With my hand I smooth my simple chiton, a Greek dress made from a rectangle of cloth, secured by a braided belt. Embroidered with my eagle symbol on red, and the lower skirt is blue with white stars, together reflecting my iconic costume. My tiara catches the light of the setting sun, like a vast fire beyond the horizon, settling upon the waters of the sea. Waves wash upon the sandy beach warm beneath my bare feet, around me the air is alive with the laughter of children.
"Mother come play with us." The boy called Peter asks.
I skip from the waves as the water splashes my legs, the tide comes in as the day ends. I laugh and dance from the waves, to join him and his brothers and sisters, so many children run and play around me. I know their names, for I named each one, and they call me mother. Everyone of them an angel, a cherub, and a vision of loveliness, care free and full of life. I chase them like the huntress I am at heart, and like the mother I have become I let them escape my touch, more often than not, finding joy in the magical sound of their laughter.
From Cornucopia's magical horn of plenty, I spread out a bountiful banquet on crisp white linen so every child can eat their fill of fresh fruits, fine pastries, and candies.
I take up the guitar the instrument I had mastered in life, in America my adopted country, and play for them the songs I remember.
As I watch my children eat I see three figures walking towards me.
Two women, one is wearing the clothes of a Princess of Themyscira, the other that of an Amazon Warrior. They are visions of me. I set the guitar down beside me and rise from the sands. The third is Superman, my friend Kal. I should be confused by this, and yet even though I cannot explain it to myself, their arrival seems just, even expected.
"Don't worry. I will go and see what they want." I tell the children, their faces remind me that I am the only adult they have ever seen. In all honesty I do worry, I know that I have forgotten something both important and tragic. I have buried this deep within me, to forget, and that scares me.
"Diana." Kal says with surprise, but he is not overawed. Superman leaves my other selves to take my hand, I freely give him my affection, a coy kiss to his cheek.
"Kal why have you come?" I ask him. My eyes do not meet his, rather I look on the red and yellow of the shield he wears on his chest. I have my answer there.
"You have to ask?"
I touch the crest. "This symbol means hope to Krypton's dead world, and to Earth's living planet Superman." Only now do I risk his eyes. I know when I do I will plunge back in reality, I will face what I am.
"Come back. All we need are the obols to meet Charon's price." He makes it sound so easy.
I laughed at him, and skip back and away. "Where can we go to find coin in Hades?" I ask my eyes fill with tears.
"I had hoped you would know." He confesses, his hand runs through his hair, he is both weary and worried.
The fire of sun fades across the sea, and nightfalls quickly.
"Where are these children from?" The Warrior Diana asks.
"From here." I tell her pointing to the sands. She looks at me with sadness, for we are one. Each of the three of me understands.
As darkness falls my children lay down to sleep where they are, curling up together upon the sand, tired from play, and full of fine and delightful food. The dark comes quickly as it can in the tropics, and with the dark the tide advances.
Superman looks at the waves moves quickly to where the children lie, to where each after the feast from the horn of plenty now lays down to sleep.
"Diana, they should move, how can they sleep here? The tide comes in."
I leap at him, and bury my face in his chest. "You cannot stop the tide." I weep, I am not ashamed of my tears.
He moves from me, I grab his hand, and he turns back to me, his eyes question the vision, as the children's feet are kissed by the waves, and they do not wake, the frothy waters lap around the sleeping infants and as it does the children melt, losing substance, falling away back into the sand. Just as I was made from sand so they had been made, and to the sand they return as the tide engulfs them.
I fall to my knees, my hand still in his.
"Tomorrow Kal I will make some more children like me from the sands."
"And tomorrow the sea with reclaim them?" He said angrily bringing me to him, but the anger was not in his touch, his hand was gentle, his touch spoke of compassion, and his eyes were full of understanding, but his heart beat with righteous anger.
"As I do every sunrise, so the sea every sunset undoes."
"There is magic here." The Princess Regent says. "In this moment, in this twilight."
"Yes." I agree as the water washes away the soft outlines of my children. "There is magic, for we are three together here." I hold my hand out to my other selves. "I must dance a lament." I tell them. "As I have danced and wept every night under the moon. Come let us dance together."
Kal looks on mystified as hands join and a circle is formed.
Together we sway, creating our own rhythm, our long matched hair flutters in the sea breeze, dances with us as we twist left to right.
Together we three dance, and together we sing. "Blue eyes in which would shine the distances of a morning sky, and we sang that they would not be blurred by tears. To them came the sea's embrace and to the sands you all returned until the next tomorrow."
