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Your eyes slide open, in the darkness of your room.
Like your brother’s, they are flecked with gold, a sign of your divine ancestry. Unlike him, you will never see them for yourself - some quirk of your blood has hidden your reflection from the world. To stare into a mirror is to imagine a world without yourself. You cannot quite bring yourself to rise, and for a few minutes, you listen to the subtle rhythms of the oikos in the early dawn.
You are Deianira Hippomedion, and you are alone in the house of your father.
Of course, there is your mother, and yes, there are your loyal household staff, but there are now no noblemen present in the halls of your modest Thessalian estate. Your mother, sadly, has not truly had her wits for these past five years. The hunt for her cure has taught you much of human illness and its amelioration, but even nepenthe could not set her mind in order. You suspect the problem in her is not magical, divine, or even truly mental in nature, but perhaps some deeper issue beyond your ability to detect or rectify.
At any rate, it is only a matter of time before your brother’s absence becomes known. Your unease from yesterday has sharpened - the benefit of rest clearing your mind. As you rise, bathe, genuflect to Helios, and eat a light breakfast of eggs, barley porridge, you consider the following: your position is precarious in the extreme - you are the unwed daughter of a somewhat obscure Argive prince in a border territory and the man of the house has left you to seek personal glory and he has abandoned - no, you must not think this way. It is a disservice to your brother, and to your oikos.
Still, you feel that the uniqueness of your situation is dangerous - you are completely unaware of any unwed woman leading a household, either in myth or the current time - you strongly suspect that if this information became widely known, wolves of all types would begin prowling at the gates. Therefore, you must find a way to obfuscate the truth of the matter, at least temporarily.
You are still mulling over your options as you stride into the andron, and you are somewhat surprised to see that the room holds not just Argyros, but also brown-complexioned Iudas, Pantaleon’s large frame, and Molpagorus, a bearded craftsman who has (sometimes stridently) represented the needs of the loose collection of the few thousand Thessalians under your house’s affiliation.
The mood is somewhat tense - as you settle into the nearest chair, you see that the men’s eyes contain none of the barely-hidden, lazy desire you have come to expect. Instead, they track you anxiously, unsure of how to proceed. As a group, they seem tentative, cautious; they are not certain of how to proceed, either. There is an expectant pause, as Argyros clearly prepares himself to begin the discussion.
