Circe's House

The home of the goddess Circe on Aeaea. Built of stone in a tidy clearing in the oak forest. A wide terrace where she lays out a long table heaped with food, where she serves cheese and grain and honey and wine and spices the men do not know. Inside, a hearth and a kitchen where she will sit and talk with Odysseus through entire nights. Outside, the wolves and the mountain lions, drowsy in the shade, who used to be men. The first crew of twenty walks in and is welcomed and fed. She moves among them, teasing them, letting them eat from her hand. Then she touches them with a wand and their faces stretch and their backs curve. The same house, in the same evening, becomes the pig sty across the yard. Later it becomes a refuge, the place where Odysseus heals, builds, makes love, and learns what is coming. The architecture does not change. Only the goddess decides what kind of room you walk into.