A salt breeze blew through the air as the summer sun slowly baked the small, shoreside village to the southwest of Athens. Medusa sighed, her beautiful auburn hair blowing in the breeze. It had been a long day, and with the list of things she had to accomplish, it looked to be longer still. She had spent most of the morning turning away suitors, each eager to take the beautiful woman as their bride, and she had fervently declined every one of them. But for every one she turned away, another thirty seemed to take their place.
Medusa was known far and wide throughout the city-states for one thing: her impossible beauty. The flowing waves of her long, gorgeous hair, the smooth contours of her delicate cheeks, and her stunning malachite eyes were enough to captivate both man and woman alike, but her luscious pear-shaped figure regularly drove men to madness. She was immensely proud of her beauty, but that didn't make the ever-increasing parade of suitors easier to handle. Luckily, her next errand took her to the Temple of Athena, and men generally avoided such flirtation within its walls. The stories of how The Virgin Goddess reacted to such things was enough to frighten even the most foolhardy of admirers. She would make an offering, and then find respite within those hallowed walls for a time before venturing back out into the village...
It was quiet within the Temple that day, which wasn't uncommon. It was the middle of the day, so many of the priestesses had left to take a meal, and there weren't many offerings during that time. Even so, the silence made her uneasy. The air seemed heavier, as if the sea was slowly seeping into the temple, threatening to wash it away. Worried, Medusa moved to leave, only to run head first into a tall, broad, dripping-ly handsome man.
