I’ve sat here, perfectly balanced, every day for as long as I can remember. I look down at my body, barely covered in the gauzy material I always wear. Below my seat hang my feet, and my hair, shifting in the breeze. Past my feet there is only an empty hole leading to Hades itself. The ropes creak, and I look up instead, the ropes stretch up, far and away into the dark.

A man walks onto the platform nearby, with one of the priestesses. She wears the gold robes of a Virgin, and averts her gaze from me, knowing she could have been chosen instead of me. She blushes. The man kneels before me as the priestess retrieves the incense, the fans. I listen to his questions, and learn there is a war. He begs answers of me, and I twine my bony fingers in my hair.

The incense crackles, and the Virgin beats the fans. The smoke soon fills my half of the chamber, rolling over the edge of the platform like water. I breathe it in, and I begin to see.

I don’t know what I tell them, or remember what I see, but they listen.