Who: Pheme and OPEN Where: Pheme's palace, between land and sea and sky. When: Ancient Greece Rating: TBD
Ovid, when centuries later he penned its description in his Metamorphoses, would only barely do justice to the house of Rumour.
"House" didn't seem quite the right word for it - Pheme's abode was a palatial affair of a hundred great halls, towers and jutting spires, all constructed from brilliantly polished bronze and gold and set on the peak of a mountain whose fickle foothills did not always reach down to the earth of the mortal realm. On a clear day it was fairly radiant, the reflected daylight off the palace walls creating the impression of a smaller, second sun.
Its insides were filled with archways, wide corridors, open courtyards - though no doors, never a door to deny the swift spread of the murmurings and whispers that formed a constant background noise within Pheme's realm. There were people, too, if you could call them that; most were nothing more than ghostly, transparent figures, the echoes of the mortal folk who daily drifted in and out of Rumour's halls, oftentimes without ever realising it at all. Among them one might occasionally find a more substantial form who stared at everything in awe and moved with the cautious tread of a pilgrim in a sacred place - which, of course, is exactly what they were; hapless men and women who had made the treacherous journey in search of knowledge or favours, or something more.
And everywhere, Pheme herself. Many-eyed, many-tongued, many-bodied; her slender blonde form could be seen making the rounds of each room, whispering in transparent ears, watching from windows and doorways and the tops of towers - sometimes listening, sometimes speaking, always attentive.
She was in the central tower, too; the highest point of her lofty abode, where sunlight streamed through wide windows offering an almost unbroken three hundred and sixty degree view of the world below. Wings folded against her back, she lounged now on the cushioned kline that served as something of a daybed. Her gaze hovered expectantly on the stairs - there were no unexpected arrivals in Pheme's palace - and she waited patiently for her visitor to reach the top of the steps.