"Tell me about her."
Kassandra drained her cup and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Why? She's lost to me now." Was this her fourth cup? Or her fifth?
The woman sitting next to her shifted closer. "I'm a poet. And you seem a good story."
"You want a story, poet?" Kassandra didn't know the woman's name. "I can tell you an epic tale. How I killed monsters and men and hunted the heads of a hydra all across these fucking islands." She reached for the wine.
The jug slid outside Kassandra's grasp. She blinked, then saw the poet dragging it across the table. First this annoying woman had given Kassandra the wine, and now she was taking it away.
"I'm more interested in a different sort of story," the poet said, picking up the jug. She refilled her cup, then Kassandra's. "Pramnian wine. They make it here, on Lesbos. The grapes wait on the vine longer than anywhere else, growing sweeter the more they're denied the harvest. Once picked, they're piled high enough to crush themselves under their own weight. The result is as close to ambrosia as mortal hands can make it."
Kassandra knew of Pramnian wine and how sweet it could be. It had been the taste on her tongue the night she and Kyra had— She shook her head and stared at the dark liquid in her cup. This wine didn't taste as good, but then again, nothing tasted as good, no color looked as bright, everything lesser now that there was no Kyra to share it with.
The poet kept talking. "I could go to Athens and find someone singing an epic on every corner. But my poems aren't about the past. They're about the here and now."
"Right now, we're sitting at a table, drinking in a kapeleion. If you think that's worthy of a poem..."
"Always so literal, warriors. What's more exciting: listening to someone tell a tale of battle, or fighting in one?"
"Fighting, of course."
"That's the kind of feeling I'm trying to capture, but my poems aren't about war. They're about desire."
"Love poems?" Kassandra huffed a breath out her nose. "I can't tell you anything true about love."
"Not love. Desire."
"Then tell me a poem about desire."
"When I look at you, even a glance
leaves me speechless.
My tongue breaks, and thin
fire races under my skin,
as my eyes see nothing
and my ears fill with a roar."
Kassandra remembered the wanting, the thrill just beneath her skin, the drum of thunder in her ears, so vivid she could feel it. "Is there more?"
The poet smiled. "It's no longer desire once you get what you want," she said. "I gave you a taste of a poem, now give me a little of you, stranger."
Kassandra desired things she could never have again. She lifted her cup and drank deep. "She is fierce and beautiful," she began — in the present tense because that was the hopeful tense — "and she caught me suddenly in her snare..." and as Kassandra kept talking, it wasn't as terrible as she feared it would be, and for a moment it felt as if Kyra was sitting right there with her, as if she'd somehow spoken Kyra into existence, the Kyra she knew before she'd fucked everything up so badly.
Tell me about her, the poet had asked, so Kassandra did.
.oOo.
The sun was setting over Mykonos, shading the island with bright golds and jeweled greens, and Kassandra breathed in the crisp sea air and smiled before she turned from the balcony and walked back into the atrium where the symposium was in full swing.
She found Kyra talking with Barnabas and Iola in her favorite corner, the one piled high with yellow and blue flowers, and Kassandra's heart did the double-thump it always did whenever they were reunited after a time apart.
"Business is very good," Barnabas was saying. "We've added another run from here to Athens, and opened up a new route from Naxos."
Kassandra put her arms around Kyra from behind and rested her chin on Kyra's shoulder. "Soon you'll be ready to retire," she told him.
He grinned. "I'll retire when you do, Kassandra."
She could feel Kyra's laughter vibrating against her chest. "Kassandra? Retire? I can't even get her to slow down."
"Well, there are a few ways you could..." Kassandra said, and she whispered some suggestions into Kyra's ear that involved their bed, and their bed, and their bed that made Kyra's cheeks turn a deep shade of pink in a way Kassandra found immensely satisfying.
Barnabas grinned and raised his eyebrows. "It's good to see you both so happy," he said. They — all of them, really — had gone to Hades and back before they ended up in a place of stability and peace, and they'd all learned not to take any of it for granted. "Iola and I were thinking about buying some land here and making this our home port."
