InsaneJournal

For the first few days of her new life, Melpomene couldn’t bear to leave the hotel. The canyons carved by the fear of losing Telos were embedded deep in her psyche, and though she’d reached her hand as high as she could, and Alan had grasped it and tried to pull her out, it wasn’t as easy as all that. Her heart warned her to stay inside, with Telos, stay safe. Her gut cautioned her against stepping out, and so she spent the hours telling her son stories, singing to him, sleeping at his side. She could have too easily slipped back into this way of life completely if it hadn’t been for Alan, who encouraged her to come out for a walk with him so the maid could pass through Melpomene’s room without a wary, paranoid mother watching her every move.

At first they just walked the city block, Telos bound to her front, Alan at her side, a prickle of fear across her shoulder blades, the sense that she was being watched making the hair at the back of her neck stand to attention. But nothing happened. And nothing happened the next day, when he took her out as well. The third day, too, bought nothing; no disaster, no ruin, no loss, just a fresh cold lime and chicken salad for lunch, a comfortable squishy seat in the corner of a cafe’s garden, and Alan talking about a gig he had that night while she fed Telos, picking at her own lunch with one hand.

For the next few days after that, Melpomene only left the hotel when he was there to walk at her side, but Alan had a job, Alan had a life, and he couldn’t come every day. There came a morning where Telos wouldn’t settle, not at all, and he cried and cried, getting more and more distressed at his own cries, peeling at the edges of her sanity.

Calliope had blessed Telos with eloquence, and Melpomene felt she could hear it already in the pitch and variation of his cries, though perhaps it was simply because she spent every day with him, every night with him. Was it a muse’s intuition or a mother’s that meant she heard the subtle difference between an ‘ooaa’ and an ‘aaoo’, that she felt his own needs in her bones, knew when he was telling her he was hungry or hot or tired or uncomfortable? Although she didn’t want to believe it at first, she knew what this cry meant, too; he wanted to go outside, he wanted her to walk, he wanted her to show him the world.

It made her realise: she’d made his world as safe as she could, keeping him away from anyone who could snatch him, but in doing so she’d also made it very, very small.

Her sisters had bought her a pram but Melpomene could not bear to use it. Instead she went everywhere with Telos tied to her body, close in his baby wrap like he was still safe in her womb. Babies could be lifted from prams; if anyone tried to take Telos now, they would have had to strip him from her corpse. Telos started to settle as soon as he was wrapped close in, and his coos took on a content sound of wonder as she walked down the street, not quite as thronged by other people as she would have been in her old neighbourhood, and a little bit closer to the sky. There were less skyscrapers around here, and from the footpath that first morning alone, the sunlight touched them both.

And each morning after that, she expected to see Apollo stepping out of the sun to bring her back, but every morning, the sunlight bought heat and light, it bought out Telos’ laughter and his wide open eyes, and nothing more. Melpomene never let this relax her. She could not believe fate, or Apollo, would simply let her go, though every time Alan came over, with his offerings of bagels and coffee and most precious of all, company, she felt that painful hope stoking inside her. He believed things could be different.

She wanted his story to win over hers, but wanting it didn’t quell the fear. Ever. Telos stayed wrapped to her front whenever she went out and her gaze was sharp as knives, though she never, never carried one.



Carrying her fear with her, as though it was wrapped close as Telos, Melpomene began walking the neighbourhood, every day. She sought out places to sit where Telos had a whole array of interesting things to look at, but just as importantly she looked for places from which she could watch the world. She never sat with her back to a door, or her back to the street, and where possible, she tried to keep out of the direct sunlight. She didn't believe any of this would do any good, but had to do it all anyway.

One cafe was particularly good, both for line of sight, comfort of chair, and strength (and frequent refills) of thick dark coffee. She needed the latter – Melpomene was tired, all the time.

Telos’ demands weren’t the only thing ruling her sleep. He slept for a good solid six hours, most nights, but when he didn’t wake her, her nightmares did. They were no less frequent now that she had uprooted her life, although now when they struck and she threw on the lights, the terror did fade a little faster. Some nights when she’d thrashed awake at her old place, the fear and the exhaustion had lain so thick in the air that she would hallucinate Tragos, holding Telos in his arms as she fought and fought and lost the fight against the thickness of drugged sleep. Some nights she would wake and drag herself to her living room where she would watch Tragos plunge the knife into his neck over and over and over till the sun rose, or Telos did, calling her attention back to the present. In her old place she had smelt Tragos’ blood, she had heard his voice, she could feel his arms twisted around her holding her to her bed while Kaden took Telos further and further away. In her old place, when she woke like this, she was still surrounded by them, and had no skill, no practice, at soothing her own nightmares away. Nightmares just happened, and you suffered them for as long as they demanded you suffer them.

In her new place she was surrounded by the smell of clean linen, coffee, toast and Telos. The memory of the smell of blood would fade, slowly, yes, but it would fade, when she bowed over Telos’ head, and breathed in deep, and let the smell of her baby become her past and her present and – fates willing – her future.

But nightmares still snapped her out of sleep, and it had been a long, long time since she’d known what rested felt like. That feeling was somewhere in the distant past, alongside feelings of ‘safe’ and ‘certain’.

Well no, there were still three things left she was certain of: She would do anything for Telos. She trusted Alan. And there was no way the Fates were done with her yet.

Her outing today proved that. She was sitting in a seat she already thought of as hers (straight line of sight to the door, but away from the counter) jiggling Telos on her knee and trying to keep him happy (he didn’t want to stay happy today, he was tired, he was grouchy, he’d cried through a lot of the night something was wrong) when Telos released the leg of the bright rainbow elephant (a gift from Thalia) he’d been thrashing around, and the toy skittered across the smooth wooden floors to come to a rest right at the feet of Clio’s Will Stutely.