artemis eq "yes">>She leaves you there. This is your decision to make, not hers and she leaves you to find your answers for yourself. You are grateful even as you are afraid.<<endif>>\nYou fear. You take the time, high above the earth and made of floating vapours, to think about what it is that you fear.\n\nIs it Alpheus? He has asked you, and he has pursued you, but he has not caused you harm, nor do you think he wishes to.\n\nNo, you do not fear Alpheus.\n\nWhat you fear, still, is having your choices taken from you. You do not want him to decide that you will marry him, any more than you wanted your parents to decide that you would marry Lethe.\n\nSo, now, still and safe in the skies, you can make that choice for yourself. This has been granted to you.\n\nDo you choose to go down to [[take him up on his offer|give up]] and see what that will bring, or do you choose to run on and [[choose another life for yourself|save yourself]]?

When you wake, the light has returned and you are colder than you should be, and you find that your skin has started to dry and peel in little flakes from your arms and hands. It itches.\n \nYou set out with more purpose today, your eyes and ears and nose alert.\n \nThis land is rich and it rains often, so it doesn’t take long. You come to a small stream, dancing through the woods down a pebbled path.\n \nYou and your skin sigh as you lie full length in the flow, covering as much of your body as you can. It washes away dirt and tiredness and leaves you with a pleasantly softened feeling. You watch the sky, patches of bright blue between the leaves. You remember that you love the land, too.\n \nYou don’t notice him in the water until he’s right [[beside you|meeting alpheus]].

Artemis comes to you, sometimes occasionally, sometimes often.\n\nYou delight in her presence, always.\n\nThere comes a day when, in nereid form, you press a kiss to the lips of your goddess and are surprised by how much it does not feel like audacity.\n\nShe smiles, of course, and kisses you in turn.\n\nYou know that you will love frequently and freely and be loved by many, but that Artemis, sleek and powerful as a shark and stronger than the pull of the tides, is your first and most, and you will always belong in part to her.\n\nYou [[live your life in joy|lives happily]], and Artemis visits you, sometimes occasionally, sometimes often.

You will not be taken by him. This island is a good place, a place that you would like to stay, at least for a while. He will not take that from you.\n\nYou gather all the strength that you know is within you, and all the power that you can feel in your growing bond with Ortygia.\n\nIt wraps around you, turning your stream into a charging torrent, and you gush towards Alpheus, pushing pushing pushing him back towards the sea.\n\nYour place. Your new home. Your life. Your choice.\n\nHe is retreating. You push again, try to force him further, but he pushes back, and your power wavers just a little. He is very strong.\n\nDo you call upon [[the gods|lose]] to help you in your moment of need, or upon all the power that you know waits in [[the earth and sea and skies|win]] and try to defeat him yourself?

You drift. Aimless. Away. The current pulls you back and forth, and you do not care. You take no joy in the speeding dolphins, or the bright anemones as you pass them.\n\nFar, far from your home, you know you should start to look for a new place to settle, but your thoughts are full of salt and sorrow, and the waters here are cold.\n\nIf you go on this way, the deep ocean will claim you, and you will lose yourself in its vast darkness.\n\nYou need to clear your head.\n\nDo you swim [[down|no artemis]] into the deeps, to find your bearings there, or [[up|artemis 2]] to the surface, to look upon the land and sky?

You find that the people of Ortygia have built a beautiful fountain in celebration of your help. You can flow through it and rise up into the air for your droplets to to sparkle and shimmer under the sky.\n\nFrom the highest point, you can see the hills and green fields of your island all around, and in the distance, the beautiful blue-green Aegean of your childhood.\n\nYou miss it still, but you know that you have found a good path.\n\n<<if $met_artemis eq "yes">>You live here for a long time, and sometimes you are [[visited|artemis visit]].<<endif>><<if $met_artemis eq "no">>You live here for a [[long time|lives happily]].<<endif>>

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You are joined with him, but you never learn to love him.\n\nYou tumble with his flow, from mountains to sea and back again, watching the world go by on his riverbanks.\n\nThere were other dreams once, and you have not chosen this. You miss your freedom on the land and under the sea with an endless desperation, but he holds you here and you do not know how to find your own strength any more.\n\nYou wish with all your heart and soul and self that you could [[try again|Start]].

