That night, looking at the moonlight reflecting off the cold marble floor of our bedroom, I made my decision. I was no longer a block of stone to be admired and controlled.
I walked out of the heavy wooden doors of his estate and stepped onto the dirt path. For the first time in my life, the ground beneath my feet felt real. The air smelled of salt and wild herbs.
The shift happened when my daughter, Paphos, was born. As I held her tiny, warm body against my chest, I looked at her soft skin. I realized that he would try to carve her, too. Not with a iron chisel, but with his voice, his rules, and his suffocating expectations. He would want her to be a silent statue, just like he wanted me to be.
He reached out to grab my wrist, his grip hard and unforgiving like the stone I used to be. "I made you!" he shouted, his face turning a deep, angry red. "You belong to me!"
But Pygmalion forgot one crucial thing about living breathing creatures.