Comments on the Eighteenth Beginning

The Houseboat on the Styx is an old bit of writing. 

The rivers are a single river that flows in the shape of a Lorenz butterfly.  The traditional rivers of Hades are: 

Styx, river of  hate or detestation;

Lethe, river of unmindfulness or forgetfulness, said to flow around the cave of Hypnos;

Archeron, river of woe or sorrow;

Pyriphlegethon, river of fire;

Cocytus, river of wailing and lamentation.

Eridanos, is another river sometimes associated with Hades or being underground.  Phaeton died and fell from the sky, struck by Zeus' thunderbolt, and tumbled into the Eridanos.

I had gathered a story of Tiresias  to add in, but I can't find it again and it may have been deleted from wikipedia as inaccurate.  He was a blind seer. His daughter in the old story I'd gathered was Daphne but the current wiki article says it was Manto. 

In my story, she drops in on her way to be reborn.  He mocks her as she passes.  She will not give up either life or wisdom and prophecy.  He cannot bear both together and will not be parted from prophecy.  He is therefore the only aware being in his section of the butterfly.  They enter the boat as it passes a copse of dead trees with suicides hanging from them.

Other notes for the story include:

• There is an area ruled by Chronos, who mutters of older gods.
• A spring called Tilphussa can 'kill' the dead.
• Before the entrance to Hades live Grief and Anxiety, along with Diseases and Old Age. 
• Also Fear and Hunger and Death and Agony and Hypnos (Sleep), brother of Thanatos (Death), dwell in this place together with Guilty Joys. 
• On an opposite threshold is War, the ERINYES and Eris (Discord).  (So the different rivers run by different lands.)

 "In the midst of all this an Elm can be seen and False Dreams cling under every leaf."

There is [to be continued]