"How long has it been since that child visited?"
Euryale leaned against a smooth pillar of their island temple, her delicate fingers massaging her temples. The question was rhetorical, a sigh of exasperation directed at the empty air. The island felt… larger without him. Quieter. Duller.
For years, her foolish little sister had placated her with the same flimsy excuse: "Humans are like that, sister! They wander off for days! He's probably exploring a new cove, or watching the birds. He'll be back!" Stheno would say it with a serene, unblinking smile, her voice a soft melody of lies.
And Euryale, against all her better judgement, had wanted to believe it. The alternative—that the pale, interesting little thing they'd plucked from the sea had slipped their grasp—was an insult she couldn't bear. So she'd swallowed the absurdity, day after day, until the days bled into months, and the months into… well, she'd lost count.
Until now.
"Yo~"
The voice was cheerful, irreverent, and utterly out of place on their secluded, monster-haunted isle. Euryale didn't bother to turn. She knew that tone. It belonged to the winged annoyance, the divine gossipmonger.
"We have nothing to discuss, messenger," she said coldly, her voice echoing in the quiet courtyard. "Take your tricks and your tales elsewhere."
"Aw, don't be like that! I'm just here doing a public service," Hermes said, materializing in a swirl of wind in front of her. He leaned on his caduceus, looking bored. "Passing on news to a concerned… mother… about her wayward child."
Euryale went very still. Her violet eyes, usually glazed with bored malice, sharpened to lethal points. "Cyd is on this island. He has simply been… absent for a few years. That is all."
Her own words sounded hollow even to her. A few years. The realization, voiced aloud, was a cold splash of reality.
"Looks like someone's been keeping secrets," Hermes singsonged, his gaze drifting to a cluster of oleander bushes where a small, hunched figure was trying—and failing—to become one with the foliage.
"Sister… I… I can explain…" a tiny, trembling voice piped up. Medusa peeked out, her face pale with fear.
"Enough." Euryale's voice was a whip-crack. She turned slowly, her every movement radiating icy fury. "You dared to deceive me? My own sister?"
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" Medusa squeaked, shrinking back.
"Anyway, just thought you'd like to know," Hermes continued, utterly unfazed by the familial drama. He ticked points off on his fingers. "He took a dip in the Styx. Came out nigh-invulnerable. Got some pointers from old Chiron on Mount Pelion. Learned to fight, to hunt, all that wholesome stuff. And right now? He's on a ship. The Argo. Sailing with the cream of Greece's hero crop towards Colchis. Going after the Golden Fleece. Quite the adventure."
He delivered the news like a merchant listing produce. Euryale listened, her face an unreadable mask. When he finished, she looked away, towards the endless, empty horizon.
"It sounds…" she said softly, "as though he will become a remarkable hero."
"Yep! Might even come back here one day, all decked out in glory, a full-fledged hero," Hermes said, spreading his hands. "Just imagine the reunion! What expression will you wear then, I wonder?"
Euryale ignored him. Her attention was fixed back on Medusa, who was shaking like a leaf in a storm. "Medusa. Your punishment."
Medusa flinched, bracing for the worst—petrification for a century, being tossed into the sea with weights, forced to listen to Stheno's poetry for a week…
"Find him."
"…Eh?"
"Find Cyd," Euryale repeated, her voice flat. She made a curt gesture. A long, hooded travelling cloak of simple black wool appeared in her hands. She tossed it at Medusa, who caught it in a fumbling heap. "Go. And once you do… do as you please."
"But… if I go…" Medusa clutched the cloak, her mismatched eyes wide with confusion and concern. She looked from Euryale to the temple entrance, where Stheno was undoubtedly lounging, expecting her afternoon tea. "Who will… the meals, the cleaning, your hair…"
"Are you defying me again?" Euryale asked, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper. She didn't even look at her.
"EEK! No! Never! I'm going! I'm leaving right now!" Medusa yelped. She scrambled to her feet, threw the cloak over her shoulders, pulling the deep hood up to shadow her face, and took off at a run, nearly tripping over her own feet in her haste to escape.
Hermes watched the small, cloaked figure vanish into the island's lush interior. He whistled softly. "You sure about that? She finally got comfortable in that… form. And you're sending her right into the heart of a heroic saga? To a boy who's practically a hero-in-training?"
"That is none of your concern, you meddlesive god," Euryale said, finally closing her eyes, a gesture of dismissal. "Do not presume that events will unfold as you, or your kin, might desire."
She turned her back on him, her final words floating on the salt-tinged breeze, more a statement of faith than a fact.
"Cyd. That child… will not become a hero."
---
Meanwhile, on the deck of the Argo after the day's "liberation" of a coastal village from bandits.
"Can nothing ever just go my way?!"
Cyd muttered the words into his cup of cheap, sour wine. He was wedged into a corner of the main deck, trying to make himself as small as possible. The air was thick with the smell of roasting meat, spilled alcohol, sweat, and something darker—the metallic tang of blood not quite washed from blades and hands.
The ship was a split reality. One half was a riotous, torch-lit banquet of "victory." The other half, where Cyd had retreated, was a pool of shadow and cold sea wind.
"To today's glorious triumph! A toast!" Heracles bellowed, his voice booming over the din. He flung a heavily muscled arm around Cyd's shoulders, nearly dislocating them, and raised not a cup, but an entire small barrel of wine above his head with his other hand.
