Modern Kassandra, Alexandra Maddox, Chrissykat, ParfaitCherie, The First Blue – thank you all!

I'm sorry I'm taking so long to update now, but the workload is definitely catching up with me. Hopefully next month will be a little less stressful.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The next couple of days you hardly spoke to me at all. As Iphis once said, it was highly unwise to do or say anything you might perceive as an insult and you had felt insulted by my suggestion that you might subject me to becoming your hypothetical wife's slave. Now you were letting me know exactly how offended you were.

Your aloofness affected me more than I'd care to admit, but it also gave me a much needed pause for a little introspection.

I had to figure out how deep my feelings for you really ran, to ponder – soberly! – the true implications of a relationship with you and, perhaps more importantly than all of that, to try to understand the changes I had undergone since the war had turned my life upside down.

Because I knew I had changed, in some respects almost beyond recognition. The very passion I was developing for you was not only a big part of those changes, but also a sign of how deep they were.

Who was I, Hippodameia, known as Briseis, daughter of Briseus? An eighteen year old widow, born into the aristocracy of Lyrnessus, former wife of a king, current war captive and slave, maybe future mistress to my master and prince. How many different things to be in such a short life! It was no wonder I felt lost.

And what exactly were you to me, Achilles, son of Peleus? Where was this unlikely passion of mine for you coming from?

Perhaps the best way to begin searching for answers to those questions would be by looking back, by finding the girl I used to be before my captivity or even before my marriage. And then maybe try to figure what you would have meant to me if I had met you under different circumstances. In my father's house, perhaps, before I was given to Mynes… would I have loved you? Would I have fought my family's wishes, resisted Mynes' proposal and taken off with you with or without my parents' blessing? Or would I never see beyond your obvious pride and volatile temper, never get a chance to discover the more caring and human side of you?

Hence I went back to the tapestry I had all but abandoned in the past few days. It was an attempt at recreating the landscape of Lyrnessus and it would provide a good starting point for my quest in search of my old self.

I peered at the loom, brow furrowed. There was something off in my design. I scanned the half-made tapestry, narrowing my eyes. The curve of the city wall was correct, the outline of the citadel emerging above it with the palace and the temples looked right as well. Then what was the problem?

"Hum-hum." A woman was peeking through the door, holding something wrapped in a white cloth. It was one of the girls who had been so venomous on the way to the cistern nearly two months ago, the one who had accused me of acting "high and mighty". I had been rather cold to the servants from that day on, keeping my distance and probably justifying their view of me as arrogant. I didn't care. Those women had insulted me and I wouldn't stand for it. In the meantime, they had made a couple of attempts to soothe me, but I hadn't paid them any heed. It would take more than a half-hearted effort to patch things up. Only an explicit apology would suffice.

I pressed my lips together tightly. That was not the moment to delve on certain similarities in the way some people reacted to perceived insults…

I nodded curtly at the girl. She walked in and held the package out to me.

"We been bakin'", she said, "an' I made olive oil bread the way we used to do in my village. I figured maybe you'd like to try it."

It was another one of those half-hearted attempts. I took the wrapped loaf from her coldly, broke a piece and tasted it.

"It's good", I said. "It can be brought to the prince's table tonight."

"You was right to be angry the other day", she said abruptly, without taking the loaf I was handing back to her. "We was talkin' rubbish. You was sufferin', same as all of us. Is jus'… it 'urts a bit, you know, to see that them differences that was when we was free are jus' the same now we're all slaves."

I looked at her, surprised at her honesty. She was short but sturdy, her arms thick and strong, her skin permanently tanned from working on the fields, out in the sun.

"I understand", I replied slowly. "It's true, that doesn't seem fair. Maybe it already wasn't fair before, but it becomes worse when we all share a common misfortune." I paused. Her words were an apology, even if not entirely explicit. And she did have a point in her complaint. I softened my tone. "We must learn how to stand together and help one another, instead of clinging to what divides us."

"Yeah. Anyway, you was right on somethin' else too: the likes of us couldn' run a king's 'ouse the way you do. We wouldn' know where to begin." She smiled suddenly and my jaw nearly dropped in surprise. The smile transformed her, made her look young and fresh, even pretty. "I didn't even know what bed sheets was before I came 'ere. The first time I seen them prince's sheets in the laundry baskets, I asked another girl if those big white cloths was sails for small boats."

I laughed along with her. Then I broke two more pieces of bread, put one in my mouth and handed her the other one.

"This is really a specialty. From your village, you said?"

She nodded, chewing the bread. I went on:

"Where was it?"

"Across the plain from 'ere, up north", she said, then shrugged. "It was nice, but I don' like to think about it much. I miss bein' out in the fields, though. 'ere's jus' sea all 'round, 'xcept for this spit of land that's too narrow to be good for anythin'."

"Why don't you like to think much about your home village?" I asked, genuinely curious.

She shrugged again.

"Is best not to 'ang on to the past too much. The ones that do, end up walkin' into the sea." She paused, then added: "Besides, when I try to remember my village, I always see it wrecked, with the burnt 'ouses and pillaged fields, not as it used to be before. An' I don' like to think about it that way."

I stared at her wordlessly for a moment, then turned to my tapestry. Yes, that was exactly the problem: the design was perfect to the last stitch, but in my mind's eye, that same landscape was now forever clouded in black pillars of smoke that rose from a long line of pyres stretching before the city's walls. I was drawing Lyrnessus as it used to be, but what I remembered was Lyrnessus as it had become.

I looked back at the girl. She might be uneducated and blunt, overall rough around the edges, but she was not dumb. She had put her finger right on the answer that was eluding me.

"You're absolutely right", I said, admiration evident in my voice. She smiled again.

