I have been in love with Greek mythology as long as I can remember. Artemis was one of my first girl heroines (they typically left the story of Niobe out of mythology books for kids), and I found myself loving the idea of living in the woods with a bunch of animals, a bow, and my friends.

My life has taken a very different route than one Artemis would approve of, but I’ve still steeped it in Greek and Roman mythology. Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Aeschylus’ Oresteia are two of my favorite books, and I frequently include the names of mythological figures or outright references to myths in my writing, because I like writing it as much as I like reading it elsewhere.

So, needless to say, there are some fancy mythological terms on my list of drabble vocabulary.

PYTHIA

(noun: from Greek pythein for “to rot”)

the name of any priestess serving as the Oracle of Delphi

The earth whispers in her ear. She cranes her neck and presses her face to the ground, a question on her lips. Drugged, her words slip and stumble, sometimes poetry, sometimes nothing but sounds and syllables.

She inhales the divine, exhales truth. A golden crown perched atop her head, she breathes the vapors and speaks the words, her short life leaving her with every sigh. She lives in respect and admiration until another takes her name, her whispers, her prophecy. Even if she joins the voices under the earth she’ll be nothing but a murmur in a woman’s ear.