video | 01

[pharmaka]

[ For a brief moment after the camera flickers on, Circe appears uncertain, and then her expression at once resolves into a calm, unstirred facade, cool as a plane of water. She has unglamorous auburn hair set back in a tousled braid, eyes of an odd, subtly gold sheen, and a plain, even voice. ]

Well. I do not know whether it is for the better that most of the plants and animals and the like are familiar to me here. It would surely be a better preoccupation than what I was assigned, to acquaint myself with the local wildlife, so perhaps I will do it nonetheless. It has been made clear to me that there is an almost impossibly large amount of land to be seen.

Given I am unfamiliar with travel and with this country, I thought I would seek suggestions. In particular... [ a short pause ] I find I miss the sea. I had heard of deserts, but they are not so lovely a place to live as they are to hear tales of. And the same can be said of cities of men.

[ That is it. She says nothing about the confusion, the mingled hope and fear, that all this freedom and newness has set about in her. She is quite possibly the only divine being here. It is impossible to tell. Is that her father, keeping eye on her in the sky? If it is, she doubts he is about to say hello. In some respects she is as alone as she ever was.

In others... There are more people, more mortals, and more land than she has ever given thought to in her long life. It is thrilling and terrifying at the same time, and Circe dares to betray as little of it as she can manage. ]

Comments

[notgood]

[A bark of a laugh at that, but otherwise he keeps his humor to himself.]

Well, you are a witch, aren't you? You practice magic.

Let's say you receive them as any reclusive witch would.

[pharmaka]

So you have read the story, and still you laugh? Are you given to laughing at the ill fate of others, or just vile men in particular?

[ She can well enough guess what she must have done to cause him to laugh there. Circe has already done it a hundred times with other crews. There's no reason to think she'd have changed her process for Odysseus, great-grandson of Hermes or not. ]

[notgood]

I've defended vile men for a living. I've also been given an ill fate myself. I laugh, because it hasn't happened to me. Yet.

[pharmaka]

Defended them, how so? As a guardsman?

[ Circe doesn't really laugh at bad fates. From the moment she'd learned what would happen to Prometheus, she had been torn and stricken. Even the vile men who deserve it, she does not laugh over: she turns them to her pen with the same grim workday attitude she turns toward any arduous chore. There is some satisfaction in it, some bitter schadenfreude, but she is prone to being a humorless sort. ]

[notgood]

As a lawyer.

[Something that may not... exactly be a thing, back in that time.]

As their... counsel and representative in law.

[pharmaka]

[ It definitely was not a thing in her time. Circe attempts to piece this together. ]

A sort of learned orator in the courts? Then you must be persuasive.

[notgood]

Something like that.

In the time I'm from, we judge crimes and dole their punishments based on an elaborate system of checks and balances. A representative is brought for each side. I am that representative. It's to help keep the balance.

I'm sure the courts are much different, in your time.

[pharmaka]

Courts are most commonly used to settle disputes, not enforce the law. Such enforcing is left up to those in power.

[ She should know, considering she was summarily handed judgment without a single person even considering defending her. What mercy she was shown was purely to salve her father's pride about his lineage being punished for being too powerful.

Circe is quiet a long moment, before finishing, ] Vile men or not, I can see no bad thing in more balance. As a child, I witnessed Prometheus's torture in my father's halls, and there was not a word said on his behalf, by anyone. Those who are reviled should still be considered for mercy.

[ Not that she shows much mercy herself, sometimes, but this is also a tiredness in her beneath the bitterness, that she should be expected to hold herself to a higher standard than all those around her. If they seek to assault her, she will do the same right back. Such a man's wife weeping and asking for mercy would possibly be able to move her heart, but Circe has never been presented with that, and has never had to find out. What a mess it all is. It makes her weary and sick of the world to think on it. ]

[notgood]

And if those in power make arbitrary decisions based on bias?

[Of course, he knows she wouldn't disagree. Of those in Greek history, myth or not, god-like or not, it was rarely the women who would argue for intentional injustice.]

You... saw Prometheus's torture?

[He shifts in his seat, only visible because the video feature.]

Is it true? What happens to him?

[pharmaka]

If? [ She laughs briefly, an exhale of dark humor. ] More like when. I do not say I prefer it, only that I am subjected to it.

