How is a bonfire to show it brightness, when constantly held in comparison to the tumultuous, arrogant beauty of a star near its end, constantly at the brink of a self-destruction that would be, even then, a wonder-striking sight in its incandescence?

How is the genius to show her intelligence, when constantly held in comparison with the charismatic pull of a man closer to insanity than most ever dared venture?

How is she who is tied to the earth with lead cuffs of practicality and humanity to ever fly above the untethered callous man who wishes himself a god; who would do whatever it took to become a god?

That question, or paradox, or nightmare; that was the story of Penelope and Odysseus.

Eighteen years ago

Their wedding day had wrung tears from her pencilled eyes on the day, and it still did now. Penelope's love for Odysseus had been unsurmountable, and his had been great enough to bring the goddess of marriage and sacred matrimony from her throne upon the clouds.

Hera's gift had not been everlasting love - that was a condition of marriage, and deities did not give superfluous gifts. What she had given them had been something better, something as sacred to Penelope and Odysseus as the goddess was to Greece. A symbol of their love and commitment, a wedding bed carved from the trunk of a still-living tree. It would grow along with their devotion to each other, it would stay rooted as steadfastly as they would stay by the other's side, it would weep alongside their strives and struggles. That tree was rife with a symbolism that treated Odysseus and Penelope as one, as something to be revered.

Her husband had fallen to his knees in front of the goddess, tears in his eyes as he somehow found befitting words for the poetry that she had turned their love into. Hera's eyes had been cold as alabaster as she took in his words, and all she had said after was a warning to stay true to his marriage. Neither Penelope nor Odysseus had seen the goddess since.

That heady feeling of love and pride had nearly closed up her throat completely, ignoring her body's pleas for air. To die of love, she had thought as her eyes watered and her breaths came out in choked gasps, is the most noble way to die there ever was. She had not seen who threw the cold water in her face, who stayed by her until the palpitations had final subsided. They said her woman's body had failed under stress. Penelope would forever believe that the reason her body had stopped functioning was so much more than that. Her devotion was too big, it was a noose of love that wrapped around her pliant neck and lifted her up, up, up, breaking her body and renewing her soul while all of her dangled above an abyss that could have dropped for as far down as could be imagined.

16 years ago

'What are we made from but dust and iron?' He had asked her once. 'What runs through our veins but rusted metal and packed dirt, are we made from nothing but the scraps left on this earth from what made the gods?' There had been anger in his voice, contempt in his voice. How could we be so feeble, so weak and malleable and worthless when we could have been so much better? He seemed to ask.

But Penelope had found something strangely beautiful in his words. There was no stronger metal than unbreaking iron, there was nothing more vital for life than vibrant earth. If she was made from strength and life, then that seemed better than even the gods, made from stardust and magic and detachment and ice as they were.

'Had you been made from scraps, love, your overfilling soul would have torn that mortal vessel at its seams long ago.'

She had smiled, and he had smiled, and all other emotions had been forgotten.

10 years ago

In thirteen years, Penelope always remembered him like that; passionate and daring and wonderful. In her heart, those memories never faded, but ever evening when she retired into her rooms without him, she was always slightly colder than she had been the night before, one more detail of her life before lost to the abyss of forgotten moments. Perhaps that was the consequence of basking in the light of a burning sun for so long - anything else seemed colder and darker than life itself. Even those memories seemed warmer than the cold that had spread from her hands into her heart, as though there had been a candle lit in her distant past, and she had snuffed it out. There had been some days, bleak as they were when she truly had tried to weave his shroud. It always came out wrong, very slightly to the left of what he had been, to her, to himself, to the world. Those were the days when her tears seemed endless when her needles came within a hairsbreadth of the thin skin at her wrists. The only thoughts that stopped her from breaking that delicate skin, from staring endlessly as rusting iron poured from her body, was that she was the barrier between the throne and the dozens of men lounging drunkenly in the lounge. She was the barrier, and she would not break.

One week ago

He had returned to her without warning, on a day that had no occasion tied to it. He gave it an occasion. When Penelope saw her husband for the first time in thirteen years, she was at the place of a servant, at the beck and call of guests who never left.

