The Harbinger - Bethany College

day, I would imagine. She found me by chance, and we talked for a while,
each taking comfort in the other’s affliction. I told her my tale, and when
she realized who I was, she wanted to know her fate since I have the gift
of foresight. I couldn’t lie to her, and I told her that her future would be
wrought with turmoil and hardship. However, if she could reach the Nile,
she would be restored by Zeus and would bear him a son.
She studied me with large brown eyes, and I could see her thoughts
swirling around like the fly near her flanks. Her tail twitched languidly in a
half hearted attempt to shoo it away.
“If there were anything I could do for you, I would.” I said to her. My
heart went out to her, a victim of the gods’ caprices. She raised her head
slightly.
“I will make it. I must.”
There was something deep inside her that I had never experienced before
in mankind.
“How can you be so sure?” I asked.
“It’s the only way for me. I have to be.”
“I would think that you would be distraught, especially now. The times
are bleak for mortals. Things aren’t like they used to be before Pandora.” I
said. Curse that harlot.
“Perhaps. However we have something we did not have then.”
“What?”
She looked at me with a sideways glance, as if to say ‘you didn’t know?’
“We have the gift of Hephaestus: hope. It was told to me by a priest that
he wove it into Pandora when he created her; one last gift to mankind.”
It was a gift to mortals; underneath her confounding curiosity and seductiveness,
he had placed hope, unreasonable, groundless hope that turns the
curses of life and the treacherous gifts of the gods into a blessing. Instead
of crumpling under the weight of Zeus’ gift, they have been made stronger
through Hephaestus’. But it was also a gift to me, I think. He had left me
here, but he hadn’t abandoned me. Io rose, flinching slightly as the fly bit
into her parchment-like skin. A line of blood dribbled down the white fur.
“I should go now.” She didn’t want to leave.
“You should. You have your own fate to worry about.”
“Maybe. But once I have looked after it, I’ll find some way to help you
as you’ve helped me.”
I didn’t take her words too seriously as I watched her tediously make
her way back down the mountain. But as the days have progressed, they
haven’t stopped echoing in my head, and I remember her tone and look as
she said them. She might come back after all.
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