Iola smiled and said, "So if you know of any olive groves that might be coming up for sale..."
"Oh, Barnabas. That would be wonderful," Kyra said. "I'll put out the word."
One of Kyra's attendants approached and stood off to the side, waiting to be addressed. Kyra tilted her head in acknowledgement, and the attendant said, "I'm sorry to interrupt, Archon, but your guest has arrived."
Kassandra snuck a kiss on the back of Kyra's neck before Kyra wriggled out from her arms. "My poet is here," she said. "I'll be right back."
"She has her own poet now?" Barnabas asked. He always did love a tale well told, and he'd spent a fair chunk of his visits trading songs and stories with Kyra.
"No, this one is a traveling poet. But Kyra is a fan of her work."
"Are you?"
"You know pretty words are lost on me."
"A shame, really, as you've inspired so many."
Iola took Barnabas's hand in hers. "Let's refill our cups before the performance begins."
He raised his cup to Kassandra as the two of them wandered off towards the tables of food and wine, and Kassandra stepped closer to the center of the atrium, where she'd have a good view in every direction. She leaned back against a pillar, and settled in to wait for Kyra's return.
Soon enough, Kyra reappeared, accompanied by a woman dressed in an elegant peplos, and Kassandra had another opportunity to marvel at the ease in which Kyra could bring a room to silence, in the way she moved, and her subtle projection of authority.
Kyra stood at the edge of the steps that led down to the atrium's court. "It's a joy to have all of you here this evening," she said. "And joining us tonight is one of my favorite poets, Sappho of Lesbos."
Kassandra's eyes widened as she got a better look at the poet. She knew this woman, remembering the dingy kapeleion on Lesbos where she'd drunkenly spilled her heart all over a stranger.
She was still trying to recall exactly what she'd said when Kyra found her at the pillar, and Kassandra opened her arms and welcomed Kyra inside them.
The poet turned a searching gaze over the assembled guests, and once her eyes finally met Kassandra's, she gave Kassandra a small nod and the hint of a smile. Then she said to the room, "It's an honor to perform for the Archon of Mykonos and her friends and family. I'd start with a poem about home and hearth, but given my present company, I think I'll begin with this one instead."
"It is usually
a terrible thing to be hunted.
But when you were the hunter,
I didn't mind."
And the poem unfurled itself through the imagery of an eagle and a hunter. A few stanzas in, a murmur passed through the guests, and Kassandra could see glances being sent their way. All she could do was hide her smirk in Kyra's hair and tighten her arms around her hunter.
Eagle and hunter. Pursuer and pursued. And the poem's central question: who was hunting whom?
As soon as the poem was finished, Kyra said quietly, "I know Sappho's work, and I've never heard that poem." She turned and stared at Kassandra. "That was about us. How did she know those things?"
It delighted Kassandra that Kyra's first reaction was to suspect her of being up to something. "I met her, once. Apparently this was the result of that conversation."
"When?"
"After the Plague of Athens." When she was still reeling in grief from one loss after another, and after she'd scorched the earth across Lesbos looking for the cultist known as The Seer, only to come up empty handed.
Kyra lifted her hand, and cupped Kassandra's cheek. She said nothing, but what was there to say? They'd been together long enough to speak without words.
"I never stopped loving you," Kassandra said. Not once along the way to Hades and back.
Kyra lifted herself on her tiptoes and said, "I'm glad you believed." And then she leaned in and kissed Kassandra, softly, and Kassandra's heart did the double-thump it always did whenever she returned home.
Author's Notes:
The title of this drabble was shamelessly stolen from the title of one of my favorite poems: "When We With Sappho," by Kenneth Rexroth. You should read it.
My deepest apologies to Sappho for putting words in her mouth, and additional apologies to her, Gregory Nagy, and Anne Carson for my mangled re-translation of a snippet of Fragment 31.
Sappho's appearance in this story is an anachronism. Her life predates the Peloponnesian War by a good two centuries.