She comes to you.\n\nShe comes to you and you know at once that you are hers.\n\nThe goddess Artemis is more beautiful than any being you have ever seen before, sleek and powerful as a shark and stronger than the pull of the tides.\n\nYou look at her and you feel so small. Your questions are meaningless.\n\nBut she smiles at you, and your heart thunders in your chest. All questions are important, she tells you, but she cannot help you with this one. You have to work this out for yourself.\n\nThoughtless, you reach out to touch her, and your fingers sing where they rest upon her arm. A shiver runs through you, and she holds you still with her [[eyes|eyes]].

Arethusa

Your parents are the only thing you love more than the sea. When they tell you that they would like you to marry, you are intrigued, certain and assured that they would choose only the best for you, as they have for others of their children.\n \nThey explain that an important task lies before you. They would like you to wed Lethe, and join the living, breathing sea to the cool, dark waters of the Underworld. They had originally courted Styx, they tell you, but feel that Lethe would make you a better match.\n \nYou ask for time to [[think|thinking]] before you give them your answer. They grant you a turn of the moon.

You call back, to the magic that made you a cloud. You can feel it gathering, sparking, rolling, all around you and you can reach out and touch it.\n\nYour mother can do this. Your father can do this. You never knew, until this day, that you could do this too.\n\nYou take hold of the magic and shape it, pull it into yourself and twist it around and it follows your thoughts, clinging and trailing like wisps of seaweed.\n\nYour vapour obeys, every particle. It pulls back, in, together, and pours you down from the sky as fat, heavy raindrops, splashing down to become a pool on the ground. You do not need water, you realise for the first time.\n\n[[You are water|stream]].

You draw your waters in close about yourself and turn to run, but Alpheus knows where you are now.\n\nHe follows you, not stealthily this time, but with noise and strength and determination, tearing through the land after you until he finally catches up with you just as you reach the edge of the sea.\n\nHis waters mix with yours and you are caught in his currents. He takes you back, far across the seas, to his river, where he holds you fast, [[keeps you with him|alpheus wedding 2]].

You flow far, free and joyous. Sometimes you run above the ground, bubbling and dancing under the sky. Sometimes you wind your way through the earth, in the deep, dark spaces where the light has never been.\n\nAnd so you find yourself passing through the Underworld, where your parents would have had you live in your joining with Lethe.\n\nAnd there, you see the goddess Demeter's daughter, Persephone, taken by Hades. \n\nShe looks sad, but she does not look trapped. She [[chooses to stay|persephone]] and she rules here as Queen.

You flee and rush and tumble across the land and under it, heading back for the Aegean. You can feel its waters calling to you in the distance.\n\nAnd so you find yourself passing through the Underworld, where your parents would have you live in your joining with Lethe.\n\nAnd there, you see the goddess Demeter's daughter, Persephone, taken by Hades. \n\nShe looks sad, but she does not look trapped. She chooses to stay and she rules here as Queen.\n\n<<if $met_demeter eq "yes">>You spill over yourself in your haste, sweeping across rock and grass and down under the bed of the sea. The salt water calls to you, but you do not venture there.\n\nWhen you come to Sicily, you push yourself out through the surface, cascading upwards as a geyser, your waters hot and sulphurous from the depths of the earth. Your force calls the attention of Demeter, even through her grief and rage, and she comes to you.\n\nYou quiver and ripple in her presence, but hold fast through the fear. You tell her of her daughter, down so far below, and watch her rage shift and change, a wide, unfocussed destructive force reigning itself in and channelling itself to rescuing her daughter.\n\nDemeter leaves Sicily, now it can recover and live on in peace. She is headed for Hades, and there will be a reckoning, but you have seen Persephone on her throne and you do not presume to guess what the outcome will be.\n<<endif>><<if $met_demeter eq "no">>You are sad to witness Persephone's unhappiness. She has eaten the pomegranate seeds and made her choice, and it has brought her doubt and sorrow. You hope that there is more to her story that has not yet been told, that there is peace and joy waiting in her future.<<endif>>\n\nYou go on your way, and you pass the river Lethe, and are struck by its presence. You know you will return here, so you do not linger long. You must [[see your parents first|going home]].\n\n

The moment is endless. You are afraid that you have overstepped your bounds, but the fear is overwhelmed by delight in her focus on you. \n\n<<if $met_demeter eq "yes">>She will return to Olympus, she tells you, and she will fight for Sicily. For Demeter. She does not know where Demeter's daughter might be, and she cannot guarantee any success, but she will try. For you.<<endif>><<if $met_demeter eq "no">>You have to find your own path, she tells you, but she will be near if she can, when you are in need.<<endif>>\n\nShe leans forward and brushes a kiss against your lips before she leaves. You forget, for a moment, anything but her.\n\nWhen you are alone again, you [[miss your home|missing the aegean]].

