Tapestry

A wondrous woven magic, in bits of blue and gold
A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold.
~Tapestry, Carole King

Calypso doesn't want to admit it, but she feels him coming before she hears it. After so many years, so many heroes arriving to taunt her with dashing good looks and bravery and charm, she knows when someone new has arrived.

And so when she feels the subtle ripples in the magical strands that form Ogygia, she throws a spade at the dirt. Time passes differently on Ogygia, she knows, but this still feels too soon. Hundreds of mortal years passed between Drake and Percy – there were other, less notable heroes in the meantime, whose visits were less memorable even though they broke her heart just the same – and yet there can't have been more than a decade between Percy and this newest visitor.

So she braces herself, just like always. A part of her knows that no matter how hard she tries to resist it, she will fall in love with this new hero the second she lays eyes on him. Curse the Fates.

But like always, she promises herself that this time she will put up a fight. The gods and the Fates be damned, this time she will not let herself like this hero. She will force him off her island, force him to leave her in peace, whatever it takes to get him out of her life before he can become a part of it.

This time she will not let her heart be broken.

Then she hears the crash.

She leaves her garden and rushes out to the beach, fully prepared to throw this hero into the sea herself if she has to, and yells, "What are you doing? You blew up my dining table!"

She has no idea whether he even speaks English, but she hasn't seen a Greek hero in years – millennia, by mortal scales – and besides, she's been practicing from the books Hermes sometimes brings her.

The hero is shouting something back, but she ignores him, clenching her fists. She knows she will have to look at him eventually and prepares herself to calm her heartbeat. She's been practicing, running down the beach and then taking deep breaths to steady her racing pulse, wondering if maybe the key is to trick her body into believing that she's not in love.

She forces herself to look at him, really look at him, and feels – nothing. Not a trace of the heart-pounding, stomach-dropping, face-flushing rush she's become accustomed to.

He's staring up at her with a mix of fear and anger splashed across his face and she's terrified that the sudden onslaught of feelings are about to come racing across any minute.

No, she needs to get him off Ogygia before the island makes her feel anything for him.

"Really?" she yells at the sky, "You want to make my curse even worse! Zeus! Hephaestus! Hermes! Have you no shame?"

The hero says something else, but she ignores him and continues to scream. She knows the gods aren't really listening, they're too caught up in the conflict between their Roman and Greek sides, but it feels good to yell. She needs to say something to make the hero want to leave, something insulting, so she adds, "You think it's funny to send me this – this charbroiled runt of a boy to ruin my tranquility? This is not funny!"

Please be angry, she prays. Tell me you want to leave.

"Hey, Sunshine. I'm right here, you know." The boy's voice is tinged with anger. Good.

Charbroiled runt may have been a bit of an overstatement; true, the smell of smoke pervades the air, and true, he's certainly not the tallest hero she's ever met, but his darkened skin radiates sunlight and his dark curls— No. She hates him and she hates his hair.

So she drags him down to the shore and makes him say the words that will get him out of here.

"I want to leave Ogygia."

Calypso feels more ripples in the island's threads, the woven magic responding to his request, and she wonders whether she truly has found a loophole in the rules.

"Who are you?" he asks, and she almost wants to tell him.

I'm the girl who is supposed to fall in love with you.

Instead, she says, "It doesn't matter," and then, just in case: "You'll be gone soon. You're obviously a mistake."

The raft still hasn't appeared. Worry begins to bubble up within her, but she forces it down. She has made it nearly fifteen minutes with this hero without the slightest inkling of love.

"Any minute now…" she mutters, partly as a reminder to this hero and partly as a reminder to Ogygia.

Please please please please please.

But then the ripples that have been forming in the tapestry of the island shuddered to a stop.

No.

"This is wrong!" she yells.

It can't be. They always, always leave. So why is it that the one time she wants a hero to go, Ogygia refuses?

The hero looks like he wants to say something, offer some comfort, but she doesn't want to listen. She wants him to go away.

So she runs.