Her Universe
“I know that you can change your color, I’ve seen it. So why black?” Euridyce asked one night, the two of them settled deep in the belly of a ship, resting on her cot, staring up at the metal ceiling above her.
Penelope doesn’t respond right away, slow and languid like oil on a cold day. But she can feel in her mind, how the other sorts, considers, thinks things through in ways without words. The way that all of the Athloki thought, an alien sort of flickering from emotions to images to sounds.
When she answers it’s simple, soft, like a whisper in the back of Euridyce’s mind, “This is just easier for me- It doesn’t mean more than that.”
It meant nothing to Penelope. To cast herself in such a hue, to choose the color of the weakest members of their society. A shameful color, a pathetic, pitiful color. A color to be disdained and looked down upon- expendable.
Worthless.
Penelope wasn’t any of those things.
She was powerful, a warrior, her partner in mind and body, every inch the equal of her- a white haired Athenian, only a step below Reya simply by birthright. Penelope was striking, strong, thoughtful… perfect…
She was everything.
Yet… Her nature. Black.
She was black. The color cast in every beat of her thoughts, every thread of her being, black eyes, black hair. A deep pitch existence where light could not touch. A color with so little value they slept through the night to avoid being in its presence, lest it break way under their sight which could not allow it to exist in their view.
She was powerful, immortal, a pillar that held the white burning stars.
But. Were those things truly antithetical?
Eurydice… Wasn’t sure anymore.
She was reminded of the galaxies outside their planet. Black as the deepest of space- the never ending expanse of black, the ebony creation of the universe itself, cradling stars and asteroids and comets and worlds alike- all held with such gentle care as to keep them all floating and spinning. Without it there would be nothing to hold it all together, no river of Styxx to connect this world to the next-
Without her the stars would pierce the sky with nothing left to keep them in place- a blinding fire that burn everything in its path until nothing was left-
Without her… Eurydice…
Would just be
Alone.