Psyche came awake shivering on cold stone. She wrapped her arms around herself and pulled her legs closer to her body in hopes that it would warm up and she could go back to sleep. She had been having such a wonderful dream, and she hoped it would not fade. In her dream, she had been having her wedding dress hemmed alongside her sisters, and her mother and both her sisters would were telling her just how lovely she looked in her dress. Once their dresses had been fit to the Queen's satisfaction, they had walked from her mother's waiting room to the courtyard where they had met their father and the husbands.
She had clearly seen the faces of both her sisters' husbands, but the man her father had chosen for her, his features were blurred. And no matter how much she blinked to see his face without the fog had failed. In her mind, she had had told herself repeatedly that he was a handsome man and that she was lucky that her father had picked him as her suitor. She remembered smiling in her dream then coming awake on the chilly stone at Aphrodite's shrine.
With a yawn, she stretched and then opened her eyes. Instead of seeing the shrine and the basket she had carried the offerings in, she saw a stone wall and the trees and shrubs beyond it. Psyche pushed herself into a sitting position and looked at her surroundings. She was nowhere near her father's palace or even in the same polis. Her breathing became labored as she came to her feet and pivoted around.
She found herself in the courtyard of a beautifully carved palace. Statues of Eros and Aphrodite carved in white stone were scattered around the edge of the walls. Where was she? Had someone taken her to a temple to Aphrodite? Had the goddess taken offense to her pleas for sympathy? That she had never wanted to be compared to the goddess of beauty? Aphrodite was rarely kind to the mortal women who compared their beauty to hers. Psyche remembered the stories that her governess and her sisters had told her in her youth of what the goddess of beauty did to those who displeased her. The goddess typically had her son shoot them with the love potion and position the ugliest person in their path for the mortal to fall in love with.
Had Aphrodite found a new form of punishment to make the mortals pay for the sins? Would the goddess even listen to her pleas? Her own beauty did not compare to that of a goddess, any of the goddesses, not just Aphrodite. Psyche felt her lips begin to tremble as she looked towards a set of closed doors across the courtyard from where she was standing. Did she wait here for the goddess to summon her to her side? Or did she go in? It might offend the goddess if she presumed too much. And perhaps the goddess wanted Psyche to suffer in the coldness for a little while before sending a servant to fetch her inside.
Psyche wrapped her arms around her and looked around the courtyard once more and found several stone benches along the walls. Would it offend the goddess if she sat while she waited for the summons to her side? Would the goddess think her parents had forgotten to teach their daughter manners if she took a seat while she waited? It was how her mother liked to hold court in her waiting room. The Queen insisted that her guests sit on one of the benches along the back wall from her chair. And did mortals not try to emulate the gods when it came to how one behaved at court? Why else would her parents had insisted upon her and her sisters conducted themselves in a certain way?
She took short steps towards the nearest bench as she rubbed her arms with her hands. Psyche sat down, organizing her skirt so it would cover her legs as much as possible and returned her arms around her chest. She should have worn a shawl to the shrine. But it had been a warm morning when she set out with the basket, and she had not thought she would have been gone that long. Nor had she thought that she would fall asleep while begging the goddess for forgiveness only to wake up so far from how.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the door and waited for a servant to fetch her to the goddess's side, but none came. She was being punished. Her sisters had often told her that the gods enjoyed punishing mortal even for the slightest infraction. And what else had she done besides having people make Aphrodite's offerings to her instead? She had not wanted it, ever. She had only wanted to be married alongside her sisters. Psyche took a deep breath and waited. How long would the goddess make her wait?