The pride he took in everything he did, that need to be completely perfect at all times for everything, was absent in his hasty disguise, ragged and caked in mud as though he had stolen it from someone on the street. His impatience to be home (even when she left, there was a place in her heart hoping with all the strength it had, that the desperate, cracked light in his eyes had been just as much a longing for her as it had been for home) was visible in every action he made, every word he spoke. The peasant's clothes he wore did nothing to mask his stiff-backed gait that spoke of royalty and leadership in every step; they did nothing to mask the haughty tilt of his head, his voice used to giving orders but not taking them. Her guests must have been well treated indeed, to notice none of those signs in preference of their own egos.

Penelope had known him from before his feet had crossed the threshold; she had known him from the shadow he threw upon the sun-baked marble of their home. With him, Odysseus brought the blood back into her heart. She thought that maybe she had been a walking corpse for thirteen years; her fingers felt warm for the first time in her memory. Had she been a lesser woman, Penelope would have broken down in front of her perpetual guests.

'Is there any water for an old beggar here?' Her husband had rasped. His manner was a study in the mockery of acting; he seemed to be laughing at both himself and those in front of him. His words should have given her guests ample evidence that this was not, in fact, an old beggar. Perhaps they were so drunk, on power and privilege and liquor, that they no longer knew how to tell the difference between the deity and the destitute. Perhaps they were blind to the light, holy and transcendent, that emanated from him; perhaps they were deaf to his sardonically clipped vowels that were a life away from the words he spoke. It would be a miracle if the day did not end in bloodshed.

'There is water in here, old man,' one of the men had said, 'but only for those worthy of it.' The man, Eurymachus, had said. Greeted with raucous laughter from around the room from the mouths of those who would never be as worthy as her husband, Eurymachus might as well have spit in the rightful king's face. But her husband had only smiled.

'tell me, sire. How must I prove myself that you and your noble comrades might see me blind to the aura of poverty that has surely preceded me?'

Antinous was a fighter; he had left for Troy with her husband, and had returned ten years earlier, and it was he who spoke next with mirth colouring his voice.

'Beat us, any one of us, in a duel fought on this floor, before these good men, and you may drink from silver goblets along with the rest of us. Beat us, and prove that we can call you an equal!' Penelope took a sort of perverse pleasure in the knowledge that these men, who had made her life a living hell for thirteen years, would have ends stained with bloodshed, and that she would be there to witness it.

There was a crazed light that illuminated her husband's eyes, giving his pupils a cracked and broken look. It was the look she had seen mirrored in the eyes of madmen. (what was a madman, she had often wondered after one of his fits, but a result of the monumental boredom that is genius without a purpose?).

'A challenge is a challenge.' As Odysseus straightened his hunched back and pulled back his hood, he caught her eye. She almost thought that his calm, polished persona would crumble entirely when his eyes widened, and he took a step towards her that might have been imperceptible, had she not been hyper-aware of every move he made. She couldn't wait to see her husband again.

The men around her had stiffened, she was still not sure whether they recognised him as the rightful king of Ithaca, or they thought him as simply a man worth fighting.

'Antinous, I challenge you to a duel. Fight me in front of my own throne. Beat me, and I will give you and your men a dozen seconds to escape my wrath.' He had always harboured a love for the dramatics. Penelope had just wanted him to finish his duty and finally, finally, return to her.

'Odysseus. What a long time it has been.' Antinous murmured under his breath. He attacked the coward's way, with the element of surprise and speed on his side. He was dead before he could fully rise from his seat, a dully feathered arrow sticking from his throat. Odysseus had not given him the honour of an elegant death, nor had this man been defeated by his famed Palintotos. No. Antinous, the war-hero praised across Greece for his heroism was slain by a farmer's bow and a farmer's arrow; all they had killed before was deer and fowl, and Antinous was yet another animal in their eyes.

'Forgive me, my dear. This will just take a moment.' The first words her husband had said to her in over a decade. Then, 'run.' He said to the remaining men, who stood with their weapons drawn, 'that will make this immensely more enjoyable.'

Penelope could have forged a thousand blades in the blood that had stained her floors that day, that would all have broken under the wrath they had been created from.

