It has been three years since your initial arrive at mount Pelion. Three years since the centaur Chiron began to teach you, and three years since you realized you had fallen in love with Prince Achilles.

It is the end of winter. Chiron says spring will come in maybe a week’s time. For now, a thin layer of ice still coats the river, and the grass is still bent into hard shapes beneath the dead trees. Achilles cannot, for the life of him, understand why you so favor this time of year.

As much as you adore the time you get to spend with Achilles, you loathe the circumstances that brought you here. His cruel mother was preparing him to be a soldier. He was to fight in every battle that came his way, to win them, and to die honorably, with all the fame and wealth that a man could imagine. Others would sacrifice everything for such a prophecy. But Achilles wanted only the glory, and not the death and destruction that came with it.

You do not want any of that for him. But what can you, a simple mortal, ever possibly hope to do?

The three of you silently eat your lunch inside the cave. Chiron is placed at the entrance, wise old eyes peering out into the distance. You and Achilles sit around a small table, low enough to the floor that you need not use chairs or benches. The two of you have become such men now… the naive boys of the palace no longer remain inside your grown bodies.

“Chiron,” Achilles speaks up. You smile to yourself because you already know, by the tone of his voice, what he is about to ask.

“Yes?” Chiron hums from his place near the stone wall of the cave.

“Tell us about spring again,” Achilles says. “About the animals, and the trees, and the pleasantness it always brings your subjects.”