AN: Newest story :) Was actually written and submitted for an inkpop contest, so if you can read and vote for me that would be super appreciated! Time is running out though... /contests/2/forbidden-love-the-poison-diaries-writing-contest/entry/1643/
Hope that you all enjoy; it is the first time I've ever written anything about Greek Mythology and I hope I don't do it a diservice.
The birth of Narcissus was not so much an escape from the slick warmth of his mother's womb as it was a condemnation. Narcissus: the result of seduction and trickery - by the gods of course, the Greeks would never allow the offspring of mere mortals such poetic misery - and the weak heart of a woman too ensnared by emotion to deny him. His beauty rivaled that of Aphrodite herself and he caught the lustful, needy eyes of many women and men. His history was his curse though, for it had been prophesied that if he were to ever know himself that he would join the sad souls of those who had expired before him. Of course, his beauty bred vanity, and in turn inspired an arrogant attitude which did not go unnoticed by the gods. When he spurned the affections of the nymph Echo (or those of his lover Ameinias – the details had been twisted and transfigured by the minds and tongues of men, altered until it suited their needs), Nemesis, the goddess of redemption and revenge, damned him with the past the prophets foresaw and cursed him to fall in love with his reflection glaring back from the home of his father. He sat by the edge of the river, desperate, oh so desperate to embrace the man below him until he withered away from thirst and hunger and a longing for something unattainable. From the ground where he sat in his distress sprung a flower of plain white, pure and simplistic in its natural beauty.
When the child is born he smells of jasmine and hyacinth and the dark, rich aroma of leaves curled, dead on the forest floor. A prophet smiles and loosens his tongue to sing the song of the condemned.