He will come for you, if you offer.

He will give the dying life.

Give yourself. Give all.

Of all, he will devour.

Kallisto was still out in the field gathering olives from the emerging harvest. Usually, she'd sit quietly between the rows plucking the lavender and thyme that grew on its outskirts and weaving them into small garlands for her sisters. To Kallisto, her small town of Minkinos and her family was all she ever had. Yet no matter how she tried to ignore it, the last season had been brutally dry. When she trundled through the arid soil, pricking her bare feet, she tugged a leaf and it crumbled in the palm of her hand. The plants were so parched of water, and the olives surrounding her were so shriveled, they were like raisins—wrinkled and gummy. It’s been like this unbearably for the last four harvests. Her people haven't had a meal in days. Kallisto's own skin was tender and sallow like that of an old woman withering away in the dark.

She was under no illusions, she knew that if something wasn't done, her way of life and her people would wholly perish. As she crossed through the curled and papery-dry leaves in the field she heard a loud thump—heavy and wheezing—nearby.

MOTHER!

She screamed. She ran through the swarm of hill goats where her mother had taken a tumble. She waved her sisters over to gather her. They lifted her up and carried her inside the small thatched-roofed hovel.

"Daughters," her mother's words barely escaped her lips. She looked to her eldest, Kallisto. "I am not meant long for this earth."

Kalisto gazed into her mother's eyes, red as if coming down with a cold.

"You are of age now, Kal—"

"No, I cannot do this without you. I am weak without you mother," Kallisto pleaded, inside begging the gods to take mercy.