Melpomene stayed where she was until the cold started to seep into her bones. She didn’t fight the pain on the air, the deep winter freeze of it. She didn’t fight the pain of being locked out – the deep winter freeze of that, too. Every inch of her broiled with anger, with the need to hit something, to lash out, to keep lashing. She wanted to rip something apart with her teeth. Hunt down the Sheriff with Artemis and sink her knife in deep deep deeper than she’d done on the first day she’d ever felt this baby kick. He kicked at her now, and she felt such a fierce connection of kinship – both of them lashing out at those who loved them.
Both of their worlds too small to contain them.
She huffed out a breath, and it billowed like smoke, lit by the streetlights above, by the lights of Clio’s house behind her.
If Clio had come out, she would have snarled at her just as viciously, but Clio did not come out. That hurt too, the locked door had such finality to it.
Perhaps it would not be so final if she’d let her pain show in a different way, but Melpomene had no desire to degrade herself as Hermes had done, wallowing pathetically in his woe, no fight in him, no nothing, just begging for Clio’s care. The act still disgusted Melpomene with how pitiful he’d made himself. He was an Olympian, and much of the world knew his name, and still he behaved like a worm.
Melpomene stayed where she was until the cold started to seep into her bones, and then she stayed where she was for a little longer.
She did reach out to someone, though, when she’d grown so cold it began to eat away at her rage. She called Tragos, her voice low and cracked, hoarse and worn. “Please,” she asked, when he picked up. “Please come and get me.”