Menalippe wipes the sweat from her brow as she tends to new flower bed in the midday sun. She wonders how the restorations are going Knossos and if the Commander will be returning in the next few hours. Menalippe tires of the twin’s company. She watches the dark skinned, black haired duo bickering about which would go better and how one’s method was better than the other’s for digging a proper hole. She sighs, standing to break up another fight.

”No! Melancton do not do it like that,” hollers Melanie. “Mother never taught you to do it like that!”

”Mother is not here! The Lady will not care how I plant these flowers, but that they stay where they are planted against the winds!” Menalippe stands behind the two. Zero stifles his laughter, being the youngest of this band.

”Will you not stop your fighting,” asks Menalippe. “I cannot separate you two, for then you do not get anything done. But when together you fight all the while. What am I suppose to do? Phia warned me about your nature. But I think she finds a strange connection between you two and the royal twins. At least they never fight as much as you two!” Melanie and Melancton exchange glances up at Menalippe, Phia’s unofficial trusted second in command while she is away at Knossos.

They smile up at her and start in a eerie unison, “What would you have us do?” They fall in the fresh dirt laughing. Menalippe rolls her eyes, feeling more like a baby-sitter than someone who is in charge. But that was what she was for Phia’s real second, Alala was in Knossos setting up the new guard there.

Menalippe was not one for fighting or war, but she could not deny any of her heritage. Many of the female troops still in Crete were from the old stock of amazons. No longer did they call themselves by Amazon, but it was still used and occasionally whispered by strangers to the cities. Menalippe sighs again looking towards the setting sun. Phia should have been here by now.