Thetis

Thetis is a sea nymph and the mother of Achilles.

Family
She is the mother of Achilles and grandmother of Neoptolemus, who is called Pyrrhus. Because she forced Achilles to marry her, she is also the mother-in-law of Deidameia, the daughter of King Lycomedes of Scyros. Her father is Proteus, the slippery Old Man of the Sea.

Appearance
She is wily like her father and knows how to shapeshift, making "her skin flow into a thousand different shapes of fur and feather and flesh." Her hair is "black and long as a horse's tail." She is cold. Her skin is very pale, as pale as bonepg. 109.

She is taller than 12 year old Patroclus, taller than any woman he had ever seen, and taller than most men. Her black hair hung loose down her back. Her skin shone luminous and impossibly pale, as if it drank light from the moon. She smells like seawater laced with dark brown honey. Her voice is hoarse and raspy, like the grinding of rocks in the surf. Her eyes were not like a human's; they were black to their center and flecked with gold. Her mouth was a gash of red, like the torn-open stomach of a sacrifice, bloody and oracular. Behind it her teeth shone sharp and white as bone.

She hates to be kept waiting.

Prophecy
It was prophesied that Thetis' child would be greater than his father. Hearing this, Zeus and the gods shackled her to a mortal, to make the child less powerful. It was the gods that caused Thetis to be raped.

Peleus Rapes Thetis
The gods led Peleus to the secret place where Thetis liked to sit on the beach. They knew that she would resist, but they told him to hold on to her no matter what. She struggled fiercely, but he continued to r*pe her.

The gods forced her to stay with Peleus for a year. She spent that time being silent, unresponsive, and sullen. The hour that year ended, she ran out of the house and dove back into the sea.

Relationship with Achilles
Achilles often spends hours talking with his mother. He always goes alone, as Patroclus prefers to avoid her. Achilles is the only person that Thetis loves, and even then it is distant. She wants him to be great, to be famous. She would only return to land to visit Achilles, and even then, it was never for long.

Achilles leaves late at night or at dawn before the palace was awake, and returned flushed and smelling of the sea. He does not bring Patroclus with him.

Every time Achilles visits, she asks him what he is doing, how he is doing, of his reputation among men, and if he will come with her to the caves under the sea.

Relationship with Patroclus
She hates Patroclus.

Thetis tells 12 year old Achilles that she wishes to meet Patroclus. Patroclus is afraid because of her reputation for hating mortals. She tells him that Achilles will be a god, and asks him if he understands. He says yes."'Good.' Carefully, as if to herself, she added, 'You will be dead soon enough.'"