You glide onwards, and find that when you spend too long deep below the surface, you miss the sun sparkling on your waters, in the same way that in your previous form, you missed the salt sea on your skin.\n\nYou dip and rush and weave across the earth until you find yourself rising through the ground of the island of Ortygia.\n\nThis is the place where Artemis was born to the goddess Leto.\n\nThe island is small but the land is beautiful. It is very dry here, and the people are poor for it.\n\nHere, you could be of use, you realise. Here you could help people, in a way that would be entirely within your powers.\n\nPerhaps you will [[stay here for a while|caught]]?

<<if $met_demeter eq "yes">>You spill over yourself in your haste, sweeping across rock and grass and down under the bed of the sea. The salt water calls to you, but you do not venture there.\n\nWhen you come to Sicily, you push yourself out through the surface, cascading upwards as a geyser, your waters hot and sulphurous from the depths of the earth. Your force calls the attention of Demeter, even through her grief and rage, and she comes to you.\n\nYou quiver and ripple in her presence, but hold fast through the fear. You tell her of her daughter, down so far below, and watch her rage shift and change, a wide, unfocussed destructive force reigning itself in and channelling itself to rescuing her daughter.\n\nDemeter leaves Sicily and it can now recover and live on in peace. She is headed for Hades, and there will be a reckoning, but you have seen Persephone on her throne and you do not presume to guess what the outcome will be.\n\nDo you [[follow her to the Underworld|underworld]] to see if your own future lies there as well, or do you [[go on with you own journey|go on]]?<<endif>><<if $met_demeter eq "no">>You are sad to witness Persephone's unhappiness. She has eaten the pomegranate seeds and made her choice, and it has brought her doubt and sorrow. You hope that there is more to her story that has not yet been told, that there is peace and joy waiting in her future.\n\nDo you [[stay in the Underworld|underworld]] to see if your own future lies here, or do you [[go on with you own journey|go on]]?<<endif>>

You have not followed any path that you could have foreseen for yourself, back in your parents' caves under the Aegean.\n\nYou have made your own life, and it is a good one. Your story goes on, and sometimes it brings you sorrow or pain, because that is the way of things, but you do not doubt.\n\nYou are happy in your choices.\n\n\n\n[[Begin again?|Start]]

Your mother tells you that you cannot stay here. You do not have to marry Lethe, but they must not offend her, so you must leave, right now, that very day.\n\nHer sadness bubbles and writhes, creating great funnels that spew boiling water from the bed of the sea. The life there is forever changed, and so is yours.\n\nYou have no choice but to obey your parents. Do you swim from your childhood home with [[resentment|demeter]] seething in your heart, or [[sorrow|no demeter]] blinding your eyes?

A joining with Alpheus, you decide, would not be a bad thing. He is a mighty river, and beautiful, and he flows down to the sea.\n\nYou decide to stay with him, and you follow him back down the path of this small stream until it joins with the great body of water that is his river. Its torrent is powerful and the water dances against your skin where the spray hits you.\n\nThis is a good path, [[you will follow it|alpheus wedding 1]].

In the time that follows, you wander the island from shore to shore, bringing life and prosperity in your wake.\n\nYou learn every inch of its surface, from the tops of the hills to the cracks between the lowest rocks, and every grain of damp sand upon the beaches.\n\nAnd you learn, with time, to change your shape at will. Nereid or stream. You learn that one is not an alternative to the other, and that you can be and have always been both.\n\nThe people of Ortygia grow to love you as they thrive in your presence, and you realise that you are happy in this work.\n\nOne day you notice that there is [[work going on|fountain]] in the main square of their town.

