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The andron is gloomy, quiet - only the flickering of torchlight illuminates the room. Servants and spearmen shift anxiously on their feet, but in the twilight, you cannot glimpse their features clearly. In the corner of the room, you see Gerasimos' crouched on his heels - a profile of coiled action, he is watching intently, even as the rest of your chorus, mostly women, huddle against one another in terror.
Myrethuia, with slurred tones, speaks at just above a whisper, as she stands above before Damachides’ corpse with Charima, and embraces her.
“Lady Charima, Lady Charima! The Lord needs rest and recuperation – see how exhausted he looks? We must make him comfortable until we can obtain an Asclepian…We must send for blankets and pillows, milk and cheese, oils and incenses to soothe him for the night…” Myrethuia simultaneously waves to the servants in the room as she speaks, and they all but sprint out of the room to fetch bedding and the sundries requested. You can’t see Charima’s face at this angle, only the back of her head – braids askew, you nonetheless see her nodding tentatively.
Your eyes practically pop out of your head – a more blatant attempt to recast reality you have never seen in your life, but bizarrely, Charima seems to believe Myrethuia’s ridiculous statements. Myrethuia, facing you, is certainly drunk – her face is entirely too close to Charima, and as she whispers, you begin to see the outlines of their true relationship. This is not the hierarchical relationship between Lady and servant, but something more complicated, more twisted, more poisonous than you could have guessed. Myrethuia’s doelike eyes are locked onto Charima’s, unblinking, and you see naked possession written over Myrethuia’s pretty face – she is Charima’s jailer!
It must have happened over years, you think – innocent suggestions from Myrethuia becoming more and more insistent, “playful” insults becoming acidic and curdling, Myrethuia’s tempestuous and unpredictable joys and frustrations becoming central to Charima’s daily life... The slow construction of a prison cell with words, with feelings, with thoughts - a gossamer cage hovering beyond Charima's fingertips, untouchable. Charima never stood a chance – not against a woman carefully chipping against her autonomy, day after day, night after night…
It disgusts you – this relationship is aberrant, a violation – Myrethuia’s arm is looped casually around Charima’s shoulders, and the contact does not strike you as romantic or sexual, but as an expression of power, and of Charima’s powerlessness.
<span class="mu-i">She has surrendered everything to Myrethuia out of convenience, and now…there is nothing left within.</span> you think.
