The largest wears the hide of a bear and walks toward Medea, loosening the cloth around his hips. Jason giving her up so soon. But this bear-man stops at the rudder posts, holds onto one and leans back over the water, shits into the sea, fouling the air. The breeze not strong enough, and now the other men feel free to do the same.

This is the sea burial of a prince, she says in their language, waving with her arm for them to stay away. A future king of Colchis. She sees one grinning, teeth in starlight. A game to them. Jason unconcerned. He takes his turn at the oars, as vacant and stone eyed as the rest.

They drink water from clay vessels foreign to her, eat food taken from her home. Sounds of chewing on lamb that was grilled over her father’s fires. Sweet smell of honey to mix with the smells of shit and viscera.

Hekate’s hold loosening, the first deep blue appearing over the mountains that rim her home. Jagged outlines of black, and the stars fading. She looks down again into the water and is losing this world, too, the surface thickening, becoming opaque even in this first shadow of light.

Her grandfather climbing the other side of the world. Holding the reins, hooves pounding air. She used to wait for him at this hour when she was a girl, waking before the rest, hoping to see him. The beginning, perhaps, of her interest in night, unintended. Descended from the sun and worshipping darkness. Who she is makes no sense to her. How she became. What she will become still.

The other side of the world steep and nearly endless. Long climb in that chariot, light appearing long before he clears the peaks. A place where mountains wear away, long slides of loose stone, without trees, directionless. Any other god would become lost. She feels this place inside her now, barren heart, no living or growing thing. She waits for Jason to notice her, his face only one of nearly fifty pale dark-blue shields in this light, rolling away with each heave at the oars then returning.

All these men belong, all act as one, the rowers, the men who stand before her working the rudders, the men holding thick lines that guide the sail, even those who have stopped to eat or drink and sit low on the deck. They’ve fallen into a wordless routine, their minds blank.

Jason, she calls. She can’t wait for him to notice.