of ladies most deject and wretched

[chariestmaid]

The first feeling is fury. When Ophelia wakes from a warbling, uncertain dream like the reedy call of a recorder, there are tears in her eyes, but she can tell they're tears of anger. Ophelia would always cry, whenever she tried to argue on her own behalf, always broke down and bit her tongue before she got another word in. But if something saddened her, she could never summon tears. Her father didn't believe her because of it — she doubted her own feelings, doubted they counted if she couldn't express them appropriately. Hamlet could, he could swear his love with all the holy vows of heaven, before he ripped up his own words and threw them back at her.

And now her father’s left her, to weep herself to sleep. All propriety, all decorum left with him, not that it was been enough to cover her. He put his jacket on her shoulders instead of his arm, and turned his back to her, to go with the king.

Fury fades, and what remains is a drowsy numbness, a sense of wrongness as she sees herself as if from the outside: a missing cog in a breaking-down machine. What should she be feeling now? Ophelia doesn't know.

Hamlet was right, she thinks. She wasn't made to live in a court. She should have been a convent girl. She should have worn a veil, so no man could ever see her face, nor smear the paintings from it.  The chariest maid, her brother once said, is prodigal enough if she unmask her beauty to the moon. She keeps her eyes down, lest the moon catch her crying, or her angry tears unmask her.

When she looks up again, she's still clutching her father's jacket, thinking of the shame she'll bring when she's found out of doors. How did she come to be in these woods? It’s a quiet relief, after the stone walls of Elsinore, to see so much green.

Comments

[chariestmaid]

"Apollo," she murmurs, cementing it in her mind. Like the god. Like the god, she thinks, connecting it at once to the familiar fashion in which this Apollo spoke of Diana. The way Ophelia herself might speak of her brother, with confidence in his habits. "My name is Ophelia."

[papadopoulos]

"Ophelia!" That -- makes sense. Claudius and Laertes are here, after all, so why shouldn't Ophelia show up? For a god of truth, though, he is adept at hiding his thoughts; and so pastes on a polite smile. He is resolutely ignoring the fact that he has a song by the Lumineers going through his head as they continue walking.

"You may find some unexpected friends here in this place," he continues, trying to figure out the best way to explain the mansion to her. "I found my brother, sort of. Well, he's close enough to my brother that it mostly doesn't matter."

[chariestmaid]

It feels strange, to be making conversation about family members, walking on the arm of the man she doesn't know, scant hours after the first man in her life accused her of coquetry and dismissed her. But she follows along, politely, consciously turning her face to Apollo as he speaks. "Close enough?"

[papadopoulos]

"Yeah." He makes a vague, fluttering gesture, a brief dazzle of light: maybe it's the sun in Ophelia's eyes, but Apollo certainly looks a little sheepish about it, though he elects not to say anything. "He's from a different world. Still the god of wine, theater, drama -- all of that, but not the one I know."

[chariestmaid]

It's an odd thought, unsettling. What would her brother be like from another world, all the same things that make him him, but with none of their history? Perhaps that's the world she's found herself in. She doesn't dare to speculate. "Dionysus," she surmises. "Which god are you?"

[papadopoulos]

He chuckles a little, and it is warm, like sunlight streaming through a window. "I've got a lot of names. Apollo. Phoebus. Sometimes Lester. Sunny. Goldilocks, if I'm in a good enough mood. But if you know Dionysus just by those descriptions, you probably know what I'm god of as well."