"That your city?", she asked, gesturing at the loom.

"Yes, but it's just as you say. I kept feeling there was something off in it. Now I know what it is." Then I frowned. "What do you mean, when you say that the people who hang on too much to the past end up walking into the sea?"

"Well, you know, they get stuck in it an' don' find the strength to start again."

"But what does 'walking into the sea' have to do with it?"

"They get so broken they don' wanna live anymore. So they walk into the sea an' don' come back."

"Oh. I see." I shuddered. The girl peered at me.

"You ain't like that. You got the will. You'll start all over again an' you'll be alright." A dreamy look spread over her hard features, softening them. "W'o knows, you may still get back some o' what you 'ad before. Maybe I'll 'ave me own fields again one day."

"You hope to be freed when the war is over? And go back home?"

She shook her head. "No, none of us are gonna be freed like that. An' even if I am, I don' 'ave a 'ome to go back to. Nor am I the same as I used to be. Whatever folk I 'ave left won't even know me an' I won't know them. Jus' like the village an' the fields. Nothin' will be the same ever again. No, I'm 'opin' for other fields, across the sea. Where these men come from."

I raised my brows questioningly. She seemed a little embarrassed.

"There's a guy, see. 'e likes me an' I like 'im. 'e's a warrior for the prince, but 'e used to be a farmer. We started talkin' because of that. We both miss sowin' an' plantin', an' seein' our crops grow. 'e says 'e's gonna ask the prince for me when the war is over."

"And then he'll take you home with him?"

"Yeah. We'll be married an' raise a family an' tend the fields, an' never speak of war again. 'e says I'm right for 'im, so 'e don' care where I come from and that I been a captive 'ere."

"He says you're right for him. Is he right for you as well?"

"Oh, 'e is, yeah. Jus' right. 'e's a good man, sound as rich soil." She smiled again. "'e's been fightin' 'ard and doin' everythin' 'e can to show 'e's brave, so as to cause a good impression to the prince. That way when 'e asks for me, the prince will say yes."

"Why doesn't he ask for you now? Why wait for the end of the war?"

"'e says I'm safer 'ere in the prince's 'ouse. See, if somethin' would 'appen to 'im, the gods forbid, I'd 'ave nobody to protect me. I'd become fair game for the other men. This way, there ain't no one that dares to touch me."

"I see. Well, that seems to show that he really cares for you. If he didn't, he wouldn't be taking precautions to insure your safety."

She nodded solemnly.

"Yeah, that's what I reckoned too. I mean, we're not really waitin', but…" She stopped, her whole face deeply worried all of a sudden. "Please don' say anythin' about it to the prince. 'e's terrible when 'e's angry."

I shook my head, trying to conceal an amused smile.

"I won't say anything, I promise."

She seemed momentarily relieved, then frowned:

"Is not that I'm easy. Is jus' that I figured if somethin' bad 'appens, at least I'll 'ave memories of my time with 'im. I won't 'ave wasted my chance of bein' 'appy, even if only for a bit." She lowered her eyes in unexpected shyness. "Anyway", she went on after a pause, "the reason I mentioned it is that we all 'ave someone we're right for and that's right for us. An' when we find that person, it don' really matter much where we come from or where we're at. I know for you royal folk it ain't so simple, there's all that dowry stuff an' lineage an' alliances an' things that must fit, but I think you're right for the prince an' the prince is right for you, so, I dunno, maybe you won't manage to become queen again, but maybe you'll find some 'appiness anyway."

I stared at her in silence for a while. Then, on an impulse, I stood up and hugged her. "You're a good woman. Thank you for the bread and the good wishes. I hope you'll get everything you want with your man."

She hugged me back tentatively.

"You're not 'alf bad either. I'm really sorry for the other day. Is not jus' me, most o' the girls 'ave been feelin' bad about it. We know you wasn't really playin' games, you was jus' tryin' to find your footin' 'ere, same as we all 'ad to do."

When she left, I sat back at my loom and started to undo the tapestry. I wouldn't deny the past, I would never forget it. I wouldn't be able to, even if I wanted. It was part of me, both the good and the bad in it. But that girl, with her pragmatic perspective on life, was absolutely right. The Lyrnessus I had known in my youth no longer existed. The Briseis I had been no longer existed either. Even before the war, life had changed me: the naïve girl in my parents' house had disappeared a long time ago to become Mynes' unhappy wife. That wife had experienced war, was widowed and then evolved into a different young woman in yet different circumstances. It was pointless to try to imagine what the old Briseis would have felt for you. Without the war, even you would not be the same person I knew; you'd be someone else entirely. Perhaps a man who still loved Deidamia and whom Deidamia still loved.

Speculating over what-ifs served no purpose because I was not living a hypothesis, I was living the reality of here and now. And in that reality, the real me as I now was had fallen in love with the real you as you now were.

The past was made of experiences that had shaped me, of memories that were shaping me still. But it did not hold the answer. In the past, I had thought I knew what my future would be. The present showed how wrong that notion had been. As you had said, future is the definition of unknown. There were no answers except for the ever-changing nature of life itself.

I wouldn't walk into the sea, as that girl had put it – helping me understand the reason why you had been so worried when I had demanded you leave me alone sobbing on the beach. I wouldn't hold on to the past to the point where it would break me. Nor would I allow concerns over the possibility of pain in the future to impair my chances to experience happiness now. I was not reckless, I probably never would be, but I would not let myself be paralyzed either.

I knew I loved you. I also knew I trusted you – like that girl's man, you had taken precautions to insure my safety in case something happened to you.

The real question that needed answering was the one I had asked myself after our argument two nights ago: did I want you enough to take you the way you were? The answer, it seemed, was yes.

You might be difficult, even challengingly so, but you were worth it.