discord
In lieu of actual content, another reposting of modern-day myth.
title: discord
rating: pg
prompt: a series of unfortunate events.
summary: the judgment of paris in a modern setting, 568 words.
Paris tells the story differently of course and so very vividly.
Mount Ida is a remote place with a railway line that cuts right through, straight between the foothills, dividing the isolated from the inaccessible. There is a secluded platform and crumbling shack that constitutes the station. The train to Phrygia only stops at Mount Ida once a week but Paris went to the station religiously every Monday evening at nineteen hundred hours to collect letters from Troy and elsewhere (to the young Paris, elsewhere was a vast unknown place that was neither the Troy private compound nor the vast spaces of Mount Ida).
The evening in question was sometime in the early summer. Paris remembers this because the shadows were long and the sky was pink (red sky at night, shepherd’s delight) and he was not alone. There was a girl standing on the platform. He remembers that she was wearing a calf-length red dress and a large straw hat with scarlet ribbons that whipped about in the wind, cutting through the air like rivulets of blood. She was holding an apple as the train drew near. Paris tried not to notice how the skirt of the dress was blown up, a Marilyn Monroe movie scene transposed to a decaying railway platform. He knows he shouldn’t have been watching her, with a childhood sweetheart at home, heavily pregnant. Oenone had laughed when he left for the lonely outpost because he was wearing a flat farmer’s cap and carried a rifle over his shoulder; he looked like any other farmer except that he was a foreigner, a not-quite-son of Phrygia. He would never have calluses on his hands.
As the train slowed down, the girl told Paris that her name was Eris and he thought nothing of it. She must have dropped the apple when she boarded the train; that is Paris’ reasoning at least.
There was very little mail to collect that day; just some junk that Cebren had ordered from a catalogue. Cebren hoarded all those little things, like limited edition corkscrews and kitchen knives and car wax. Paris looked down to see the apple at his feet (golden delicious) and he picked it up just as the train pulled away from the platform.
Eris was nowhere to be seen but Paris was not alone. Three women stood, perfectly groomed and immaculately manicured and all three stared at Paris expectantly.
He claims he was flustered. They all started speaking at once, speaking of power and wisdom and military prowess, but one of them was demure; the one with the rosy cheeks and shining hair. She whispered something about love and beauty and Paris still does not know why he pushed the apple into her hand before he hurried down the mountainside to the house of his father-in-law.
It was only when he saw Helen’s photograph in one of Oenone’s glossy magazines and his gut squirmed that he understood what he had done.
I think I am the only one who does not blame him for it; we might as well blame Peleus and Thetis for not inviting Eris to their wedding (although the gods know that everyone else was invited). Paris blames Eris herself of course; he calls her a vindictive Eve. I tell him that he has mixed up his mythologies but the principle is all the same.
What harm ever came from an apple?
title: discord
rating: pg
prompt: a series of unfortunate events.
summary: the judgment of paris in a modern setting, 568 words.
Paris tells the story differently of course and so very vividly.
Mount Ida is a remote place with a railway line that cuts right through, straight between the foothills, dividing the isolated from the inaccessible. There is a secluded platform and crumbling shack that constitutes the station. The train to Phrygia only stops at Mount Ida once a week but Paris went to the station religiously every Monday evening at nineteen hundred hours to collect letters from Troy and elsewhere (to the young Paris, elsewhere was a vast unknown place that was neither the Troy private compound nor the vast spaces of Mount Ida).
The evening in question was sometime in the early summer. Paris remembers this because the shadows were long and the sky was pink (red sky at night, shepherd’s delight) and he was not alone. There was a girl standing on the platform. He remembers that she was wearing a calf-length red dress and a large straw hat with scarlet ribbons that whipped about in the wind, cutting through the air like rivulets of blood. She was holding an apple as the train drew near. Paris tried not to notice how the skirt of the dress was blown up, a Marilyn Monroe movie scene transposed to a decaying railway platform. He knows he shouldn’t have been watching her, with a childhood sweetheart at home, heavily pregnant. Oenone had laughed when he left for the lonely outpost because he was wearing a flat farmer’s cap and carried a rifle over his shoulder; he looked like any other farmer except that he was a foreigner, a not-quite-son of Phrygia. He would never have calluses on his hands.
As the train slowed down, the girl told Paris that her name was Eris and he thought nothing of it. She must have dropped the apple when she boarded the train; that is Paris’ reasoning at least.
There was very little mail to collect that day; just some junk that Cebren had ordered from a catalogue. Cebren hoarded all those little things, like limited edition corkscrews and kitchen knives and car wax. Paris looked down to see the apple at his feet (golden delicious) and he picked it up just as the train pulled away from the platform.
Eris was nowhere to be seen but Paris was not alone. Three women stood, perfectly groomed and immaculately manicured and all three stared at Paris expectantly.
He claims he was flustered. They all started speaking at once, speaking of power and wisdom and military prowess, but one of them was demure; the one with the rosy cheeks and shining hair. She whispered something about love and beauty and Paris still does not know why he pushed the apple into her hand before he hurried down the mountainside to the house of his father-in-law.
It was only when he saw Helen’s photograph in one of Oenone’s glossy magazines and his gut squirmed that he understood what he had done.
I think I am the only one who does not blame him for it; we might as well blame Peleus and Thetis for not inviting Eris to their wedding (although the gods know that everyone else was invited). Paris blames Eris herself of course; he calls her a vindictive Eve. I tell him that he has mixed up his mythologies but the principle is all the same.
What harm ever came from an apple?
posted by Lindsey at 9:54 AM
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