My fingers run on the sharp blade of Katoptris, my own eyes look back at me and I see how my tears start falling like a cascade. I wish I hadn't been stuck here. The people in the streets shriek in the town market, they wish I were dead. The people in the battle field are dying, and the blood on the ground should have been mine. I wish I would have stayed in Sparta, I would have been loveless. I would never blush at the sight of my lover. I would never be content. But no war would have started.

Better yet, I wish he hadn't taken me away. I have never asked Menelaus to make me his bride. Maybe I would have met my one true love, Paris, another way. Free from a husband whom I dread. Free from a war that is haunting me down. 

O, wretched beauty, you're a curse! And now my Paris is off to war, facing Menelaus, and I know them both! In a combat, he'll be turned to dust. 

And in vain I cry. For fate is fate and it does not listen to the cry of helpless women.