Notes: A school project. (When given a choice of creative writing projects, I always choose to write a character monologue... oy.) Of course the god referred to is Apollo. The title was a last-minute thing, only chosen because I needed one.
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Fallen
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I can no longer sleep. The days grow brief, the darkness lingers; all light burns my eyes and a veil of weariness seems drawn over my sight. My gift, my curse, weighs upon me like it were a globe, and I poor, thankless Atlas.
I wish now for ignorance and innocence; I wish I had never heard of love. I wish I had been as weak as any woman given to whimsical fancies, and had fallen for his charms and graces, god though he was and myself unworthy. I would have given myself then, gladly, and been burned by his light, had I known that by the ruination of my life I could have saved my beautiful city from itself.
O Athena, in all your wisdom, forgive them -- they know not what they do. Is all Troy to be blamed for the weakness of one man, the selfishness of one woman? Must this be the price for the preservation of my own life? -- though even that will not last, for though I may survive Troy, Greece will be the end of me. I know this, as I know so many things, and the truth of the visions gives me cold comfort in these final days.
In the morning I will kneel before the great mirror in Aphrodite's temple; I will curse her name as I unbind my hair, and though my voice will be but a whisper in the gale of war, it will be all that I can give and more than I can afford. I will mount the mighty walls of Troy and scream and beg and weep, not because I think they will believe me but because I must -- I must say goodbye in the only way I know how; I must give them the only gift I have left to give, whether they will accept it or not.
Let them think me mad. I will love them all the same; for as long as history remembers my name, I will love Troy more than any other.