“Once she was separated from the cockles & clams, she found herself miraculously transformed into a Goddess. But she found herself different from the Goddesses & Nymphs of the sea because of the girdle. It clung to her body as a second skin, or as the shell clung to the cockle, & she had never been able to take it off. And thus, she herself had never known what she hid beneath the girdle.”

“And it was told that as soon as Poseidon saw the young Goddess, who looked no more than eighteen years of age, by human reckoning, passion immediately overwhelmed him. Unlike all the other Goddesses & Nymphs of the Sea, Aphrodite was not naked. She wore a huge girdle around her slender waist which covered her breasts & her hips as well as her crotch & buttocks. And, thus, instead of impaling her with his trident, Poseidon was overcome with curiosity as to what she hid beneath her girdle. He thus introduced himself as the King & Sheriff of the Seas & told the young Goddess that, as such, no secrets should be kept from him by all those who wished to live in the sea. He would therefore request that she removed the girdle to show him what she hid beneath it.”

“And she[Aphrodite]mourned Nerites` loss not because Nerites was her paramour but because she was her mentor.It was, strangely enough,poor Nerites who had taught her all she had known about sex & love until then. For how was a young Goddess, who was born from a cockle, to know about such things?”

“She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her.”

“They knew each other. He knew her and so himself, for in truth he had never known himself. And she knew him and so herself, for although she had always known herself she had never been able to recognize it until now.”

“She went by the name of Belisa Crepusculario, not because she'd been born with it or baptized it, but because she herself had searched until she found the poetry of 'beauty' and 'twilight' and cloaked herself in it. She made her living selling words.”