Alcyone and Ceyx

Alcyone and Ceyx is one of those love stories that has a rather strange ending. If you look at the above picture you just might get an idea of what I am talking about. Yeah, yeah, you'll understand it soon enough.

So the story starts out as one of those typical love stories. The man of the house is going far away for his work and the wife is bawling her eyes out. There's about a million of stories that have a similiar beginning to this one. Only usually, the man is going off to war, not on a ship to visit a far-off oracle. Speaking of which, wasn't an oracle one of those things that gave off really good advice or could tell you your future or did it mean something else? Oh well, who knows?

So as I was saying, Ceyx goes off to sea, but not before promising his wife that he will be back in two months time. And Alcyone tells him, "If you die my life is over and I shall be cursed with every reluctant breath I draw."

Oh how romantic!

Not really.

I mean seriously! Maybe it sounds romantic telling him that if he's gone she'll kill herself or live in depression, but if Ceyx actually does die, well then she will be living in pain! Or be unmoving underground. Would anybody really want to go through that? No. If I were her, I would've broke up with him right before he left so I wouldn't have to go through any of that. She should've known he wasn't coming back alive. Okay, why do I for some reason feel like what I all just said didn't make any sense?

So back to the story. As it turns out Ceyx does indeed come back dead. No, no, no, I'm not talking about him turning into a zombie, I'm talking about his dead body washing up on shore and Alcyone finding it, and after all those days on end praying to the goddess-Aphrodite? I can't really tell who she was praying to because it gets kind of confusing in Mary Zimmerman's version at some points.

So Alcyone is so upset and "Aphrodite" sends a message to some other gods to let her husband live as (drumroll please), a bird! Yeah, a bird. But of course Alcyone was the first to turn into one. It was as she was running towards his body and soon realized that for some reason she couldn't hold or kiss him and was instead pecking the heck out of him!

But it all ended happily because as I said, Ceyx had also turned into one. And so the happy and forever couple, of birds, flew away into happiness!