Tisiphone and the Three Furies

In a small village, not but twenty full, lived a child with a future even the great Gods of Olympus could not fathom. Born by a whore and a king the baby was banished from the city of Athens to live in the dried-up fields claimed by neither Athenians nor Spartans. The earth grew nothing but hopeless dreams and night terrors as the Peloponnesian Wars began. This place of misfits, each one banished for one unthinkable reason or another, would soon stage a tragedy inspired by Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy.

Murderers who had never shed blood to farmers who were a seed short on their sacrificial holy day. All were cursed to live out the remainder of their days in a wasteland. Their stories would never be told by the hearth of great poets or sung by the light of muses on the tongues of musicians. They would die and the life they led, for no apparent reason, would vanish from the winds of time. A chore for the Three Fates if there ever was one.

Still, the child grew in the shade of naivety and thrived on the lies woven by the lips of her siren mother. The older woman, once a lady of class and power, was knocked to her knees when her lover chose his greed over their child. She was labeled a common whore, unwanted by all men of money, and sneered at by the women on their arms. Forced to run or be sacrificed to the gods for a sunny day in spring. She chose banishment for herself and the unborn child.

She begged the Gods for help, but nothing was heard from Olympus. No sign gave her hope, until one fateful night in the fits of a vision within her dreams. This would be her salvation, the sacrifice to save her shriveled soul. Now all she had to do was find the man who could interpret it all.