Greetings! This is certainly not my first foray into fanfiction - actually, I have written a reasonable amount, scattered over twenty years and heaven only knows how many odd websites (and, in the early years, newsgroup archives), but it is my first serious foray into femslash. I hope you enjoy what you read, keeping in mind I own utterly nada of the characters and their worlds.

If you are wondering about my choice of pseudonym, there is quite a bit of history about it. Sappho was one of the first female poets we have records of in the Western tradition; she lived on the Isle of Lesbos from around 610BC to 570BC, and her poetry will continue to live for as long as people resonate to beautiful writing. Sappho was the first poet we are aware of who saw love as something to cherish and strive for, rather than a madness cursed on humanity by the Gods; she was also the first female poet we are aware of who wrote about her love affairs with women. And yes, the term 'lesbian' does come from the fact that Sappho lived on Lesbos. Sappho is an enormously important historical literary figure; in Ancient Rome, she was their equivalent to how we think of Shakespeare today. (And other poets there pinched her work wholesale - hello, Catullus!)

One of the girlfriends Sappho mentions most in her poetry is Anaktoria. Here's one poem to sigh over, and you can see why I thought it very apropos to put this story (and I suppose the ones to follow) under the name of a woman who was beloved of a woman poet.

To Anaktoria

Some say cavalry and others claim

infantry or a fleet of long oars

is the supreme sight on the black earth.

I say it is

the one you love. And easily proved.

Did not Helen - who far surpassed all

mortals in beauty - desert the best

of men, her king,

and sail off to Troy and forget

her daughter and dear kinsmen. Merely

the Kyprian's gaze made her bend and led

her from her path;

these things remind me now

of Anaktoria who is far,

and I

for one

would rather see her warm supple step

and the sparkle of her face - than watch

all the dazzling chariots and armored

hoplites of Lydia.