-'*'-
I listen to Diana sing and watch her dance. Three Diana's, three goddesses, one a Warrior, one a Princess, and one a Mother. Collectively I recognise my friend, I see her qualities, her strengths and her power.
As she dances I see the Three Graces together, whom the Greeks called the Charites, the beautiful goddesses of nature – red in tooth and claw, charm - in politcs, diplomacy and love, and of human creativity and fertility.
I had never truly imagined Diana as a mother, and I understand why I never permitted myself to take that intuitive leap, as obvious as it was. Diana was my friend and my comrade, above all else an immortal Amazon Princess. I had not considered her future, not in the same way I worried for Bruce or Lois, with their human frailty and as they grew older the disparity between my life expectancy and theirs became increasingly obvious. I was experiencing first hand the reality of functional immortality, that my friends aged as I stood still, and this experience was one I shared with the Amazons. Yet Diana was the exception among her people, not the rule, Diana was the only child born on their Paradise Island.
Diana dances, three of her, their hands meeting together in the centre as they circle, hands rising and falling as they turn as one, and individually, their feet rhythmic on the sands.
I see in her the essence of Gaia, the Earth herself. In each facet of Diana's love is visible, as a Warrior and a Princess she was as a mother defending her cubs, or a Queen her subjects. Here in this tragic beach she was compassion personified, I saw in her the potential for new life, for children. I remembered how her mother Hippolyta had for centuries longed to have a child, thinking how could I be so blind, Diana was so like her, in her biology driven to bring her own children into the world. Here on these magical sands was the hardest of all Hades's tests of her Spirit, and for me the most revelatory. I cross a threshold to see Diana as a sexual being, as woman as potential mother, as a mate.
The rhythm of her dance speeds up, the chant accelerates, and I feel the magic of the twilight. It cries out to my primitive nature, lust burns within me, years of pent up internalised and buried desire, passion I could not, would not acknowledge even to myself, ignites in my soul, a hot searing fire like the sun, illuminating the deep love of friendship, testing it, and proving it be precious gold. I see Diana as a woman, yes she is my best friend, and yes I love her and desire her. She is all of these things, she is the Three Graces of Myth personified, I see her completely, and I fall to my knee.
Diana turns and steps back – the three of them stand a triumvirate back to back, their hands held high, and touching, they spin as only Wonder Woman can, becoming a blur of colour, accompanied by the crackle of magic.
"Diana forgive me." I whisper.
Her song ceases, and from the kaleidoscope of three a single Diana stands before one and whole, as Wonder Woman she drops to her knees before me, and takes my face in her hands. "What have I to forgive?" She asks. "You have crossed from life into death to win me back, to unite my fractured soul. I should ask you to forgive me, for leaving you, for dying."
I rest my hands on her shoulders. "I have loved you as my friend for as long as I have known you Diana, but I was blind to who you really were, and what you really meant to me."
"Kal." She whispers.
"Diana. I love you. I could never look at you as woman, as a friend as a comrade, yes, but as a woman I had to stop myself, I was a married man there was a line I could not cross, but I know I was lying to myself all along."
She looks into my eyes. "Now in death itself, you cross that barrier to tell me you love me. Oh Kal if gaining your love means dying I'll die a thousand times, a thousand and one nights for your touch."
I press my lips to hers. I feel the warmth of her kiss as we open to each other. My hands fall from her shoulders and I draw her close to me, her hands wrap around my neck as mine enclose around her waist, we come together in our first true embrace on the sands of a different reality, not knowing whether we are alive or dead, but for me nothing else matters but this moment.
Our embrace under the jewelled sky of the realm of the dead is defiant, it speaks of fertility, it is the kind of kiss that leads to new life, that demands more from each of us.
-'*'-
I can hardly believe it, I have Superman in my arms, his lips touch mine, and I am happy, the horrors of Hades have been banished, I am whole again, not only because I am united from trials my soul no longer divided, but because I have found true love. The ancients believed we were created as androgynous souls, which became divided into the two genders male and female, that we are fated to search until we find our other half, our soul mate.
I have dated other men, even perhaps entertained thoughts of love, but I know in the depths of my heart I was created to be one with this man, I am yin to his yang. That I was made to be the answer to the question Superman poses, and in turn I am complete him.
We huddle together under the stars, we come together as one, and yes it is a cold night in hell, but we don't care, we are together, we have each other we are one flesh.