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Her dad’s servant Thanatos, god of death, had suggested that Pluto might be doing Hazel a favor by ignoring her.

But slowly we are being vaccinated, we are being freed; and soon Thanatos and Eros may not be so scarily intertwined.

He was King of the Dead—not Death himself, whom the Greeks called Thanatos and the Romans, Orcus.

Sitting cross-legged in my friend’s attic, I tore through those pages, ricocheting between Thanatos and Eros.

Forbidden or disaster-laden touch has been thematically explored from the beginning of storytelling: think the apple of Eden, King Midas, Apollo and Daphne, Tantalus, Pygmalion and Thanatos myths, where touching can have calamitous consequences.