She closes her eyes. The skin over them is the color of sand in winter. She listens, and she too remembers.
She remembers standing on a beach, hair black and long as a horse’s tail. Slate-gray waves smash against rocks. Then a mortal’s hands, brutal and bruising on her polished skin. The sand scraping her raw, and the tearing inside. The gods, after, tying her to him.
She remembers feeling the child within her, luminous in the dark of her womb. She repeats to herself the prophecy that the three old women spoke to her: your son will be greater than his father.