Scene: Pharmakon

In medias res

(A half-lit stage. On one side, a stone courtyard tangled with vines; swine rustle at the edges. On the other, a faint shimmer of spice-laden air, the outline of a shape-shifter flickering. Circe and Scytale face one another across a circle of silence. A mortar and pestle rest on the ground; Scytale’s flesh shifts subtly as he speaks.)

CIRCE
(pressing leaves into stone)
You carry your poison in your skin.
I grind mine from roots.
Which of us is truer?

SCYTALE
(smiling blandly, face rippling)
Truth is a face the moment before it changes.
“Our hostilities are better left unvoiced.”

CIRCE
(gestures toward the swine)
Unvoiced?
See them. They squeal what men dare not speak.
The potion tore away their words,
left only hunger.

SCYTALE
(laughs softly, voice a wheeze)
And yet hunger is honest.
Faces lie more sweetly than squeals.
I am no less healer than you.
I give them new masks to survive their wars.

CIRCE
(snarls, then softens)
Survive?
Or vanish?
The pharmakon does not spare—it unmasks.
Poison and cure—
two sips of the same cup.

SCYTALE
(nods, his form shifting to mirror Circe’s own face)
Exactly.
Look—yourself.
Do you know whether this reflection
is venom
or salvation?

CIRCE
(stares at her double, voice low)
I know only this:
whatever you wear, whatever I brew,
the beast is waiting.
In you, in me, in all.

SCYTALE
(steps into the half-dark, voice echoing)
Then perhaps, sorceress,
we are the same draught—
two halves of one unspoken dose.

(Silence. The swine grunt and stir. The leaves drip bitter sap into the dust. The air ripples as if with spice. Both figures hold still, caught between cure and poison.)

BLACKOUT.