After supper one day, after Philyra had departed to spend time with her friends, Evadne and Calista were sitting inside the villa together in silence, watching the people of Atlantis pass by.
“You long to return Above?” said Evadne quite suddenly.
Starting at the question, Calista carefully weighed her response. “You have shown me great kindness and love, for which I will always be thankful. Yet, I left my brother and mother in gods know what kind if situation and in need of my aid. It is not even a question of wanting to return home—it’s needing to.” She chuckled caustically. “Not that it matters, either way. I cannot even leave the villa, let alone Atlantis. I would not even know how to depart. All I can do is pray that they are delivered by some other hand than my own.”
Evadne stroked Calista’s head. “Do you think that I did not follow my daughter as far as I could? I saw them send you up. I remember all they did, the words they chanted that opened the dome and let you be assumed into the sea. I could do it again…but I know not if I dare.”
Calista’s heart thudded wildly. “Why would you not?” Her fingers clenched into a tight, anxious fist, her nails biting into the tender skin of her palm.
“I fear them,” Evadne answered directly. “I fear what they would do if they discovered that I had helped you leave them. Would they take away Philyra?”
“Did you not say that you detested the status of nymphs as indolent and impotent creatures?”
Evadne nodded.
“If you helped me leave…you could at last exercise the power of choice that you so longed for.” She looked intently into those eyes that so resembled her own, searching for a positive answer.
After a pause that seemed to span across ages, Evadne said, “I will have to think on it…and it would take at least a month to prepare everything. I would do anything for your happiness,” she added fiercely. “Is this what you want?”
“Very much. Mother.” This woman could never replace Olympia, but Calista had learned to love her and to appreciate the bravery that coursed through her veins. She thought she had inherited that from living with Olympia, but she was only part of the mixture. Evadne was a courageous woman in her own right and it was clear that their resemblance extended past the skin. The fierceness of her affection for Calista resonated with what Calista felt in her own soul for Olympia, Pyp, and yes, Evadne and even Philyra although Calista could not bring herself to fully trust her.
Her hand wrapped in her mother’s, Calista watched life in Atlantis unfold before them.