In chapter eleven, the villainess gets some bad news after she's come home from a night of dancing. The messenger is Scolopendra, from the Greek for centipede.
It's a short chapter, written in Medea's voice and I'm delaying writing it because I can't find a second epigram that suits the contents. It may seem a backward approach, but I find that a great epigram helps me frame what goes in a chapter and what is out of scope.
The first epigram was easy. It's a perfect mixture of pop culture and moron humor. I love it!
"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys it's owns special laws." -Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
The second epigram has proven more difficult. I like the idea of mixing it up between contemporary classic and pop culture quotations. I was toying with Shakespeare, particularly one scene in Antony and Cleopatra. I am also fond of this classic quote from Sophocle's Antigone
"None love the messenger who brings bad news."
In the end, seemed too obvious and not terribly poetic.
Then I stumbled across this lovely poem. I think I'll use the last lines as my epigram. I love the way it captures the woman's passions, both hot and cold. The poem is John Crowe Ransom's Parting, without a sequel:
She has finished and sealed the letter
At last, which he so richly has deserved,
With characters venomous and hatefully curved,
And nothing could be better.
But even as she gave it
Saying to the blue-capped functioner of doom,
"Into his hands," she hoped the leering groom
Might somewhere lose and leave it.
Then all the blood
Forsook the face. She was too pale for tears,
Observing the ruin of her younger years.
She went and stood
Under her father's vaunting oak,
Who kept his peace in wind and sun, and glistened
Stoical in the rain; to whom she listened
If he spoke.
And now the agitation of the rain
Rasped his sere leaves, and he talked low and gentle
Reproaching the wan daughter by the lintel;
Ceasing and beginning again.
Away went the messenger's bicycle,
His serpent's track went up the hill forever,
And all the time she stood there hot as a fever
And cold as any icicle.