Chapter 5

## Events

* Successful in finding out where the blood of the Gods and Titans has been spilled, Circe brings Glaucos to one such spot.
* The flowers are beautiful and fragile as moth wings, bell-shaped and of the palest yellow. Circe has brought a picnic to eat so as to make the outing look innocent to her father in the sky. She plans to pull Glaucos into the nearby forest and show him that her oath does not hold them anymore after she turns him into a god.
* Circe coaxes Glaucos to sleep. She realizes that the sap of the flowers is what can make any creature transform into its truest self. She lets drops of the sap fall into his mouth.
* Glaucos' body begins to change. His skin turns deep sea-blue, and his body swells. Long, copper-green hair grows from his chin. Barnacles form on his chest. He wakes and realizes that he has been changed. He is very excited about this and asks Circe if she can take him to the gods' halls.
* Circe takes Glaucos to her grandmother. Circe lies and says that he just woke up like that. They welcome him, and Tethys tells him that he is welcome there until he finds a palace of his own. Circe introduces him to all her aunts and uncles and cousins and the nymphs. They are all eager to hear his story.
* Circe takes him to meet her father and grandfather. She wishes to marry him. Helios and Oceanos take him to Nereus and he introduces him to Poseidon. Together, they help him shape his underwater palace.
* Glaucos becomes popular and exaggerates his tales of life as a human. He says that he sent a wave to smash his father's boat, and the shock killed him. He blessed his mother, and now she has a new husband and a slave to help her with the washing. His mother built him an altar, and the village hopes that he will bring them a good tide.
* Glaucos asks after Scylla, and tells her that he has never been so happy.
	+ *His eyes lifted to hold mine. “Circe, I have never been so happy." I smiled back at him. I saw nothing but the boy that I loved shining at last. Every honor lavished on him, every altar built in his name, every admirer who crowded him, these felt like gifts to me, for he was mine.*
* Scylla tells Circe that Glaucos has asked her to marry him. Circe is shocked and runs away so that they can't see her cry.
* Circe goes to her father and asks him if she can marry Glaucos. He laughs and says that Glaucos can have his pick, and he does not think that it will be her.
* Circe goes to Glaucos' palace and asks him if he wants to marry Scylla. She tells him that Scylla is beautiful, but she doesn't deserve him because she is cruel and doesn't love him as he deserves to be loved. She tells him that she would be more, she would be all and kisses him. He pushes Circe away. Circe tells him that she has loved him since the day they met, since he was a human with fish guts on his hands, weeping from his father's cruelty. She tells him that he will find no one more loyal than her, and that she will do anything. He uses his powers to send her back to her rooms.
	+ *I lay on the dirt, weeping. Those flowers had made him his true being, which was blue, and finned, and not mine. I thought I would die of such pain, which was not like the sinking numbness Aeëtes had left behind, but sharp and fierce as a blade through my chest. But of course I could not die. I would live on, through each scalding moment to the next. This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh.*
* Circe leaves her father's halls at twilight and gathers the flowers of true being. She brings them to the cove where Scylla bathes every day and breaks their stems, emptying their white sap into the water. She does not care for what punishment may come, for it would only be further proof of her love.

## Characters Involved

* Circe
* Glaucos
* Tethys
* Scylla
* Helios

## Characters Mentioned

* Poseidon
* Nereus
* Achelous
* Selene (not by name)