The boy had known pain – he wasn’t so entitled, so privileged, to not understand the barbs and nettles, the stings and measures, the weight of anguish settling over brows, chests, and joints. Some had been self-afflicted rites of passage, the first scars borne from first battles, bloody lacerations torn into hide, muscle, and bone because he’d been too wicked, too stupid, to see impending damnation. Others had been caused by inhumane beasts, murderers set on wreaking havoc and maiming the innocent, or the mere trials and tribulations of a child who simply hadn’t gotten what he wanted. He wasn’t sure what it was now that plagued him – a series of circumstances he’d likely managed to whittle himself, either from the unknown or the depths he’d gone to caring and compassion. He adored and cherished Enna for the finery of her devilry, for the secretive, furtive sways in which she traced the world (it reminded him of himself and his band of cutlass-bearing ruffians, all pursuing the same dreams, the same goals in another time, in crisper seasons, where their minds were fruitful and their aims were true), for the art of her heart and the mysterious entanglements layered between antlers and mending, soothing paradigms. She was like a witch, a siren, a piece of Machiavellian tendencies veiled and clothed and garbed in subtlety, and he’d basked in her songs, in her sonnets, in her laurels just as many others had done. But now, now they seemed to be reaching some great, ridiculous rift, and he was utterly confused and befuddled on how to navigate it without losing some portion of himself; he was too twisted, too angry, watching her watching him, pulling her son away, funneling Etziel from the prince, from his side, before he had a moment to conjure the meaning amidst his words and shy, beckoning speech.

He’d committed some grievous error, but he didn’t know what it was (his rage? His displeasure? His befuddlement?). To watch her shield her son away from him gave him an overwhelming, looming pause, and the dark corners of his eyes narrowed to specious depths. His jaw clenched. His disappointment funneled and furrowed down the length of his features until he felt utterly despondent, reckless, and stupid – but the notion couldn’t grate past his lips, uttered on shackles of confusion and indignation, wondering what he’d done that was so terrible, so dangerous, so treacherous, that she tightened, became a guard, a screen, against his nameless onslaught. “Enna,” he began, on a taut whisper, on a trident, on a spear, muttering between his teeth, his despair (because he was always losing something or someone, and he didn’t think it would ever be her), “You think so little of me,” and there his eyes searched to meet hers, head tilted, gaze alarmed, skull chiseled so much like his mother’s that it resembled the soft finery of rain, the calm before a storm, “that you believe I would harm your son?”

Her stance was an annihilating, crushing, knife against his throat; a sword striking against his chest, carving out his insides, slicing and dicing until there was only a residual, burning, stinging pain lancing through him (he’d always fought for the innocent, damning himself over and over again because it was delightful, because it was justice, because it was more than selfishness and corruption).

But she turned away from him, and towards Etziel, the one who resembled his father (whoever that was, whoever it happened to be), allowing him the means of escape from Erebos, the bestial, threatening oaf, and the scion just watched as the child obliged his mother’s orders, stung back into the void of stillness. He stayed on top of the water, no longer Poseidon but a renegade, watery completion of death and corruption, horror and hatred, wrath and vengeance, speckled and stained with whatever bits of ebullience lay crumbling around him.

Suddenly, he didn’t want to tell her a thing – no stories of broken, beaten children, no legends or foreshadowing of what was to be (for he would get his vengeance, or die trying, and all those promises, those benedictions, those convictions would have served for something greater, grander, than these needles poking, stabbing, into his heart). Even though she’d told the youth to disappear, so he didn’t hear the nuances, the predilections, the bitter rancor of children lost and spoiled and deceased across bloody snow, the situation would only get worse. Erebos could do naught to assuage the situation – he was no Mender, just a devil, just a fiend, just a scalded boy who’d clearly lost his way somewhere – and she didn’t trust him anyway. That much was written all over her figure.

His feet backed away, further and further, until he was in the middle of the lake and she couldn’t reach him, couldn’t see the pain, the anguish, the bewilderment of the world crashing down around him.