The shores remain far away, low mountains with patches of brown, becoming drier. She’s heard that all will be drier in the next sea, Helios somehow closer in his passing. And she’s heard this strait is very long and pinches close at Ilium, but the shores are so far apart now it’s hard to believe it’s a strait at all. It looks only like a sea.

Sound of the wake, rudders in a stream, and waves building, the upwind blade rising free and plunging again, eager, like some fish made of wood, narrow headed and tireless. Whorls of air caught, twisting like strands of web. Surface flattened and smoothed by the hull, water brightened, aerated, the sound of it a thousand sounds at once, the air become liquid as liquid becomes air.

Argonauts resting behind her uninterested, never looking over the side but only at land in the distance, oars shipped, letting the sail work. Thinking of going ashore and drinking wine, waiting only for wine, so why come on this venture at all? Why not stay at home in a pile and pass out?

Fame, probably, each dreaming of his name sung forever, not realizing no one can remember even four generations back. Almost everyone erased within three generations. Jason may be remembered, but not his men. The list of his crew will never be certain. Demigods in their own lifetimes only, then misremembered shadows, misshapen, then forgotten entirely. Nothing, as if they had never been born. Or worse, become only a name, with nothing left attached.

Floating over these waves unnoticed, unrecognized, insignificant. Jason far away at the bow, resting there, looking back at her, thinking what? He chose her, and she chose him, unthinking, in an instant. Some tie they can’t see that binds them nonetheless.

Medea walks forward, every sailor moving away slightly as she passes, walks beneath the fleece that bows out like the sail and still shimmers, not yet lost all its gold, and stands before Jason.

Are you finished pushing me into the dirt? she asks.

Yes.

His face sincere, no king but only a boy. She sits on deck and leans back against him. His arms around her, and she closes her eyes and does not feel alone. So much must be ignored and erased for her to be here, but she’s willing to do this: some basic animal need, to be held, to spend each night and even the day next to another body. She knows the sailors are watching, knows they think her weaker now, the stories no longer only of fear, but there will still be fear enough.