Dear Abbinestra. It's me, Leda.

Leda and the Swan
by Cy Twombly



2036 BC

Dear Abbinestra.

I’m in quite a labyrinth.

I really don’t want to tell my husband, Tyndareus- you know, those Spartans are mean dudes!!- about what happened to me about a year ago. (I can’t help but think that this’ll be fodder for painters and poets for years.) But right this minute I am in a real pickle!

I was hanging out in the library last night, reading a great book about some odyssey, when all of a sudden Zeus pops down from the cosmos in a rush to escape from some attacking eagle! I didn’t know it was Zeus at first because he looked like a swan, and one fine swan he was! But once I found out, I was surely not going to let him down.

To make an epic of this, I must say again, he was a hunk of a swan, and we sorta began to play around, and then he went crazy and chaos ensued and then he wouldn’t stop, and... I was mortified! And all on the same night my husband and I had been creation-making also!!

So here’s my problem. I delivered the triplets, Castor and Pollux, the boys, and Helen, a Trojan looking, gorgeous girl! Of course the handmaids took them from me directly, and then I come to find out that they’d HATCHED! Oh my Zeus! A plague be on me! Now I have three half-immortal kids, or one immortal and two divine, or whatever, and I’m having going to have a tough time raising them!

The heavens are rumbling miserably. I don’t know what to tell my husband!

Please, please send help with the speed of Mercury!

Love, Leda





Leda and the Swan by Michelangelo
(This was a dang cool "assignment" that integrated English and Art!)