Her father too proud to say anything in return. Silent behind his mask. Made smaller.

Descendant of the sun, she yells. If this is true, show yourself. All is being taken. Impotent king. No king.

Medea takes a piece of her brother, a thigh, heavy and tough, muscled, and licks blood from it, dark and thick. She spits, licks and spits again and again, three times to atone. Mouth filled with the taste of her family’s blood, and she throws this piece of Helios into the waves.

She has ripped out all their hearts, she knows. Her father’s crew crippled to see him made smaller. She will humble him until there’s nothing left, until his men don’t know why they’re rowing. They will collect the pieces of the son and wonder that demigods can fall so easily.

A cry from her father, anguish at the sight of another piece, and he turns away to command the sail lowered. Men gather at the stern to let down the upper yard and collapse all power. A ship without wind no more than a collection of sticks. Oars held out of the water, wooden insect with thirty legs, coming about, stalling. Her father bent over the side, reaching for his son but missing. The boat rolling though the seas are small. Long wooden yards of the fallen sail tipping down almost to the water, then rising into the sky.

Her father bellowing in grief, strange sound like some animal in the field. Pushing back through his oarsmen to reach his son from the stern. No pretending to be a king. Only a father. The air in Medea’s lungs gone heavy. Her father falling away into the night and she can’t see whether he recovers the piece, his boat turned and blocking her view.

Her brother gone. She misses him there, far away, in his father’s arms, and yet most of him is here. She kneels in him still. Impossible to locate the dead. Her brother everywhere and nowhere, and everything she’s felt for him remains. No part of him dies when he’s gone. He’s only gone.

Argonauts pulling hard at the oars, sail full. She is with strangers. They feel nothing for her brother. And if Jason feels nothing for her brother, what can he feel for her?