And then he went to her, still watching wide eyed from her position at the call of the head of the table. Her hands were shaking from elation at seeing him again, from relief at being freed from that cursed role of hostess.

Healing and hurting were more similar than Penelope could ever have guessed. The same rush of emotion, the same trembling in her knees that bade her to fall, that same heaviness in her heart that felt like new tremors were being etched into her already bleeding soul. The same tears that welled in her eyes, that she refused to let fall.

In thirteen long, long years, Penelope had not felt safe. She had felt safer, but never safe. She had forgotten the feeling, and it was hard to remember even as she clutched her husband to her for the first time since he had left for the war. Even as the skin on her knees was repulsed by the blood sticking on the floor, her heart was swollen with an overpowering love that she had naively thought could be forgotten. They held each other.

'There has not been a moment when you have left my thoughts,' Penelope whispered, her head buried in the crook of his neck.

'I do not deserve you.' His voice was thick with tears; his hands were bloodstained.

'And yet, I am here.'

'And yet, we are together.'

What could she say to her soulmate, when he looked so much older now? His voice, his mannerisms, all changed and hardened? His head bowed under the weight of all he had seen and all he had done; his stripped pride leaving nothing but the hollow shell of a broken man? What had caused this?

What could he say to his soulmate, when she looked so much wearier now? Her voice, her hands, hardened under the weight of responsibility and abuse? Her eyes leaking tears held back for years; her stripped faith leaving nothing of the painfully bright optimism she had once held? He had caused this.

Her hands were crusted in the blood that covered his body; his shirt was soaked in her tears. They slept in each other's arms, peaceful for the first time in both of their memories.

6 days ago

'Seven years.' There was a ringing in her ears, a white noise that numbed her down so that she did not feel anger, or hurt, or sorrow. She did not feel anything. 'You spent seven years with that woman, and not once did you think to send me a letter, send someone in your stead, send anything to me, if only to announce your existence on this earth?' His head was bowed as he gazed up at her, he had never looked more powerless, and still Penelope could not find it within herself to dredge up emotion. 'I would have accepted it, had you abandoned you responsibility as King and my husband. At least you might have freed me from the hell I survived for you.' The words were leaving her mouth without her thinking; nothing she could have said with any meaning seemed to make sense in this senseless situation. 'Why did you even come back.'

'because I still loved you; because I realised my mistakes; because I could not bear another moment without you, my dearest.' His words were empty, and they had no affect on her. Dearest. Out of how many, she did not know, and she did not want to know. He could not bear another moment without her, and yet he had survived for seven years well enough.

As she stood up from their bed without any destination in mind, Penelope realised how much quieter Odysseus looked now. Like the eery silence in a battlefield after the fact; the air still stinking with the cents of war, ringing with the aftermath of a thousand tons of steel wielded in unthinking passion. He looked a broken man, and Penelope still did not care.

Still, there was still a voice that kept murmuring in the back of her head. A broken man and a hollow woman. How strangely fitting. It seemed to say. maybe he just made a mistake. Maybe she was overreacting. But then why did that strange emptiness in her chest feel so much better than a heart that was used to being constantly weighed down by anxiety and sorrow?

And then she did. Halfway to her own quarters, that she had carved out over thirteen years of her relentless suitors slowly taking over her home like the insufferable plague they had been, she cared.

5 days ago

There is no shame in asking for help, dear.

On the paper-thin mattress that she had spent a decade of her life, head in her hands, Penelope had already looked the portrait of one on the brink of that kind of sorrow that drove men out of their minds. Maybe her mind had been edging further and further away for longer than she had believed; maybe this was it.

But voices were common in Greece. They were common for those who deserved them, for good or evil. And the goddess of marriage had made herself an icon, burning itself into the most pivotal moments of Penelope's life so far. It would only be [expected] that Hera were to appear now.

Maybe there was resentment that coloured her voice as she spoke to the goddess, but in a world where the otherworldly was more worldly than those who walked that bare earth, and magic was hunted for its brilliance, Penelope would never admit it. why should she be resentful, though? Her anger could have been written as the irrational wrath of an emotional woman who believed she had been wronged, had marriage herself not intervened. Now, she was not a mere mortal woman swimming against the relentless tides of a history written by men, dictated by her husband. Now, she was a pilgrim of the most holy kind, led by the fates themselves towards a destiny shaped by gods. Now, she could not turn back. Now, it was not a choice she had.

