The next morning- as all others- Silhaume went to the temple of Athene to make her daily offerings and prayer.
Her thoughts were ravaged by the previous night's sleep. She dreamt of blood, spilt blood and woke only to hear the sounds of her whimpering echoing around her bed.
She bent from Athene's feet and touched the place on the goddess's breast, underwhich- had she been not so godly, nor a stature- would beat her heart.
She readied to leave, but found that she sighed- and could not leave the safety of Athene's gaze.
Silhaume sat in the shadows framing the doorway, silent- and invisible, as she so loved to be.
She was suddenly startled when someone entered from that very doorway. From the footfalls she sensed it was a man, perhaps someone called to summon her back to Alchenon's lair...
But no- it was Odysseus.
Silhaume knew then that he- with his bronzed shoulders, and carelessly arranged clothing- was perfection, and that all those who would ever ask of Odysseus would know of his greatness: with or without her.
She watched him kneel, so unprotected yet so brave, and his back curve as if molten and felt her breath catch in her throat.
And the tiniest detail of him only heightened her unfamiliar arousal: the curls of hair framing the back of his neck, the muscles of which tensed in his pose...
A part of her- somewhere deep inside the core of her- sang, and yet perhaps that part of her was buried far too deeply long ago- another part of her screamed.
Silhaume leapt up, and fled from the temple, from her torturous emotions, but most from Odysseus.
When she returned to Alchenon's house, again she knew that in those terrible walls that something was desperately amiss.
With a sudden fleeting panic rising in her mind she lunged to her rooms- and gasped.
He had ruined it. Alchenon and his beastly allies had ransacked the sacred space of her quarters. There was such chaos, and as her uncle moved toward the exposed panel at the back of her wardrobe Silhaume sobbed loudly, extravagantly,
"Uncle! What are you doing, why must you cause me such pain?"
Alchenon smiled cruelly, and continued his plundering- the planks were pulled loose.
Knowing that her act of weakness would not contain him, she reverted to shouting,
"Have you not done enough already? What more do you expect that I own in this retched place!"
And then her words faltered for the boards were loose, and the light that flooded the shrine space exposed it for what it was. It's simple beauty and the painstaking love that was needed to care and make it was too quickly trampled as Alchenon reached for two very unwomanly objects by Athene's shrine.
"What are these doing here?" The helmet and the spear.
Silhaume shuddered; Alchenon's expression was fierce.
"They are mine."
"They are stolen- and you should not have them," his last words- meaning to sound like an expression of false care came with harsh intonation.
She tried to reclaim them from his grasp. She failed.
Silhaume was left in her room, alone and lacking of any possessions. Alchenon locked the door and there were no windows.
After sometime, familiar footsteps paused outside Silhaume's door. She scrambled, and felt the warmth of his breath through the keyhole. She whispered,
"Odysseus, I am breaking."
Then there was Alchenon's voice, further down the hall as he called Odysseus away.
The whispered reply of his husky voice came as follows:
"Use your cherished mind- entail Alchenon's forgiveness."
The lonely, empty sound of his leave mirrored the seeming sounds of her heart as it faded.
She was forbidden to leave her room the morning next, yet her request for speaking to her uncle could not go ignored.
He was eating an early breakfast alone. How silhaume would have loved to carve his face out with his fine cutlery...
Instead, she bowed meekly at his feet, "Dear Uncle, speak not yet- for I fear you may not interpret my intention correctly."
With some alarmed surprise fading in his eyes he allowed her to continue.
"I see now, how wrong I was to disobey you. And I ask nothing in return for expressing my apology- I merely wish to ask what it is that you want me to do in order that I may gain some of your deserved forgiveness..."
Alchenon kissed her forehead and though Silhaume was unprepared for this she willed herself not to shrink back in disgust.
"Silhaume, my dearest niece, all you need do is take the same lessons of life as your cousin- let her teach you how you may, in the future, be a good wife."
When she departed as calmly as she could manage from Alchenon Silhaume ran to the beach, far past the gates of the house.
Here she fell to her knees. And vomited, until her throat burned.