I saw him while his punishment was being decided upon and he was in holding, tortured even then. It is true. Most likely he is there as we speak, in my home realm. I cannot believe Zeus would ever relent; Olympians think nothing of those they have discarded. [ Circe lets out a different breath, one of suppressed sorrow. She once tried to convince Hermes to visit him and give him a cup of water, but he thought the idea so outlandish, he laughed. And she had pretended she was a hard-hearted cold woman, out of self-defense. ]

[notgood]

Yes, fine, not if but when.

[He'll roll his eyes here because semantics.]

My point is that we combat that as best with can, with the balance we try to have.

[He listens to her talk of Prometheus, and it... pains him, but he knows she's right. Even to this day, he is likely tortured for daring to give humanity knowledge. Those who go up against Gods... pay for it.

He remembers Zeus' laughter at his sarcastic remarks to Odin. How easily, Zeus and Odin both could have struck him down in that moment.]

It isn't only Olympians. It's all of them.

[pharmaka]

[ She is silent again for another long moment. She thinks of her sister, admitting in the dark night of her palace in the hissing tones of a viper what she had done to appease their brother, Perses; that Circe had been scorned as a child but being complicit instead was its own torture. She thinks of her grandmother, listening to her pleas and relenting and blessing Glaucos's nets only because her granddaughter had asked it. Circe thinks of Aeëtes and his cruelties, but how he had still spared words for her, hard words she had needed to hear, that he had not needed to say.

She has spent many hours wondering if gods were fated to be the way they are, or if it is learned, or if it can be overcome. If she is destined to share those cruelties and isolation, that extreme fear of pain and craving for power. Surely she does in some part. And yet... ]

Even as you say that, and my heart agrees, I am not sure it can be true, [ she says slowly. She picks an example that is less personally revealing than the others she is remembering. ] Prometheus did not ask for pardon. He confessed to Zeus freely. I asked him why he did what he did, and he said -- I have never forgotten -- Not every god need be the same.

... Perhaps I hold to that too tightly. I do not want to be Zeus. But is Lord Prometheus not also a god? And a cousin of mine. Perhaps he does not outweigh my other thousand cousins, but it is his words I think on so often.

[notgood]

I didn't know he... turned himself in.

[That... changes things, a little. At least in his mind. Not every god need be the same...]

I don't know what to say to that, other than that humans and gods are not very different. And that he shouldn't have confessed. Not without a plan or a bargain in mind. Being just and clever aren't mutually exclusive.

[pharmaka]

I cannot help but think that he was perfectly clever, and chose to forego such a plan. There is a particular defiance, and a message in that defiance, to accepting all consequences.

Do you not remember Prometheus because of his punishment? I do not recall mortals finding every good deed done in their name so memorable. Yet he stands as a parable for all of us. As I am probably a parable used for Titans with too much power.

[notgood]

A personal defiance, sure, but that's the best one can frame it. I think of all the good he could have done, if he was never caught.

To have someone so powerful on the side of humanity when the scales are so ill balanced against us would have been a boon. Who fights for humanity, when the Gods are feeling wrathful? The balance we were talking about- how it isn't there at all. He could have evened the odds if he was still around. Even with his sacrifice, he's still seen as a hero, but he could have done so much more.

[Spoken, perhaps, like someone who didn't learn the lesson of "your quest of knowledge can have unintended consequences."]

I remember him for his gifts. Not his punishment. Maybe I'm... unusual in that.

[But as someone who is the son of Loki, is it really that unusual?]

[pharmaka]

Are all of us doomed to be reduced to what way we may be of service to others? [ Circe can't help some bitterness behind that, an old grimy wound that has long been infected. But she lets out a breath and recognizes it for being misdirected. Certainly Chauncy has been nothing but civil in the discussion. ]

I am not in the habit of telling others what they should have done with their lives. I can hardly begin to guess at what I should have done with my own. Regardless, I have never had so receptive an audience for my old sad memories of Prometheus, and for that I thank you. He is gone and forgotten among my kin, and it scares mortals, at times, to know I am so old.

[notgood]

[He gives her a curious look when she says as much about service, but otherwise lets it lie. Clearly she's got problems with that. He doesn't, which is why he said it. All people are in service to others, in some manner.]

You're welcome. And you'll find age won't scare me. I've met beings even older than you at this point.

[pharmaka]

[ Pasiphaë recruiting her to help birth the Minotaur simply because she was the most useful, easily manipulated one had stung hard, and Circe has not forgotten it. ]

I am hardly considered old by my own estimation, [ she says with a faint laugh. ] My great-grandmother is Gaia herself. I could not fathom how I warranted such a reaction the first time I encountered it.