An email message from: Harmonia. To: You, my faithful listener. Subject: I Need To Step Away From The Table For A Bit.
Hello, my friend.
I want to tell you something, and I'm going to tell it to you the way I always do --- straight, warm, and without making it weird.
I need a break from my family.
I know. I know. They're my family. I love them. I genuinely do. My father --- god of war, terrible at apologies, surprisingly good at barbecue --- I love him. My mother, who is beautiful and chaotic and never once in four thousand years has arrived anywhere on time --- I love her too. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Hephaestus, Dionysus --- all thirty-five of them, every last impossible one --- I love them.
But I have spent forty-five episodes at this table.
Thirty-five relatives. Thirty-five stories. And then --- and this is the part I want you to understand --- just when I thought I was done, someone brought up Perseus.
Nine episodes. Nine. Daily. Medusa, the Graeae, the sea monster, Andromeda, the whole thing. I was fully committed. I was there. And it was wonderful, truly, but by the time we got to the winged sandals I was eating ambrosia standing up over the sink and avoiding eye contact with everyone.
So. I'm stepping away for a while. Not forever. The archive is right where you left it --- forty-five episodes, all the stories, all the relatives, the whole glorious mess. It's not going anywhere. Neither am I.
But right now I need some quiet company, and I know where to find it.
There's another place I've been spending time. It's called The Golden Thread. Same voice --- this one, the one you're hearing now --- but quieter. Slower. Instead of my enormous, exhausting, deeply loveable family, I'm sitting with individual human souls who bent the world a little toward the good. One life at a time. One discovery at a time.
It's very peaceful over there. Nobody has been turned into a swan. Not even once.
Come find me. I'll save you a seat.
And when I come back to the Olympic Family --- and I will, because you don't just walk away from thirty-five relatives forever, they find you --- you'll know first. Stay subscribed. That's all I ask.
Much love. I am, Harmonia.