Once, long ago, when the battle between Titans and Gods was newly won, there was a young queen of the Amazons. Tall and graceful, she was a daughter of Aphrodite with long, dark hair and sparkling violet eyes.
One fateful day, she met a mortal warrior, and, although she had been warned of the danger of this by her sisters, she fell in love with him. Despite her secret, the queen, whose name was Eleanor, continued to rule the tribe, as was typical. She could not hide however, her pregnancy, which, when they discovered it, her subjects cast her into exile, and her lover abandoned her.
A few days later, Eleanor remained on the small raft she had been provided with, praying desperately to the gods to give her a second chance. She was starving and near dying of thirst, and her mother took pity on her. Aphrodite was about to transport her daughter to an island far away from the dreaded Sea of Monsters, when Eleanor saw in the distance, the two most feared monsters of the young world, Scylla and Charybdis.
Just as Aphrodite was about to save Eleanor, the small raft and the young woman were sucked into Charybdis. Her last thoughts, as the whirlpool dragged her down, were of her lover, for although he had left her, she still loved him as dearly as before.
It was a busy day at the Port, and Alyosha, an old sailor, was tired of hearing the boasts of the younger men. He just happened to be staring off into the horizon, ignoring the tale of a rather burly man, when he saw a small dot approaching the docks.
"Ship!" he yelled, happy to get away from his tedious duties as Supervisor of the Dock.
Excited, he ran back to the main port office to tell the Customs Officer of this new arrival. The Officer's irritating secretary greeted him.
"How do you today, Alyosha?" the secretary asked of him.
"Fine, thank you. But I have a matter to discuss with the Customs Officer. Now."
"Ooh, what news?" Alyosha sighed, but he knew that the secretary would not let him see the Officer until he told him.
"A ship. Newly arrived. Hard to tell what it looked like, it was too far away." The secretary, who had jumped up from his desk and crossed the room to greet the sailor, hurried back to his small desk and began to shuffle through papers.
After a couple of minutes, he found what he was looking for. A small, leather-bound book. He quickly flipped through the book until he found that day's date.
"That's funny. No ships are to come in today." said the secretary, confused.
"Please, the ship is nearly here, let me speak to the Customs Officer." said Alyosha, annoyed. Finally, the secretary stood up and said simply:
"I will alert the Customs Officer, and send him down to the dock shortly." Alyosha rolled his eyes, and hurried back down to the dock, where the vessel he had spied earlier was arriving.