Regan Flieg: Till We Have Faces Role Playing Assignment

Oural, Queen of Glome, your book has reached us, the gods in Greece.  Since in your stubbornness you have refused to have it any way but yours, we have refused to pass judgement upon you until your writing reached us here where you willed it be sent despite knowing your claim all along. 

  I, Aphrodite, the goddess you feared as Ungit, have heard you all this time.  I heard when you called upon us many years past, without sacrifice and in your own space, expecting us to bow to you in your place when you refused to come to us in my temple, and I heard when you first closed your writing of your complaint, and I heard when your head fell upon the page as you wrote again. 

Oural, you have never learned, never listened.  I have seen you, and my son has seen you.  We know that at the end of your life, you knew how you had treated all of those you had claimed to love.  We also know that you would not have changed.  All your life, we have seen you tempted by love, and we have seen you push it away in the name of selfishness.  We have seen you choose pride and yourself and your confidence in reason.  Know that you have chosen wrongly. 

You claimed that we have hated you, Oural, but you would have scorned our love even if you had seen it.  In my mercy, I, Aphrodite, who you feared as the fertility goddess Ungit and who is the Olympian of love, have tried to teach you.  Who do you think taught your precious Psyche the meaning of love, which she tried to reveal to you?  What of your Fox who sacrificed his home to serve you out of his love?  Who do you think guided Ansit, who’s love of Bardia you witnessed?  We even provided Daaran to you, who you knew you could have loved.  You have been a stubborn child who will not listen.  In your pride, you even likened myself to me as Ungit while still misunderstanding. 

In your death, your spirit waits restlessly for our judgment, and you will have it.  Out of love, I could have you again follow your sister as she continues her roaming and bear her pain for her, but in this, you may yet delight in thinking you are sparing her.  I could have you follow and watch as she does suffer, but, as you have misunderstood love, you will not suffer her pain as much as pain of your own.  Hence, an insult to your pride is the only punishment for one like you.  I, the goddess Ungit and with me, my son, the god of the mountain whose bride you robbed him of, sentence you to hear your own tale spun and changed for all eternity.  You will hear it morph and shift, and you will think it unfair the way they cast you.  Eventually, you will see your story as it truly is, and if you are wiser than we judge you to be, you may one day even learn that it is not your story at all.  ALthough you have been stubborn in learning, myth is a powerful teacher, and you may someday learn what it is to truly love.  If you do, this charge will change from punishment to reward as you rejoice in your sister Psyche’s triumph once she has regained her face from behind her veil, become a goddess, and become reunited with her groom, my son.