Metamorphosis

Long ago, in the far away land of ancient Rome, there lived three best friends. Emma, Maggie, and Joe grew up together. You would never see them apart. As they grew up, Emma started hanging out with other people, but still remained friends with Maggie and Joe. Maggie and Joe spent all of their time together. Over time, the two fell in love.

One day, Emma approached Maggie and Joe and asked them to cover for her. She told them that she was seeing a married guy, and she didn’t want his wife finding out. She asked them to be a lookout while she went on dates with him, and if they saw his wife, they were to stall her until both Emma and her boyfriend could get away. Because they were old friends, Maggie and Joe agreed to this.

This arrangement went on for a while. Eventually, the wife figured out what Maggie and Joe were doing for their friend. In a fit of anger, she revealed herself to be Juno, the most powerful goddess on Mount Olympus. She told them that they were keeping her from her love, Jupiter (the married man who was dating Emma), and for their crime, they would never be together again.

Joe and Maggie woke up on opposite ends of a large field. Seeing each other, they started walking toward each other. However, the closer they got, the less they were able to move. Their arms got heavy and stiff, their feet started dragging, and their movements were slower. They each noticed that the other was starting to look more and more like a statue. When they were about ten feet apart, they stopped, afraid to go further. They called out to one another, trying to figure out what to do next. They decided to try moving away from each other. As they moved backwards, it became easier to move, and when they were about thirty feet apart they were back to normal. Juno appeared in the middle of the field, between them. She laughed, saying that they were cursed. If they were to ever get close to each other again, they would both turn completely to stone.

Maggie and Joe decided that they should try living apart. It was the only way to stay alive. Joe went looking for a way to break the curse, and Maggie went looking for Emma, to see if she could find out what Juno did to her. Maggie never found Emma.

For a few years they did this. Every so often, they would feel their limbs get stiff; knowing the other was nearby, they would walk off with heavy hearts in the other direction. Eventually they started to have conversations with each other, while still having to be great distances apart.

One day, they could not stand it any longer. They started running toward each other, arms ready to wrap in an embrace. They stopped in the middle, both turned completely to stone, an inch apart.

Author's Note (Edited): I based this story off of three stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The idea to have two characters tragically be apart was from Pyramus and Thisbe. That story was about two people falling in love; however, their families hated each other. Due to a tragic misunderstanding, one assumed the other was dead, killed himself, causing the other to kill herself once she found out what he had done. The idea to have Juno, wife of Jupiter, curse them came from the story of Echo. Echo was a nymph who would cover for her friends while they were with Jupiter by keeping Juno distracted. When Juno found out what Echo did, she cursed her to only be able to repeat what someone else was saying. The idea to turn Joe and Maggie into stone came from Deucalion and Pyrrha. Due to a large flood, Deucalion and Pyrrha were the only people left on Earth. They appealed to a goddess about this, who told them to throw large boulders over their shoulders. When the boulders hit the ground, they changed from rocks into people, and the human race was saved. My characters did the opposite, turning from flesh and blood to stone. The picture that I chose also helped influence this story. This is a rather famous statue called The Kiss, and while you cannot see it in this angle of the photo, the couple's lips are just barely apart, forever in that moment right before the kiss. I thought it represented the end of my story well.

All of these stories came from Ovid's Metamorphosis, translated into English by Tony Kline

The Kiss, Source: Wikimedia Commons