A/N: Well, I wrote this a few months ago, and since I've high ambitions to be a fiction writer concentrating on adapted Greek mythology, I figured I'd post this and see how it flew. It's not very long, so please read and review. Also, be gentle!
Disclaimer: The adaptation is mine, but the original myth belongs to the Greek people and Greek scholars, so... most assuredly not mine.
Glaucus and Scylla
She had shoulders burnt red from the hot sun. Her clothing was worn and tattered from the salt in the air. Her yellow hair, drenched from the spray of the sea waves, whipped around her neck like snakes.
"Scylla," I called to her from my place in the water, "why are you just waiting to die up there? Look at what the gods have given me! Don't you want this too?"
The rock she sat on was menacing and dark. Its toothed crags ripped at the sky and green tidal pools stretched out behind it like a mote.
She finally glanced down at me, her attention focused for a brief moment on something other than the distant horizon. I pressed my hands hard into the barnacle-covered rock. I felt the sharp bite of the rock slice the skin on my hands open. Scylla gasped loudly as I lifted my palms up to show her.
Rivulets of bright red blood seeped down my fingers and pooled in the concave places of my palms. A cold breeze blew over my cut hands and the rusty smell of blood filled the air. Suddenly, the blood disappeared and the gashes healed, leaving my hands unmarked.
"You see?" I laughed, "I cannot be hurt!"
"Why would I want that too?" Scylla called down angrily, gesturing wildly at my hands.
"You can be just like I am—you won't have to fear death! You won't have to sit on this accursed rock, waiting for someone to save you!"
Scylla looked back out to sea. She was told long ago that the rocks by the sea was where she was going to die, so Scylla sat on the unfriendly precipices waiting for her death.
"I would never want what you have, fisherman," she said fiercely.
I felt as if she had struck me. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out, and instead I shook my head in confusion.
"Scylla," I said loudly, "of course you do! Everyone wants to live for ever!"
"I don't want immortality if it means being like you, Glaucus!"
"Like me," I echoed, watching the hard line of her mouth press together into a sneer.
"Yes—like you, fisherman. So you can cut your palms? What do I care? So you will never be ill? What do I care? You're a monster—can't you see that?"
I glanced down into the white foam of the waves that surrounded me. The lower half of my body, so changed from what it once was, glinted silver as I swished the fish tail the gods had given me. It was the price of my immortality, and I was grateful for the gift, but did it make me a monster?
"Scylla," I said quietly, letting the sea's current pull me back from the rough rock, "you are wrong."
I did nothing more to convince her to join me and she did not turn her head to glance at me. But, as I let the waves drag me out into the sea, I watched her face, and the sneer she wore changed to a frown before she looked away from me for good.