Early Summer, The Gorgon Coin

I almost threw the coin into the sea today.

Not because I feared it, but because I had grown tired of finding it.

For several weeks now it has refused to remain where I leave it. I have returned it repeatedly to the western cabinet beside the maritime recovery shelves, yet every few mornings it appears somewhere else within the Archive. I have found it beside the fountain, on the conservatory windowsill, and once resting quietly on the folded blankets at the foot of my bed. It is always cold when I pick it up, and it always carries the faint smell of seawater despite having spent the night inside a dry cabinet.

The coin itself is small enough to disappear easily beneath a stack of papers or among the folds of a cloth. Time has worn the bronze almost smooth, and marine corrosion has obscured most of the original markings beyond recognition.

Only the face remains remarkably clear.

That has become increasingly difficult for me to ignore.

The stories told beyond the Archive have never been especially kind to women like me. They prefer certainty over complexity, and monsters are easier to understand than survivors. The face engraved into the bronze reflects none of the cruelty those stories insist upon. There is no rage in it, no triumph, and no hunger.

She simply looks tired.

I carried the coin into the conservatory shortly after breakfast intending to remove the remaining salt deposits from its edges before returning it to storage once again. It should have been straightforward conservation work, the sort that usually settles the mind through repetition and patience.

Instead I found myself spending rather longer than I intended studying the worn features beneath the magnifying lens.

I could not stop wondering how many centuries people have devoted to preserving easier versions of women because the truthful ones demanded more compassion than they were prepared to give. The face before me did not resemble a predator. It resembled someone who had survived something the world eventually chose to forget, replacing memory with a story that required less grief and fewer uncomfortable questions.

I found that thought surprisingly difficult to leave behind.

Clio remained beside me throughout the afternoon. She slept against the edge of the worktable with one paw resting lightly across my sleeve, waking only occasionally to shift a little closer before settling again. There was nothing protective about her behaviour today. It felt, instead, quietly reassuring, as though she recognised that the work required company more than vigilance.

Muninn behaved rather differently.

Throughout the afternoon he carried small reflective objects into the conservatory and arranged them one by one around the coin. Some were fragments of tarnished silver, others polished shell, and several appeared to be tiny pieces of broken mirror gathered from elsewhere within the Archive. By the time he had finished they formed an almost complete circle around the worktable.

Whether he intended the arrangement as a boundary, an offering, or a form of protection, I could not tell.

Near dusk the clouds finally broke beyond the cliffs, and warm sunlight reached the conservatory for the first time all day. As the light crossed the table, the worn bronze briefly became reflective despite the corrosion that should have prevented it.

For just a moment I believed I was looking directly at the engraved face.

Then I realised I was looking at my own reflection.

Or something close enough that the distinction scarcely mattered.

The eyes were unmistakably weary, though not defeated. There was sorrow there, certainly, but it had settled into something quieter over the centuries, becoming less like grief and more like patience. It was the expression of someone who had lived long enough to watch history simplify her into something easier for others to understand.

I let the coin fall.

The sound echoed across the conservatory floor with surprising clarity.

At the same instant, every reflective fragment Muninn had arranged around the table developed fine hairline cracks. None shattered outright. The fractures spread slowly through the polished surfaces until each reflected the room imperfectly.

The coin itself remained unchanged.

I suppose I should no longer be surprised by that.

This evening I returned it to the western cabinet beside the Mourning Spirit Mirror and covered the cabinet before extinguishing the lamps. I cannot honestly say why I drew the cloth across the doors. Perhaps I simply had no wish to spend the evening examining my own reflection any further.

The Archive has been unusually quiet since sunset.

Clio has scarcely left my side.

Muninn has remained somewhere among the rafters without making a sound.

As I have been writing this entry, I have found myself thinking less about the coin than about the stories attached to it.

Artifacts endure because someone chooses to preserve them.

Stories endure for much the same reason.

I wonder how many lives have been altered simply because the easier story survived longer than the truthful one.

— M