Anesidora

I like it here now.

It's quiet. It's safe. There's room to breathe, think. There's room for my personal effects. Yes, I do have possessions, and I want them tidy and neat.

You see it as plagues unleashed upon the world? I see it as an eviction of horrible roommates who far outstripped their dubious welcome. I cleaned what noxious messes they left behind here, and rest assured they did indeed leave much to be cleaned. A Herculean effort on my part, if you will.

I've learned how to create books over the years. Useful things, so much more so than the scrolls we started with. Or the rocks and clay tablets before that. Those were heavy. That tree pulping process, really – what is the phrase? - changed the game for me. I can scribe with the best of them, translating from the old texts and dead languages into the modern vernacular. Or not, depending on my whim. Sometimes the message is better in the ancient tongues, and I leave their symbols as is. I hear the message no matter what language, be it prayer or fervent wish or something deeper, wordless, raw and soul-rending.

I spend most of my days listening.

The messages, they come all the time. I hear them multilingually; I hear them melodically. I hear them in descant and harmony. Crescendo, allegro, forte, pianissimo. After all , the heart is different than the mind, and they often send discordant messages into the world.

And I keep them. I keep, as I myself am kept.

The original jar is long gone. Though god-made, there is only so much that can withstand against the inexorable grind of time. Even mountains deconstruct to boulders, to sand, to tectonic plate, to subduction, to ride the deep hot currents and erupt with a roar, transformed into new crystalline glory. Just so, I ride the tide of humans through the ages. The woman? Always with me, for that is part of her punishment. To be reborn, over and over, wherever I am carried.

She knows by now she would have been punished either way. Obey the gods, and no one dies, and Hades is cheated. Instilled with insatiable curiosity and an irresistible object and an irrefutable form, she was doomed from inception. But I must tell you, she fought the compulsion for far longer than the sagas tell. It was hidden in a mountain, and an earthquake cracked the rocks open, for it to be rediscovered in a cave. It was submerged in a deep lake, and the water nymphs floated it back to shore. It was hidden in the clouds, and the king of all birds retrieved it, believing it lost and must be returned to humans. It was thrown into the mouth of one of Hephaestus' forges, and it was mined eras later and revered as a sacred object.

Chains, disguises, distractions, sealed rooms, glues and pine pitch, gifting it to foreign ambassadors halfway round the world. We always found our way back to each other.

It was not a comfortable time for me. Those uncouth savages! Not the humans I encountered, the creatures shoved in the jar with me. Packed in with them and their habits! It was disgusting. Millions of years, sharing the same space with the things that were the exact antithesis of every particle of my existence. Outnumbered. Outmassed. Do you think you could have survived such suffering and depravity? I think not. You're too squishy, in multiple meanings of the word.

I hid. I learned many things of my keeper, the mistress of the jar.

She was not evil. If I were asked to guess, I would suppose that the All-Father realized he'd taken his revenge too far in extremis. Pouring so much irresistibilty into one flesh vessel will cause it to crack eventually, and the many replications of her form that have traveled with men to all portions of Atlas' burden show the mix and measure of all that was given to the original. Some do lean to lies and deceit, but others to the kindness and nurturing skills taught to her in the very beginning. The cleverness of the domestic crafts, the care of hearth and home, give comfort and succor when my wicked brothers come knocking on the door.

She fought against her fate like a true heroine, so of course was punished all the more for giving the men more time. You don't see her constellation in the heavens, do you? She gave men time to grow strong, to grow clever, to prosper, to learn much and tame their environment.

But the gods will win in the end.

Because, to become wise, people must suffer much.

They fight it, naturally. Those that are too clever always look for the shortcut, to divert suffering. The clever ones create proper methods of extraction and removal of evils, but the too-clever look for easier and less effort. And therefore are doomed to fail, usually taking down the well-constructed in their lust for sloth. It is the same, through the ages and stages of mankind, it is ever thus.

My brethren gather, to thwart the schemes of the clever, and aid the machinations of the too-clever.

And Hades gathers his share. The heat death of the universe may be long and long away, but it is inevitable, and it will win in the ultimate end.

I stayed in the jar, because I was hidden.

Am I as evil as the rest? Perhaps I am, and if so, I have wasted time longer than you can measure hiding my true nature from even myself. Have you experienced false hope? Felt the flame of a desire extinguished? Had a dream die and shatter into pieces in front of your eyes? Watched your longed-for lover walk away with another? Then you know my dark side, where I regret ever deciding I was different than my brothers and choosing to cling to our prison, which I transformed into a sanctuary.

And thusly I am different. Can you imagine if I had chosen to leave with the rest? What would your life be like now? Some are bad enough, with their horrid mix of my brothers - bragging and anxiety and cruelty and insane desire for complete control - can you see how me in the world would be even worse? Like the dial or notches or whatever you use now turned all the way up, with no recourse at all? How I could drain love and life and joy out of the world? Destroy any possible achievement? Wither every desire for betterment? We were never told which god put what in the jar, but I like to think that I was given a touch of regret, to make my choice to become different. It has made your world bearable, even though the suffering can be harsher than the gods intended.

The gods went too far, so I remained. A burden, but one that is both heavy and light at the same time.

I am her burden, and she is mine. I travel with her, but you will never see the “box” in which I am kept. The creation of the thing called “intellectual concept” was powerful, metamorphic. She and her children and her children's children in untold numbers carry me, and I sustain them in return.

Listen for me, in the silence. I still whisper words of encouragement and cheer, buoyancy and inspiration.

I became different than my brothers, by listening to my own words of encouragement, to transform into something better than what I was yesterday, a century ago, millennia long gone.

And so it shall be, till Hades calls the last of us to himself.

Then perhaps I will see what I can change there, as well, in the universe beyond.