He is seated on the bank with his feet still lost in the stream when you raise your head, and he is beautiful.\n \nHe loves you, is the first thing he tells you. He found you bathing in this little offshoot of his waters, and he loves you.\n \nThe second thing he tells you is that he is Alpheus, the great river god.\n\nHe is Alpheus and [[he loves you|love declaration]] and he is beautiful.

His life is not for you, you tell him. You are sure it is interesting and full and beautiful, but it is not the life that you are choosing for yourself.\n\nYou are courteous, and you explain your decision clearly. Who knows what opportunities might still be waiting for you? You are not ready to make just the one choice yet.\n\nYou climb out of his stream and feel refreshed and ready for the next part of your journey, whatever that might turn out to be.\n\nAlpheus is not happy. He asks you to reconsider.\n\nYou refuse.\n\nHe asks again.\n\n<<if $met_artemis eq "yes">>You think of Artemis, strong and free, who has your allegiance whether she asks for it or not.<<endif>><<if $met_artemis eq "no">>You think of your sister, who chose her kelp forest home and lives there joyfully.<<endif>>\n\nYou refuse again. [[You will make your own choice|chase]].

A joining with Alpheus, you decide, would not be a bad thing. He is a mighty river, and beautiful, and he flows down to the sea.\n\nYou call back, to the magic that made you a cloud. You can feel it gathering, sparking, rolling, all around you and you can reach out and touch it.\n\nYour mother can do this. Your father can do this. You never knew, until this day, that you could do this too.\n\nYou take hold of the magic and shape it, pull it into yourself and twist it around and it follows your thoughts, clinging and trailing like wisps of seaweed.\n\nYour vapour obeys, every particle. It pulls back, in, together, and pours you down from the sky as fat, heavy raindrops, that reform when you hit the ground. You become a nereid again, and you [[go to meet Alpheus|alpheus wedding 1]].

You miss the Aegean like you would miss your own skin, with an ache that rises up through your throat and behind your eyes. The sea tastes different here and it isn’t your own. You are out of place and every moment is uncomfortable.\n \nYou could go home now. Maybe you were too hasty in your decision not to wed Lethe. You could go to your parents, and tell them you’ve changed your mind. You’ll have to go to Lethe’s river, but you could visit the sea. You would no longer be banished. Is it time to [[go back|going home]]?\n \nYou don’t have to, though. You could go on and keep searching for a new home of your own. Maybe you’ll [[leave the sea|leaving the water]] altogether for a while – see what fortune the land and the rivers and the streams can bring you?

<<if $met_artemis eq "yes">>You know, suddenly, and as surely as if you could see her, that Artemis is near. It feels like the smell in the air at the shifting of the seasons, and like falling when you know you will be caught.\n\nYou call out your fear and exhaustion to her, and she answers you. With a sharp taste of salt and wind, her magic gathers your in, and mixes with a magic of your very own. Something you never knew you could access. It wraps your body and changing it, unpicking each molecule and redefining its place in the world.<<endif>><<if $met_artemis eq "no">>You pull together all of your concentration, all of the fear and exhaustion that courses through you, and you focus it all into wanting, needing somewhere to hide.\n\nAll the molecules of you, all the bit that make you up, answer you, with a sharp taste of salt and wind. Your body is changed, unpicked by magic you never new you could access.<<endif>>\n\nAnd all those parts of you drift, separate but together, up to meet the approaching storm. A cloud, that looks like any other, but still thinks like you.\n\nAlpheus is still looking for you. You know this without a shadow of a doubt. You cannot hide forever, trapped and with no way to find your own life. You have to decide [[what to do next|decision]].

You have lived all of your days in the caverns beneath the blue-green Aegean, where the water is warm, and the sunlight sparkles and fractures through the waves. You have ninety-nine siblings and, though many are spread hither and yon around the known waters, there have always been enough of them around that you have never been been lonely.\n \nThis welcoming sea is your [[home|home]].

