Kenna awoke inside a thundercloud.

She sat up and looked around, blinking in the hope that it would clear her vision, but it was no use. Everything stayed hazy as if obscured by a gossamer veil.

Something grey and smoky and smelling like a metal fence in the rain surrounded Kenna, slowly curling inwards as if curious.

"Where am I?" The question slipped from Kenna's lips even though there was nobody around to answer it.

Kenna's eyes flitted about, seeking an escape or anything to help her understand what this foreign place was.

Was she in a dream? A nightmare, perhaps? Or some realm she didn't know the name of?

In a story, the possibilities would be endless, but this was reality. There had to be a sensible explanation for what was going on.

The thundercloud receded like an ebbing tide to reveal a woman of unnatural height towering over Kenna.

Kenna started. As if it wasn't strange enough to be inside a cloud, now she had company.

"Kenna Fernsby." The woman's pale pink lips shaped each syllable of her name. "We finally meet."

Kenna studied her face.

It was sharp and almost white in complexion. Her downturned hazel eyes gave her a permanently mournful look. Dark hair fell in voluminous curls to her shoulders.

Her features were little more than images without meaning because Kenna still had no idea who she was.

"I am Melpomene." The woman answered before Kenna could ask, her thin mouth curving without humour. "The Muse of Tragedy."

Kenna blinked. She had read about the Greek pantheon countless times, but she hadn't realised that they still existed centuries after they were last worshiped.

Kenna's gaze slid over the dark, long-sleeved garment the goddess wore belted at her waist and the cothurnus boots half-obscured by the mist at her feet. As legend said, she dressed like the tragic actors of the past.

Was Kenna's love life so sad that she had gained an audience with this Muse? She didn't know whether to be flattered or heartbroken anew.

"You're very self-absorbed, aren't you?" The goddess's voice was cool and sharp like shards of rock. "How like a mortal to think she's the centre of the universe."

"I do not think that," snapped Kenna.

Melpomene made no comment, just watched Kenna with her strange, sad eyes and bitterly-set mouth.

Kenna squirmed at the intensity of her gaze. It gave her the sense that the goddess could see through her, right to her heart, right to her thoughts.

"Well, won't you tell me what you want from me?" The question burst from Kenna, as impatient as she was for answers.

"You truly think love has not known more tragedy than you have?" The goddess tilted her head to the side with a curious expression.

Kenna raised her eyes to the cloudy ceiling that the air stirred into whorls. It was all coming back to her—the breakup, the phone call with Gloria, and watching Romeo and Juliet.

Kenna really shouldn't have drunk the whole bottle of wine. Maybe then she wouldn't be in this strange situation.

This wasn't a story or reality but something in between, an alcohol-induced hallucination, perhaps.

The Muse's question seemed to have only one correct answer, but Kenna felt bold enough to be honest instead.

If this wasn't real, what did she have to lose? Maybe the dream-goddess would disagree with her, but at least she'd wake up feeling lighter after venting her feelings.

"Yes, I do."

The goddess raised her eyebrows. "Oh, do you?"

Kenna wished Melpomene would stop answering her questions with more questions, but there was nothing for her to do but play along. She may never leave this dream realm if she didn't.

"I do." Kenna tilted her chin up. She found that it lent a certain conviction to her words. "I just got dumped by my boyfriend via voice note because he would rather be with someone else. How would that make you feel?"

The goddess didn't answer.

Kenna continued, her voice shaking with suppressed emotion. "It feels lousy, let me tell you. I've given him everything I have–"

"Thus, you feel entitled to his affection. Is that it?" Melpomene narrowed her eyes.

"No! No, it's not like that. It's just... I loved him. I was always there for him. I don't know why that wasn't enough." Kenna's shoulders sagged, and she turned away from the Muse, from the heartbreak she had tried so hard to stifle.

She couldn't escape it, not with wine and chocolate and her favourite movie, and not even in the world of her hallucination.

"One plus one does not equal two in matters of love," said Melpomene.

Kenna met the goddess's dark, melancholic gaze. "Then what does it add to?"

"The letter z. Epsilon. Blue. Any number but two."

"That's very helpful." Kenna's voice went taut with frustration at the goddess's riddles and those of love.

"Mathematics has never been Aphrodite's area of expertise, nor Eros', for that matter." Melpomene's tone was almost sharp enough to cut.

"But–"

The Muse glowered. "What I am saying is that love isn't rational. It doesn't make sense. You don't always get out what you put in. Such is the nature of love."

"But I see everyone around me being loved while I keep getting hurt, and I want the same happiness. I don't know what I'm doing wrong." Kenna looked down into her lap.

Her relationship had failed because she was a failure. She wasn't elegant or distinguished. She couldn't dazzle Tim's clients and colleagues with her intellect or accomplishments. She was just her, and even her utmost wasn't enough.

"That is sad," Melpomene said as blandly as if she had never known that feeling.

Maybe she hadn't. Maybe goddesses healed quicker than Kenna ever could. Maybe things that shattered mortals were just minor inconveniences to them.

When they lost a lover, they could just find a new one among all the mortals and divinities in existence. Years of pain passed by in moments.

The myths Kenna had read showed her that mortals may live shorter lives, but they lived with more intensity—more passion and love, but more pain and sadness too.

Kenna shouldn't have expected any deity, not even the Muse of Tragedy, to understand how she felt.

"I don't blame your heart for breaking. Those organs can be fickle little things," said Melpomene, surprising Kenna with the shadow of sympathy in her words. "But you do not know true tragic love, that is for certain."

Something red and hot flared inside Kenna. Just because there was no death in her story didn't mean she couldn't feel sad about Tim breaking up with her.

How dare this goddess belittle Kenna's feelings? They simmered inside her, sputtering for lack of air until Melpomene's breath touched them.

Kenna went off like a firecracker. "And I suppose you know true tragic love?"

"I do." The Muse's eyes flashed. "I was there when Paris took Helen to Troy and unleashed a war on his people. I was there when Cleopatra killed herself after hearing of Mark Antony's death, leaving their children orphans. I was among the heartbroken audience members when Romeo and Juliet first premiered."

Kenna had read each of those stories. She had cried herself to sleep and lain awake many nights thinking about the death and devastation contained in those tales, yet that couldn't match her agony at the heartbreak in her own story.

Reading a tale was nothing like living through one. Likewise, the pain in each couldn't be compared.

Kenna reacted as a person scalded—without thinking.

"You're wrong to assume there's only one shape to tragedy. What's tragic to me may not be so to you, but that doesn't make it any less tragic. It's in the eye of the beholder, you might say."

A fierce gust of wind blew past Kenna, sending a shiver through her. That was when she knew she had said the wrong thing and, even worse, that this might be real.

Melpomene loomed larger at the foot of Kenna's cloud bed.

Kenna shrunk back, but the cloud held her in place. There was no escaping the Muse.

"What's common to all tragedy is that it is devoid of hope." The goddess pressed her mouth into a thin line. "There are no rewrites and no redemption. There's just the end, and that's that."

Kenna opened her mouth to say that she was devoid of hope. Before she could, the goddess's eyes glazed over with a shimmering grey colour.

"Perhaps a lesson will help you understand." Melpomene's words seemed to come from within and around her at the same time.

Kenna's heart nearly stopped. That didn't sound good. If this was real, she was in trouble.

She backtracked. "Wait! Give me another chance. Please–"

Melpomene rose into the air, a tall, slender column of gleaming divinity.

"Mortals have forgotten the essence of tragedy. It keeps no prisoners and knows no mercy," were the goddess's last words before Kenna's world went black.