'Why are you here?' Penelope whispered.

Marriage requires hard work, and for someone who has so toiled in its holy name, it is all he can do to stay true. And I have the power to keep him true. Penelope looked up, for where else is a supplicant to look but the fathomless ether, powerful and detached? There was no trust, no blind faith in her expression as she scanned an untainted blue sky from her window, but there was a wild sort of fury, directed at nobody and everybody, but mostly at her own heart, for who was it to keep her chained to a life she no longer wanted to live?

She looked up and fell to her knees. 'How could he do this?' she cried, 'is there no concept of commitment; is a duty to love nothing but a bond frayed by time and space? My lady, how could you protect this? How could matrimony be holy?' Perhaps Hera had no choice in the matter, Penelope had thought then, for that was surely the only reason she could have said the words she did, and still have called herself a guardian of love in the form of commitment.

Men are fickle creatures, dear. If you give them your soul, they will leave you the hollow shell you once said you would be without them.

'Is love no longer a bond of trust, but steel?' Penelope had spent thirteen years beating men who had already given their hearts to the throne back with words and promises of a never-finished shroud. She had spent thirteen years dedicated to him completely, loving him with all the power that she believed the bonds of marriage held. In thirteen years, she could have played any part at all in that great theatre that was life, but she had chosen to play the part of the dutiful wife? She had wasted thirteen years.

Her neck strained, she looked forward, 'I will not bind him to me. Fickle as men might be, they make the choices they do.' Penelope was not sure that the goddess was still listening, they tended to lose interest quickly after one lost their desperation. Still, one had to wonder. If that was the attention span of the being who embodied patience and duty and faithfulness, then what could be said about the mimicry of her holy name that men practiced?

Penelope stood up. Iron could be bent, but it needed more than heartache to break.

Now

He came back from a thirteen year absence. She left.

The memories that flashed through her mind as she packed up everything that belonged to her tinted her vision in all the colours of a nebula. The cold stone walls seemed to glare down at her, backlit in the cold light of a waning crescent moon. They remembered what she was trying to forget.

It was not that she did not love him. The least she could do was visit their shared room once last time, dusty and cold with thirteen years of unuse.

Their wedding bed was a symbol for devotion; for everlasting love. Her devotion. Her everlasting love. It was a tainted allegory for a concept that was worthless without a reciprocity that Penelope was no longer sure she believed in. She respected love and commitment to much for her to allow a stained and broken example to epitomize them. Penelope barely felt the match in her hand, lighter than a feather, as she held it to the living wood of their wedding bed. The heat followed her from their old room though, smoke wafting around her ankles, grasping at her like a malicious, bodiless being.

As she hefted thirteen years of unwavering loyalty onto her shoulders, the burnt cedar smell of their wedding bed now in smoulders, warm for the first time since long before he left, made its way into her nose. How terribly fitting, that even as she left, he was the only thing in her mind. How terribly, terrifyingly, truly fitting.

There were too many memories in the palace, equally gruesome and golden, and they were all trying their hardest to batter down the barriers in Penelope's mind as she leant on the queen's throne in a room that still stank of vinegar and blood. She did not want to leave. But she needed to. The perpetually draughty room was chilled with the cold night air, and she pulled her wrap tighter around her shoulders. It felt like she would never again be warmed - she had left her sun, to wander around in abysmal space, free and lonely.

Her steps did not echo through the newly empty castle. If the years had taught her anything, it was how to move silently and smoothly around a house that she should have been ruling over. Her back felt heavy, not only with thirteen years of loyalty, but with a depthless devotion without aim. The strings that kept her bound to him were stretched taught; when would they break, when would the pain cease?

The bright, cold night air stung her cheeks and her lungs as she stepped outside the palace; the world seemed empty with the prospect of a life without him. Maybe, when the pain was not so fresh and stinging, that emptiness would reveal itself as begging to be filled, as silent in wait for opportunity instead of the listless silence she felt in her heart and mind and soul now.