I’m sorry, he says, folding his arms and slumping, still not looking at her. I thought there’d be more.

He stares at his feet for another eternity. Stone floor unswept.

Well there will be more, she says. We’ll have a wedding, there’ll be a temple to Hekate, Pelias will have to give you the throne.

Yeah, he says.

You have to make these things true.

Jason says nothing.

The air hot and still. Medea feels as if she can’t breathe. The ceiling so low, one chamber in a tunnel, only one exit.

Jason stands. I’m going to sleep.

He walks into the next room and she follows. There’s a basin in the corner. He removes his sandals, cups water onto his feet, washing them. No drain, the water simply left on their floor. Sound of spattering against stone, flat and far away and disconnected.

The room big enough only for this basin and a bed. Almost no floor remaining. The bed rough pallets covered in linen, musty smelling. The linen feels damp to her hand.

Jason takes off the mantle, finishes undressing, washes himself slowly, methodically, as if in sleep already. Faced away from her, toward the corner.

When he’s finished, he holds up the small cup for her. Snuff out the torch when you’re done, he says, and he walks to the bed, three steps away, and lies down wet.

She stands there with the cup in this bare room and can’t believe this is her life. But what can she do? It doesn’t make sense to do anything except undress and wash herself. The water cold, a relief in this hot air. Washing with only her hand. No different than living in a cave. Her bare body in torchlight, the rest of the world gone. Even her skin seems not to be hers, looks foreign, dirty and dark from the sun, sore spots everywhere from sleeping on rope and rocks, and much thinner, bones close to the surface. This is all she has now.

She lies down beside him and feels the water evaporating from her skin, sucked by dry air. Mosquitos biting. Smaller things crawling in the bedding. She never thought she’d think of the Argo as a better place, but she does now.

She turns on her side, puts an arm over Jason’s chest. More comfortable, at least, than lying on wood, and closer to him.

Rise and fall of his breath, the heat of him, and she’s able to calm. The air closed in, but she tries not to think about it, tries not to think about their cave. Jason sleeps like a stone, a kind of anchor.