Unclear what gods her father worships, what gods might be angry if a sack is only half full. Helios his father, but does he believe this? The weather god of the sea, unnamed, faceless, is a god he might fear after this voyage, but Medea suspects her father believes in no gods except himself. Ox hides a barrier, perhaps, from all that would devour, some mythical power of the ox to keep hellhounds and every other creature away, but Aeetes most likely believes the air is empty, holding no form beyond what we know. This grove of the dead a monument only to his own rule, even the dead remaining his subjects.

What if all people hung their dead in trees, and not only the men but the women too? Are there enough trees in Egypt? How many have died in a land that old? Trees burdened until their limbs bend and finally are torn off and the bodies turned to mush are heard from far away as they land, soft pats on the earth, a kind of rain. Forests of the dead to cover and seed the world again.

Stones and caves a form of erasure. How deep was this cavern when it was first found or dug? The rock soft enough to enlarge. Do Cyzicus and Cleite lie on dirt and rock or on layer after layer of bones that have decayed into dirt? None here can say. Old men mumbling in conversation with nothing. All bodies disappeared and narrow entrances filled again with stones, lives sealed away and forgotten.

Sun falling through the sky in its endless succession of days, and all labor cyclical. Closing these tombs with stones only to open them later again. What Medea must do is make her life matter. Her days must be recognized and remain and not be buried and lost. How to do this unclear. Surrounded on every side by erasure.

Jason looks oiled, laboring among the stones, back rippling. Aware of being watched. Not taking water or rest. Young king in his fabled days before he was king. Stories will be told. The rock alive, and he will have torn at the mountain itself to free a proper burial place for his friend Cyzicus. Throughout this journey, giants of every kind will have fallen at his feet, giants of stone and water and sky. If enough people repeat the stories for long enough, Jason will become something that cannot die, but he also will have been erased, because the actions are too large and impersonal. The stories will reveal nothing about the real man who lived. Medea would have something more personal, something remembered and caught and frozen that can be only her, some moment none can fully understand or forget.

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