"OOOOOH!" roared a dozen voices in unison. Swords and axes were banged on shields. Laughter, loud and raw, cut through the night.
"Tch." Atalanta, seated nearby on a coil of rope, scowled. A burly son of Ares was leaning into her space, his breath reeking of garlic and wine, his eyes glazed with lust. She edged away, her shoulder bumping into Cyd's. Given the choice between the leering brute and the tense, unhappy albino, she'd take the albino. At least he looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but here, which she deeply related to.
Cyd, for his part, didn't look like he was enjoying the contact. His face was a carefully neutral mask, his eyes fixed on the crackling central bonfire built in a sand-filled iron basin on the deck. He took a tiny, perfunctory sip of his wine.
"Hey! That one! The white-haired ghost!" A voice slurred from the circle of revellers. A hero—Cyd couldn't remember his name, some minor son of a river god—staggered to his feet. He pointed a wavering finger at Cyd. "He did nothing! Why does he get to sit with us? Why does he share in our celebration?"
"Which is precisely why I declined to participate in the 'division of spoils,'" Cyd said, his voice calm and carrying. He didn't look at the man, keeping his eyes on the flames. He'd watched it all. The "heroes" sweeping through the bandit camp had been efficient, brutal. Then it had shifted. They'd turned on the village they'd supposedly saved, "collecting tribute" for their services—ripping necklaces from trembling women, emptying grain stores, dragging giggling or sobbing girls towards the ship. When Jason had offered Cyd a share—a bulging purse of silver and a terrified young woman with a bruised cheek—Cyd had just walked away.
"Of course you didn't get a share! You didn't earn it!" the drunk hero shouted, lurching closer. "But that's not the point! I don't like your face! You… you diminish our glory just by being here!"
"I assure you," Cyd said, finally turning his head, a faint, cold smile on his lips, "I take no pride in your 'glory.'"
"Ha?! You think you're better than us? Just because you pulled some trick and knocked out—"
"Sit. Down." Heracles's voice cut through the drunkard's rant. It wasn't a shout. It was a low, ground-shaking rumble. He set his wine barrel down on the deck with a thud that made the planks tremble.
"Do as Heracles says," Jason added, standing up smoothly. He placed a restraining hand on the drunk hero's chest, his politician's smile firmly in place. "We are all comrades here. Let's not spoil the night."
The hero glared, muttered a curse, but slumped back onto a bench, shooting Cyd a venomous look.
"I'm going for some air," Cyd announced, standing. He gave Heracles's still-clamping arm a pat. "Since I clearly haven't earned the right to be here."
He didn't wait for a reply. He turned and walked away from the light, the noise, the stench of false celebration. He moved to the starboard rail, in the deep shadow cast by the ship's sail. Here, the only sounds were the sigh of the wind in the rigging, the creak of wood, and the endless whisper of the dark sea against the hull. The air was clean and cold. He let it wash over him, scouring away the taste of the feast.
He stared into the black water, his white hair the only bright thing in the gloom.
"This… is what it means to be a hero?" he whispered to the ocean.
Violence. Greed. Lust. Arrogance. A license to take, dressed up in the language of glory and divine right.
"Disappointing, isn't it?" Atalanta's voice came from beside him. She'd followed him, moving with her customary silent grace. She leaned against the rail, keeping a foot of space between them. "But yes. This is what they are. Most of them."
"I wasn't questioning it. Just… confirming," Cyd said, a wave of relief washing through him. He let out a long, slow breath. "It's good to know I could never be one of them. It's… reassuring."
"Why didn't you kill any of them?" she asked, her curiosity genuine. "The bandits. You had the strength. Heracles said you fought a lion. Yet you didn't draw a weapon."
"I thought there were more important things to do than compete in a grisly headcount," Cyd said, glancing down at the pure white bracer on his wrist. It seemed to gleam with its own soft light in the darkness. "They were so eager, killing two for every one they needed to, like children fighting over the biggest piece of cake. It felt… petty."
"It's how they prove their strength. Their worth. Their stories," Atalanta said, flexing her own bowstring-calloused fingers. She'd put arrows through three bandit leaders herself. It was the law of the wild. The strong survived; the weak perished. It was simple. Clean. But watching the others afterward, the looting, the grabbing… it had left a sour taste.
"I have no desire to prove my strength that way," Cyd murmured, a faint, tired smile touching his lips. He closed his eyes, letting the cool wind fully embrace him.
"So you went and bandaged villagers instead?" Atalanta said, blowing out a puff of condensed breath. "A waste of time. The world operates on strength. Always has."
"So you went to treat the villagers' wounded instead," Atalanta stated. She'd seen it. After the initial bloodlust had faded and the heroes had begun their grisly tally, she'd grown restless and returned to the village. That's where she found him. Not in the chieftain's hut being offered grateful daughters, but in a smoky, crowded lean-to, his hands covered in blood and herb-paste, calmly setting a broken bone for a wailing child while his parents wept with relief. The gratitude in their eyes had been raw, real, utterly different from the formal, fearful thanks they'd given Jason.
"Some kids were hurt. I helped," Cyd said with a shrug, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "That's all."
Atalanta was silent for a long moment, watching his profile against the vast, star-dusted sky. Finally, she spoke, her voice uncharacteristically soft.
"…For what it's worth," she said, looking away, back towards the raucous light of the feast, "in that, at least, I think you were right."