Coming to a kingdom with your mother wasn’t a new thing. Usually when she was allowed to go and visit with others you came along too. Maybe she just didn’t trust you with her own handmaidens. But you got to come along.

You two arrived at Crete, and while your mother went and spoke with her dear Queen Pasiphae, a woman you’d barely remembered, you met Asterion; who was playing with some chalk quietly, his little ears or tail occasionally flicking, he seemed in his own world.

Maybe you didn’t process his oddities. Or maybe in your small child brain it made sense to see that calf’s head, the little crop of curly black hair and short cropped fur; either way it didn’t seem to phase you much.