You learn to love the cool, mysterious depths of Lethe's waters, and her gentleness and her compassion. You are happy.\n\nBut, due to the nature of your new beloved, you begin to forget your many siblings, and your much-missed days spent in the warmth of the Aegean.\n\nYou surface sometimes, and lean your elbows on the banks of the great river. You watch people who have arrived here in Charon's boat across the mighty Styx and sometimes they glimpse you, too.\n\nYou have long forgotten that there were any other dreams but this, that there could have been any other lives and other choices. But, half-hidden in the mist, you remember, just a little, the taste of salt water, and the feeling of the sun on your skin.\n\n\n\n[[Begin again?|Start]]

<<silently>><<set $met_artemis = "yes">><<endsilently>>\nThe sun shines down upon you and you feel utterly lost.\n\nYou never planned for this.\n\nYou have to go on.\n\nYou have nowhere to go.\n\nWhat now?\n\nYou call out to the gods to advise you, not for a single moment expecting one to [[answer|answer]].

He can offer you a lot. A great river would make a splendid home, full of life and movement and adventures. He could take you from tiny brooks winding through the mountains, all the way through his rushing torrent, down to the where, wide and placid, he wanders to touch the sea.\n\nDo you go with him, and see what [[new things|stay]] his offer can bring you?\n\nOr is it not what you choose [[for yourself|flee]]?

<<silently>><<set $met_artemis = "yes">><<endsilently>>\nShe comes to you.\n\nShe comes to you and you know at once that you are hers.\n\nThe goddess Artemis is more beautiful than any being you have ever seen before, sleek and powerful as a shark and stronger than the pull of the tides.\n\nYou beg her to save Sicily. You will serve her for all of your days, whatever her answer, and you know she knows this.\n\nShe cannot, she tells you. She cannot heal Demeter's pain, and she cannot prevent the destruction of Sicily, though it goes against every instinct she possesses. The politics of the gods are intricate, and she regrets that she is powerless here.\n\nYou find it hard to believe, but you can feel the depth of her sorrow. Thoughtless, you reach out to comfort her, and your fingers sing where they rest upon her arm. A shiver runs through you, and she holds you still with her [[eyes|eyes]].

You can't marry. You're not ready. You can't leave your beloved sea. Your siblings. Your dreams of a thousand futures.\n\nYou go back to your parents, to apologise, to explain.\n\nThey love you, and they understand.\n\n[[But|but]].

You go to your parents, and you tell them that you are sure that their choice for you is a good one.\n\nYou will marry Lethe and join your kingdom with one of the great rivers of the Underworld.\n\nYour parents bubble and dance with joy, and you are taken to Lethe right away. As you go, you wish a hurried farewell to your beautiful undersea home, to dolphins and turtles and tiny clinging starfish, a sinking sadness creeping into your centre and settling there.\n\nYou reach the ends of the sea far too soon, and are [[presented to Lethe|lethe wedding 2]].

You call out to the gods to help you, to any who can hear, but they do not answer you.\n\nThis was your fight. Your land. They are not able to help you win this battle that is yours alone.\n\nAlpheus takes advantage of your lapse in strength and surges forward, tearing through the earth towards you.\n\nHis waters mix with yours and you are caught in his currents. He pulls you back, away from the island and far across the seas, to his river, where he holds you fast, [[keeps you with him|alpheus wedding 2]].

Cara

You dive, down and down. In the undulating kelp forest, with fronds swaying softly around you and tiny, beautiful life darting every which way, you feel safe for a while.\n\nOne of your many sisters lives here, her great joy in life to protect this forest and see it thrive. She welcomes you with open arms and calm waters.\n\nYou rest for many days. You swim through the blue-green shadows with your sister and talk of the sea and the land, of the sparkling Aegean caves, and of choices past and those still to be made. \n\nYou [[miss your home|missing the aegean]].

You lurk under the surface of Ortygia, considering your options. Should you stay here? Is this a good place for you?\n\nYou stretch yourself out underneath the island, reaching tentatively for the sea. If you are to remain here, all island streams eventually flow into the sea.\n\nAs you near, you realise that you have missed something very important.\n\nAlpheus has caught up with you here. He has come through the sea, and he has found Ortygia, and you find suddenly that he is trying to force his way through earth that you have begun to regard as yours.\n\nIf he gets to you, he will mingle his waters with your own and pull you along with him, out to sea and back to his mighty river on the mainland.\n\nIs it time to [[stand your ground|fight]] and fight him, or \nshould you [[flee|give in]] and find your home elsewhere?