The girl in white gossamer tilted her head, violet hair spilling over her shoulder as she stared at the little boat washed ashore. More precisely, at the small life curled within.
This child… is a boy?
She knelt in the damp sand, the retreating waves hissing around her ankles. The infant was pale—unnaturally so, like marble or sea-foam under moonlight. Delicate. Almost luminous.
But… his skin is so white. So lovely.
For a long moment, she merely watched, a mysterious smile playing on her lips. Then, as the next swell began to gather, she reached down and lifted the child, cradling him against her chest. He was light, fragile as a bird.
"I suppose I'll keep you," she murmured, her voice a soft melody against the wind. Gently, she prodded the tip of his tiny nose and laughed, a sound like chimes.
"My name is Euryale. From today, you are Cyd."
"You must stay adorable forever, you understand?" Her fingers traced the curve of his cheek, then slid up to stroke his fine, snow-colored hair. Her smile widened, showing perfect teeth. "If you don't… well."
She leaned close, her breath cool against his forehead.
"Hehehe…"
---
Fifteen Years Later
"The sea is calm today."
The youth's hair—long and white as fresh-driven snow—drifted on the salt-laden breeze. He sat at the water's edge, knees drawn up, gazing toward the distant, indistinct horizon. For over a decade, the view had never changed: endless blue, endless sky, the same lonely stretch of beach. Yet still he watched.
He wasn't reminiscing about a family that might have existed across that vast water. He was waiting. Observing.
Albinism. Cyd pulled up his sleeve, studying the skin beneath. It was pale, smooth, utterly devoid of sun's touch—the skin of a statue, not a young man. He knew the term from a half-remembered past life, a world of logic and science. A genetic defect. Incurable. Avoid sunlight or suffer.
And yet here he was, sitting in the Grecian sun for fifteen years, utterly unharmed.
All thanks to those two harpies.
A flicker of anger tightened his jaw. He was grateful, truly. Euryale had saved him, pulled him from the tide. She and her sister, Stheno, had raised him. But by the time he was five, things had shifted. The air grew heavy with unspoken expectations. He remembered trying to cut his lengthening hair at seven—just a trim. Stheno hadn't said a word. Neither had Euryale. They just watched him, their beautiful faces eerily still, eyes gleaming with something that made his blood run cold. He'd dropped the shears and never picked them up again.
He knew exactly what they were. Not just monsters. Goddesses. Primordial, petrifying idols. Euryale, who could laugh like a delighted child while pushing him into the surf to "toughen him up." Stheno, who saw no issue ordering a five-year-old to prepare her tea, her bath, her everything. They were capricious, terrifying, and utterly bored.
A quiet life under their thumb was better than death in the wilds of Age of Gods Greece, where monsters lurked behind every rock and gods turned men into pigs for slights imagined. He'd made his peace with servitude.
Until the day he overheard the conversation.
"The child is becoming less cute." Stheno's voice, languid and dissecting.
"Indeed. He's transitioning from 'adorable' to… 'handsome.'" Euryale, a note of distaste in her tone.
"Yes. And he's starting to look like a man. Disgusting. He's even developing muscles."
A long, contemplative pause.
"What if we just… snipped that part off?" Euryale suggested, as if discussing flower arrangements.
"An excellent idea."
Cyd's blood had turned to ice in his veins.
Time to go.
Now, he stood, resolve hardening like tempered steel. He knelt, plunged his hands into the sun-warmed sand, and felt his fingers close around something solid and square—a wooden plank. With a grunt of effort, he pulled.
Sand erupted. A hidden pit, meticulously dug and camouaged over months, lay exposed. Inside rested his masterpiece: a small, crude, but seaworthy boat.
To set sail without provisions was madness—a slow, thirsty, sun-cooked death. But this was the Age of Gods. The rules of nature were mere suggestions. He had a different plan.
He heaved the boat toward the water, muscles straining against its weight. The keel scraped over sand, then caught the gentle surf. He leapt in, the craft rocking violently before settling. He took a deep breath, scenting the air. Calm. Serene. Ominously so.
"Now for the final offering."
Settling in the stern, he drew a sharpened bronze dagger from his tunic. He gathered the mass of his hip-length white hair in one fist, pulling it taut. The blade's edge kissed the strands just below his jaw.
He swallowed, his throat dry. Then he lifted his face to the open sky and sea.
"Great Poseidon! Earth-Shaker, Lord of the Oceans!" His voice rang out, clear and strong, carrying over the whisper of the waves. "I offer you the most precious thing I possess!"
He sawed the dagger through the thick bundle. It was tougher than he expected; the bronze grated, catching and pulling. With a final, sharp tug, it came free. A strange lightness lifted from his shoulders, both physical and symbolic.
