#6: epic

You do not have to die to see Elysium. Curious? I will tell you how it is.

Elysium is not unlike Life—what you take out of it still depends wholly on the perspective you happen to be in. Before I was sent to Hades, I had a rare few months in the company of the cherubs that are so lacking in the Underworld. Do not believe what anyone else tells you—cherubs only show themselves on Earth where they are needed.

In the moments after Jessica first leaned into me and breathed, "You inspire me," I had asked, "What do you mean?" Flustered (or playful, I know not which), she lowered her head—that crown of red luster—and she said so delicately, so sweetly, "The way you sing, Eurymachus. The way you sing."

"Are you toying with me?"

"Alas, no."

"Then what is your intention?"

"Eurymachus, I only want to hear your lyrics, to see you press your lips to the reed. I hear your melodies night and day, Eurymachus—you have cast a hex on this poor woman."

"I ... You embarrass me."

All I tell you is true. It happened exactly thus. Exactly thus.

In the following days, I composed a song on the Eileithyia Aigle, Mene Luna—I wrote a song on the Moon. She who is the Lady of Childbirth. The Radiant One. I wrote feverishly in the days, and slavishly in the nights with naught but her soft blue arms in sight, haunting my tablets as I composed on silent hills. I carved until my stylus broke—once, twice—until I was reduced to using my bloodied fingernails, but I could not take pause, lest the words—otherworldly as they were—would take flight and be lost.

I confined the words to this world, and they became epic.

On the fifth night, I sung for Jessica and she wept. Morning dawned, by and by, and she came to me fatigued, bringing me home to her court. There, covering the expanse of her yard's eastern wall, was a mural I had never seen.

In faith, it was little more than a picture of the sea, vague with the scrubbings of blue pigments, with a large moon looming in the sky, the stars having retreated to pay their respects to Hyperion-born. But what was this? A lone boat in this empty sea, with the figure of a man, sleeping.

How did she know? "You did this?"

Her face watching me without expression, she looked on as I collapsed and hugged her lovely knees.

—Eurymachus, February 25, 2003