Medusa had grown up in a posh little island kingdom. She’d been graced by some of the finer things in life, a little art and beauty sprinkled onto people, places, and things to raise their spirits.

  But in here, it wasn’t sprinkled. It was on every surface.

  Just inside the gates, she found herself in the midst of a pavilion. Tiles spiraled in whites, yellows and blues around the floor. The glazed mosaic lined up together so smoothly, her feet started to glide across them like ice. She found herself tracing the patterns with her eyes, seeing where they curled and split like crashing waves. After a few steps, she noticed the tile held an iridescent sheen that seemed to shift from blues to cyans to greens as she walked. It was like walking on water.

  Her eyes traced up to the walls, with pillars arching upwards to come to almond points above the doorways. They looked carved, sculpted, with natural lines flowing up and across them - no - these were trees. Roots fanned out at the base, and branches above, but each of them carefully braided to intertwine with the next. Even the grays and browns of the bark seemed to crackle symmetrically in patterns. Dryads, she remembered. Even their work looks like play.

  Yet there’s one thing that meant even more to her than this: people. Clusters of them, dozens in this room alone, with more down the halls that branched off of them. Some posed as intentionally as statues as they conversed, as they knew people were looking at them. Others walking and talking emphatically with one hand, while trying to control the other so they didn’t spill their drinks. A couple of couples ran around the corner as carelessly as children.

  Medusa was in awe. She checked on the others. Sisyphus’ eyes crushed half-shut by his rising cheeks, elevated by his grin. Arachne stood with her back to the others, shifty as she tended to be in open and populated spaces, but her brow and her jaw softened in spite of herself. Echo took in the sights like a child at the fair, her thin eyebrows raised passed her hairline as her eyes drifted from one sight to the next. Argos had nearly all hundred of his eyes open; it was the look one has when they say “this is a sight for sore eyes,” where longing meets relief. A long sigh made its way out of his chest, and his shoulders sank with it.

  It felt good to see the team having a good…minute. The sun was high, and this looked like it’d be the first of hundreds of minutes to come.

  But first: new people. She kicked up her feet and practically skipped up to a trio of tanner women in feather frocks, lounging by a fountain in the center.

  “Hiiii! How’re you doin’? I’m Medusa.” She did a little hand-wave, her elbows squeezed fast to her sides in excitement.

  “Oh! I mean - just drinkin’ it all in.” The woman had only jumped for a second upon seeing her and half a dozen vipers bounding up to her. It must not have been such a novelty here, as she sank her weight back onto one hip and gestured a hand casually around the room.

  “I know, right? This place is like if art and nature had a baby!” Maybe not how she would’ve worded it if she’d thought about it, but, this worked.

  The woman’s eyes widened a bit in amusement. She turned and chortled with her mates. “She says - if art, and nature - had a baby - aight, I can see it, I can see it!” It hadn’t been clear if the woman was laughing with her or laughing at her, but it turned out closer to laughing with.

  “I’ve never been out here before,” Medusa told them excitedly.

  “Really, I think we’d know if we’d seen you before!” They sounded a bit like Egyptians, and looked like it too, but with more of an African pattern collage thing going down from neck to anklet.

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  “Where you guys from, anyway?”

  “Girls - introductions,” the first woman told the other two, and they all straightened up.

  “We are the daughters of House Danaüs of Libya,” the shortest of them delivered on cue. “I am called Zara, and these are my sisters Pari and Rani.” Rani, the eldest, held her chin a little higher after that.

  “Hey I’ve been to Libya!” Medusa blurted out eagerly. Their faces suggested that they didn’t hear this often, so she kept going. “I mean it’s more than a day trip from my island, but when you parents are sea gods it’s a bit easier–”

  Rani dropped all formality and slapped her own knees in surprise. “You - you are a goddess?” She looked to the others as if to check if they were as awestruck as she was. They were.

  Medusa’s face went politely embarrassed like it did when people said good things about her and she was supposed to downplay it as nothing. But the heart in her chest felt as snug as a mink coat.

  “Can you do magic? Oh please show us a trick,” Pari begged, her voice now in the wild roughness that women only show with each other.

  Medusa beamed but put up her hands to slow them down a bit. “Hey, magic’s no carnival trick! But nah, I’m not even a hundred, nature doesn’t listen to me much.”

  Rani told her sisters what they’d all just heard again. “She says she’s not even a hundred years old.” That laugh was music to Medusa’s ears.

  “But–” Medusa added suspensefully, thinking of a real carnival trick, “I can do my own hair.” She held her hands far out and pointed back at her head and she did a turn in place to show them the back. “Aaaaand braids!

  Just like she’d taught them, the left snakes twisted around each other, slowly and methodically, first the far left one, then the far right, then the new far left one, and so on. The right one did the same. They ended up with their heads slid up against each other, then undid the last braid to give each other space.

  The laughs Medusa got for that yipped like a herd of zebras. She turned back around to soak it in.

  “Aright, so!” She flicked her wrists up as if snapping the group to attention, though she’d already gotten plenty of it. “You guys look like you might know your way around. Where to?”

  “The gardens! You’ve got to see the dryad gardens,” Zara urged her, as if verbally pulling her by the arm there.

  “You know the tailors would probably make you something for free here,” Rani hinted. Medusa knew she’d been cycling through the same two robes for weeks. There were enough stains on some sides to pass as camouflage.

  “Ohhh, the fooood!” Pari bellowed. “Everywhere you go, there’s food!”

  “Food!” Medusa roared back with a fist-pump in the air. She remembered she’d come here with her crew living off small fry and pita bread. She waved them all back to her. “Guys! I made new friends! And there’s food!”

  She saw each of their necks perk up at the last word. It drew them in from across the room from, whatever they’d been doing, Medusa didn’t think to ask right then.

  “Actually, all of those things sound fantastic right now.” she reassured the new friends. “Do all the things!” she declared. She laughed hard at herself, like she already had a couple of drinks in her.

  Speaking of which, Sisyphus stopped by the fountain and sniffed. “Is that - is that wine?” He held his hands out as if wanting to grab a handful of it. Sure enough, the archer cherub statue on top spat a stream of dark magenta. He swiped up an empty goblet sitting on the edge of the fountain, and dunked it into the pool at the base. It caught like dew in his beard as he poured half a cup’s worth down his throat, then double-dipped the cup in for some sloppy seconds. He practically gargled a garbled “aghhhh” of relief as the dry wetness hit his palate and the placebo hit his brain. “I didn't know these were real! Indoor plumbing is genius.”

  “((Fooood!)) Echo bellowed, making Pari flinch in surprise at hearing herself. Echo copied Medusa’s laugh. She looked like she felt the same.

  With the rest of the new entourage in tow, Pari led the way down the middle corridor, and into the feasts.