.volo.

They were playmates, despite their difference in society, gender and age.

She’d run away from watchful eyes when her nursemaid would be occupied with a soldier from a distant land, run to him to grab his long, skillful fingers with her own soft grubby ones, clad in gold rings made by his father especially for her chubby hands.

They’d fall to the ground and clatter on the stone floors when she grew up, and he wondered later if it had been some morbid implication of what was to come.

He always sought adventure, even once dangling a piece of dried meat over the baby Minotaur while Queen Pasiphae was arguing with her husband, the King, about something.

This had not been the first example of his hubris, and obviously not the last.

Ariadne had cried over his mauled arm, and his father had been shocked into sending him away to a nearby island while the labyrinth was constructed. It had taken a total of three years to build the massive labyrinth and in those three years their once sworn unbreakable bond was broken.

When they saw each other again, upon the termination of the labyrinth construction, he was seventeen and she fifteen. Her baby fat had vanished into the floor, and she walked with impeccable grace just as a princess should. She spoke with eloquence and whatever knowledge of worldly things that her father had allowed her she had devoured, now possessing a humble well of intelligence.

She would not have recognized him if it weren’t for his scar.

He was taller now, and his skin bronzed as a peasant’s, though his pectorals were not as formidable as he would have liked. His hair was unforgivably shaggy, but nonetheless he possessed a charm that nearly every woman who heard him spoke fell for.

If they had known what was to come then they might have held each other’s hands in secret once again, and maybe she would have allowed him to sneak her out when the guards were out late getting drunk and maybe they wouldn’t have limited themselves to leaning against the stone wall overlooking the sea, standing one foot apart and barely speaking to one another save for reminiscing fond memories almost gone.

Come fly with me Icarus, she said at one point. Let’s embrace the stars.

She’d closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sky and he looked at her, truly looked at her and beheld her beauty. He said nothing though he could sense that she could sense that he was enthralled into speechlessness.

She knew of her effect upon men, just as well as he knew his effect upon women, though he could feel her resistance.

They looked at each other in the dwindling twilight, smiling shyly over the invisible barrier that had formed between them.

The King grew displeased with Daedalus, for reasons unknown. Even though Icarus had only been in Minos for two days, he was thrown into prison with his father, festering in squalid, filthy conditions, wondering if he’d really prefer for Ariadne to see him in such a state.

He needn’t have worried himself so much. Although she was very concerned, she knew better than to test her father’s patience when he was this angry, and had no desire to confirm the terrible stories of what occurred in the Minoan prison towers.

His father was desperate, for both their sakes, he noted with appreciation. And it was often in desperation that Daedalus concocted his most ingenious creations. As his father’s plan became clear to him, and the design for the wings perfected, Ariadne’s words echoed in his mind.

Come fly with me Icarus.

She was not the sun, he knew. And his love for her was not so powerful as to match that inflicted by one of Eros’ arrows, he was fairly sure. And even though his father yelled at him to fly lower, he paid no heed.

He fell the wrong way and let the sea embrace him.