Born In The Dungeons

Chapter 8: Portal

Medusa led us to a thick forest full of colourful wild flowers and tall green trees. Fireflies were flying above and disappearing into their homes as the sun slowly came up, casting its golden glow around us. 

"It's breathtaking," mother gasped, voicing my own thoughts. She turned her head from left to right and admired the lively greenery. 

Athena, whose arms were still hooked around mine and mother's elbows, nodded in agreement. She took in a deep breath and sighed contently. "Mmm. The air here is so much better too. You won't find this in Poseidon."

Medusa scoffed ahead. "You definitely won't find this in Poseidon. Not anywhere near the castle at least. That selfish bastard. To this day I cannot believe that he named his own kingdom after himself. Someone needs to change it." 

"He named the island after his lover." Athena shrugged. "I wouldn't say he was entirely selfish."

Without turning around, Medusa laughed and continued walking ahead. "He only named it after her to appease her father who wouldn't let his daughter run away with a stranger that claimed to be the God of the sea." She snorted. "He raised this island and named it Asterin to impress that old man and show off his own powers. Nothing more."

"But the books say Poseidon raised this island to gift it to his one true love," Athena argued. 

"Rumours that mortals wrote down and published." Medusa dismissed it with a few flicks of her hand. "Poseidon had many lovers. Asterin was one of them -- although at her time she truly did have all of his attention. He always did confuse love for lust." She shook her head. "I thought he had loved me too. Once. But all it did was destroy my life. Look where it got me." She stopped and turned to face us with a flat look on her face. "Snakes for hair and a horse for a son."

I let out an involuntary laugh then immediately slapped one hand over my mouth. My eyes went wide. Dropping my hand from my mouth, I stammered. "I - I - I am so sorry. I did not mean to laugh at --"

Medusa interrupted me with a loud cackle. She put her hand up. "No need to apologize. I laugh at my own past-self all the time. Pegasus and I are quite a mother-child pair."

Heat crept up my cheeks. I felt terrible for laughing. It could have been my fatigue and hunger that elicited such an inappropriate response to her words, but nevertheless, it was wrong. I opened my mouth to apologize again, but she held up her hand to silence me and shook her head with a smile. At that exact moment, my stomach growled loudly. 

"Someone is hungry," Athena said with raised eyebrows and a pointed stare at my midsection. "Oh! Wait here."

The princess released my mother and I from her hold and ran over to a tree to my left. Underneath that tree, a thick ring of bright red flowers surrounded its woody trunk. They were shaped like tulips -- flowers that I've seen in an illustration in a book before, but they were much larger than how I'd imagined they would be. Athena bend down and plucked one flower off of its stem and returned. 

"This," she said, opening up its closed petals and revealing round berries as red as the flower itself inside, "is a tulipberry." She tipped over the tulip onto her palm and its red berries spilled out into a small pile in her hand. Taking one of them, Athena held it up for me to see. Then she threw it up and caught it with her mouth, swallowing and grinning in satisfaction. 

"Try one," she offered. 

I curiously peeked down at the berries in her hand and reached out to take one for myself. The tulipberry was as big as the pad of my thumb and was smooth to the touch. I held it up to examine it further. Lightly squishing the berry in between my thumb and index finger, I tested its firmness.