Page 48 of Becoming Monsterous

"Anything that could help." She raises her chin, brave and strong. My little not-so-mortal girl. "I'll do it."

I step up next to the mirror and pivot to face her. "Take the velvet off if you dare. I'll be here with you to support you and walk with you through your dreams."

She does.

Chapter32

Ellie

Isee myself in the mirror's surface for only a brief moment.

My reflection swims and undulates. Colors wash across the flat oval of my reflection. The gold gilt frame that surrounds the mirror sparks to life and glows.

Then I see her.

It takes me a moment to recognize her. She's younger, slim but with well-formed hips and thighs. Her hair is long and lustrous, though tangled with foliage. High spots of color sit on her cheeks from physical exertion.

Aphrodite.

As she once was.

The mirror shows me moments in her life from what I can only assume was before she become a goddess.

She laughed beneath olive trees and held her skirts up as she forged fast-flowing rivers.

Kissed a dark-haired boy who touched her beneath those same skirts. Her hand reached down to pull at his wrist, drawing his touch further and further up, until she gasped in pleasure.

Fell down in shallow streams, her knees kissing pebbles. Tears dashed her face. The same dark-haired boy looked at her with empty eyes, his hand open from a slap.

The memories swim. I feel them echo inside me with familiarity. I know the boy: Kleitos. I can feel his hand move up my thigh just as easily as I can feel him slap my face.

Tears sting my eyes, just like they sting Aphrodite's. I hear Morpheus speak as if from far away. "Steady, Ellie. Don't forget who you are."

Shaking myself off, I refocus on the mirror. This is something I'm watching and remembering, not something I'm being forced to relive. I can keep myself separate from it instead of being pulled down in the undertow.

Aphrodite is alone for a while in the visions. She foraged for herbs and fruit. Her mother and stepfather bickered, so she left home often, finding excuses to get away from them. Sometimes she spent hours hiking to the nearby village to trade wild fruits and herbs for packages of salted fish from the sea.

Her days were all the same. Until one day, something was different.

She took a new path home, cutting through the woods near her stepfather's house to avoid walking by Kleitos's house. On a path thickly grown over with weeds, she met an old woman who lived in a rotted tree and hit passers-by with a thick heavy stick. Most of the villagers avoided the old woman, but Aphrodite could see that she was rail-thin and hungry.

So she started gathering apples for the old woman. Every day she brought them by to make sure she was fed. Then she brought extra fish from the larder, hard day-old bread, and more food, until the woman, scowling, asked her why she did it. She didn't deserve her care, the woman said.

"I'm no kin of you, no traveller sitting by your hearth." She spit on the ground, her knobby hands clutching the thick stick she used to keep pranksters and children away from her meager possessions. "You owe me nothing, girl, and nothing is exactly what you'd give me if you had any sense."

"Maybe I don't have sense." Aphrodite jutted out her stubborn chin. "Ever think of that?"

The old woman's eyes glittered. "I won't love you for your selflessness. It won't earn you any attention from anyone, either. No one cares for me, girl, and no one will do you any favors because you're kind to me."

This made Aphrodite stomp her foot impatiently against the ground. "It isn't about earning your love or attention. I bring you food and water for myself, because that's the kind of person I am. I loveyou, even though you haven't earned it and you won't love me back."

I feel something stir in my chest, even as I watch the vision develop further.

The old woman's scowls grew until they were nearly frightening. Aphrodite took a step back from her, uncertain in the face of her rage.

Dropping her thick stick, the woman took a sharp knife out of her threadbare clothes. Aphrodite only had a moment to react, to flinch in horror.

The woman turned it on herself. She sunk it into her chest with all the power and might of her frail arms.

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