He held the severed mane aloft, a banner of snow against the blue. "I ask only for your blessing—safe passage to a distant shore!"
The hair, still tied loosely, felt alien in his hand. This was it. The point of no return. He felt a pang of guilt, thinking of Medusa, the youngest sister, the only one who ever looked at him with something akin to kindness. But he couldn't stay. He had to live as a man, not a doll.
In this era, the gods were real, present, and notoriously fickle. Speaking their names was an invitation, a prayer they couldn't—or wouldn't—ignore. Survival depended on knowing whom to appease and how.
And he had been appeasing for years. Since he was ten, he'd whispered prayers to any deity who might listen, leaving small tokens: shells arranged in patterns, the first fruits he gathered, polished stones. They were humble, but they were his best.
He leaned over the gunwale, lowering the hair toward the water's shimmering surface. His heart hammered against his ribs.
Please. Just this once. Take it and let me go.
Splash.
A playful, miniature wave, no bigger than his hand, leapt from the sea and smacked him squarely in the face.
Cyd sputtered, saltwater stinging his eyes. He wiped his face with a sodden sleeve. His hand was empty. The hair was gone.
The offering had been accepted.
And, as usual, a "gift" had been returned.
He peeled off his soaking tunic, wringing it out before draping it over the bow to dry. Then he picked up the fat, still-flapping sea bass that had landed in the boat with the wave. Dinner.
"Your generosity is as… direct as ever, Lord Poseidon," Cyd muttered, sitting back down. He pulled a smaller knife and began expertly scaling and gutting the fish. This wasn't new. For years, his tributes had been met with divine reciprocation of bewildering practicality.
Poseidon favored aquatic pranks: a sudden drenching followed by a haul of fresh seafood. It had the convenient side effect of explaining his wet clothes and full nets to the Gorgons.
Other gods chimed in. Once, a bolt from a clear blue sky had struck a passing gull, delivering it to his feet perfectly roasted, if slightly charred. A gift from Zeus, he presumed. He'd eaten it, thanking the King of Gods through gritted teeth, picking feathers from his teeth.
"But sending me off with travel supplies," Cyd mused aloud, working his fingers into the fish's belly. "That's new. Thoughtful of—"
His fingers brushed something hard and smooth. He hooked it out.
A pearl. Perfectly spherical, gleaming with a soft, milky luminescence. A fortune. Or a ticket.
He stared at it, hope flickering in his chest. Then the sea around him changed.
The water, moments before a glassy calm, began to pucker with tiny ripples. Dozens, then hundreds. Cyd froze, the pearl clutched tight in his fist.
"More?"
The ripples deepened, coalescing into churning swirls. The sea began to bubble and froth, as if a colossal pot had been set to boil beneath his tiny boat. A deep, resonant hum vibrated through the hull, up through the planks and into his bones.
Fwoosh!
A geyser of color exploded from the depths. Not water—fish. A shimmering, swirling cyclone of sea life: scarlet snappers, azure tangs, silver sardines, iridescent parrotfish. They erupted in a cacophonous symphony of splashing scales, arcing through the air in a radiant, living rainbow directly above him.
"TOO MUCH, LORD POSEIDON!" Cyd yelled, throwing his arms over his head. The mass was immense. If it fell, he'd be crushed, the boat shattered.
The school hung suspended for a breathtaking, terrifying second at its apex, blocking out the sun. Then, as one, they dove back into the sea, vanishing beneath the foam with a sound like a thousand stones dropping. Not a single fish touched the boat.
Cyd lowered his arms, heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He let out a shaky breath.
The breath caught in his throat.
The fish weren't gone. All around his boat, the water darkened with their presence. A living, swirling vortex of scales and fins, a perfect circle with his craft at its eye. The hum grew louder, now a palpable thrum in the air.
"Oh, no."
He barely had time to grab the gunwale, his knuckles whitening.
THRUM!
With a sound like a mighty harp string being plucked, the circle contracted. The fish didn't touch the boat. Instead, the water itself seemed to gather and push. The little vessel shot forward as if launched from a catapult.
The world blurred. Wind screamed in his ears, tearing the breath from his lungs, whipping his shortened hair into a wild frenzy. Salt spray stung his eyes like needles. The boat's prow lifted, then slammed down, skimming over the waves at a speed no mortal craft should achieve. He was a speck on a leaf, hurled across the face of an uncaring ocean by the whims of a god.
He couldn't scream. He could only cling on, his body braced against the relentless G-force, his mind a whirl of terror and exhilaration. Behind him, a wake like that of a trireme fanned out, and within it, he could swear he heard a deep, echoing chuckle riding on the wind.
He was on his way. Whether to freedom or a more interesting doom, only the gods knew.