Thread by @IAMKP

I saw her first between my thighs, a sticky mess of black curls, before the final push. And then a great cry, and she was nestled on my breast, the loveliest of all from the moment she was born. My Andromeda.

She was open-faced and limber as a child, curious and kind.

Not once did I detect a trace of pride or conceit, nor any sense at all of her self as others saw her. And maybe that is where the greatest beauty lies. She was sweet as molasses. She glistened like a star.

Praise Aphrodite, Queen of the Gods. I meant no disrespect.

I loved my daughter so.

Perhaps I was careless, and I said too much. We live in fragile times. To speak of a misfortune is to pit your self against the pain of others, to measure and to rank, whilst to share a simple joy is to injure those whom life does not favour so well.

We are graded and reduced to our status updates.

I spoke of my love, as we humans often do. I spoke loosely, and loudly. And that’s my only crime.

One fine morning, as we lay on the sand, and the sunlight glinted on her burnished skin, and she held a singing shell to her upturned ear, oh perhaps, perhaps I declared to the spray that there was none to compare. Not even the Nereids in the Aegean Sea ...

... the fifty glowing nymphs who accompany Poseidon, crowned in red coral, bearers of his Trident and saviours of the Argo, of Jason and his men.

I forgot where we were. I forgot who I was, as Andromeda swam in the Gulf of Sidra.

It was all - just - love.

But the waters, they were listening. And the word got round. And the Nereids - the ones, who are so bounteous and mild - they were vain in their hearts, they were jealous as could be, and they pleaded with Poseidon to whip up the sea, and avenge the dishonour of my motherly love.

Poseidon was fed up listening to their whine, so he slammed down his Trident and gathered up a storm, and Cetus, the monster, was conjured from the deep. And the floodwaters rose on our African shore. And my people began to tremble and weep.

Isn’t this what we often do?

Lay it on the innocents? Use them as a tool?

King Cepheus, my husband, consulted with the Oracle. And she, in her wisdom, said our Kingdom’s only hope was to take my precious daughter and bequeath her to the sea.

The decision never was mine to make. Her father dragged her to the rock, where she was stripped and chained. I cried and I cried and my womb convulsed as I watched her from above. A deluge was approaching, a writhing, frothing foam, Cetus perched upon it, grinding at his teeth.

And then from the sky, a quicksilver flash! A man with winged feet and a sack upon his back: Perseus, fresh from his victory quest, the slaying of Medusa, with the snakes in her hair, and a stare that could turn a human being into stone.

He spied Andromeda upon the rock and his breath almost stopped, and his heart overflowed, like the moment I recall when she entered this world. He fluttered down beside her and she told him of her plight.

Then he turned to face the flood that was rushing to the shore.

As Cetus bore down, from the sack upon his back, Perseus pulled out the Gorgon’s head. The tide and the monster were frozen in their tracks: Cetus in a grimace and the wave at its crest. Then they crumbled into dust and dispersed into the sea.

Perseus released the chains that bound my only child. He wrapped her in a blanket and he carried her to land. They were married soon after, and their loving was kind.

Zeus tossed me in the sky on the day I died. Now I spin around the Pole Star like a fairground ride. And history recalls me as arrogant and proud, but I am just a mother, whose love was too loud.

(Cassiopeia's Reply)