Wine and Crows

Contrary to the thought of time travel and my current racial standings doesn’t worry me as much as it sparks a particular set of questions with answers that could give life worth reconsidering. However, this is not so much regarding the ripping of the temporal plain as a long-running curiosity about the universe-destroying effects of one dead grandfather. Reading the Iliad felt like a stroll through Athens, leaving on a dirt path under Artemis’ silver-laced sky, beating feet onto the next stop. Sands of timelessness wrapped up the shine and, at the downs of my journey, went untainted by the current hardships of an area that probably isn’t accurate to any genealogy of mine for new ones to navigate. Imaging carrying the message, one theorized to express some tremendous change in the Greek Empire with never a step taken without a purpose for miles of foothills from sea to sea. Possibly during the Ionian Revolt, where tension remained lullingly fever-pitched as battles in Asia moved northward or maybe as the duty became more centered around the emperor’s paranoia. Fun times. Not to add to the mistrust by introducing the sandal-cladded youths to the rage of an Ares war.

Once the morn of the meet of father’s summons with Orihus, whose son would be wed to my sister. I’m gifted my first parcel of braggadocios viand wildly sending me to kneel before Caesar. My father sang praises to neighbors, passersby of my violet page written in gold ink and put forth efforts immediately toward preparing me for an opportunity that would have never met his youth. It’s a wonder he managed to stay regularly employed, missing a thumb wearing a name thought to be stolen with no evidence. As if he had a direct line from his fresh fish to what the Fates have foretold, turning the quest, that may not be, into a lavish tale fit for a Homer tale spun before my eyes as the sword training he rarely gave me. An Orihus was marrying a Kydoimos, but my Kydoimos was slated to share breath with the ruler. He felt more of said honor than me, so I fear I must borrow some to change my disposition.

This would become my chance to upgrade my current perception from my neighbors who, despite my efforts, see my regular intoxication and collections under false pretenses as that of a layabout between one imaginary life and another not worth the drachma to start. Recent accusations have left many of them duly stunned by my father’s declaration. It nearly resurfaced my former fame of alleged repugnant acts that brought me to experience one of Athen’s Pharmkoi, something I only survived thanks to high tide and what I have to assume was a waft of wind that saved me from a particularly jagged rock, but I didn’t ask. If it weren’t for my mother’s persistent coaxing of my limited criminal involvement, I would’ve been thrown over again. Of course, this is what ushered me into accepting this Hera-blessed opportunity leading me to the light of a career, or so my father believed.

The pillars struck me first. Shined to the roof it supported, and I couldn’t help but wonder who does the polishing at the top and where do they hide that much scaffolding. It put a little more worth in my eyes of the Spartans guarding the entrance. This may have caused me to speak my name with less than the desired confidence before being escorted across the threshold under sword and beardy grunt. As I examined the Marble, I was missing thorough instructions on how to approach and speak to the emperor with vague repercussions if I faulted any of them as silently as my mistake would be. No eye contact was a given, but as motionless as possible on my knee, this will fall to pieces if I’m forced to do any in-depth explaining. I’m a very handsy speaker, but I was not there to speak on my own behalf; accept the journey the guard discussed from his memory while struggling to stare toward his eyes but not connect while looking not like a liar while he stood. His brute of a second in command seemed hell-bent on portraying me as the half-measure bastard without the intelligence or integrity to pledge allegiance. But by the grace of Hermes, Caesar asked to look his next messenger in the eye.

“You’ll be my deliverer, then, without gripe or hesitation? Do you accept?”

“Yes, my—”

“Then here. This is for you, and only you granted you can reach your destination. It will also not be the end of you or my strife; making all three will solidify your place amongst the Olympians; it is of such close proximity to my very essence. Death must be a friend of fancy, and the Fates must hate your ascendence. Do you accept, young Kydiomos?”

I don’t think I understood the difference. Still, his paranoia as of late granted me a slight pause, for which I compensated overly so with, “If it is approved by the gods, I have no need for further explanation.”

I would’ve accepted anyway, so when I was gifted the scroll, thick and flooded, I left with my eyes down. Caesar calls out, “It’s a fun one, Woulielmos, so have it.”

I refused hesitation. Since the island was the final step, I’d work my way north on foot with a futile wave at my home. The first aim would be Drosia near the coast for the two-day journey. A better step to regain my bearings and my vigor could not be found, and for that Caesar spy I met passing through Marousi to feed me a great route, I felt was of a crucially devious intent. I was the fresh-faced Nubian, dressed to lead the slaves or dregs that I was careful not to overdo with the coin granted for the effort. To see that Caesar’s paranoia was a spreading caution for the unknown force since the Revolt seemed low stakes concerns this far north. Silence was not difficult, but in their unsettled state of training in espionage, I wondered if they hadn’t been chasing what couldn’t be seen for too long. The message that fiends were in my future was clear.

My instructions were daft, but to my weary feet pushed forward by dead legs, I revealed their simplicity in the rhyme where the mountains meet the sea under a tree of pale rose petals and face west at midnight. Their stark warning that until such time that all messages are delivered, I should not speak of their origin made the night of dazed waiting as taxing as the search for the specific tree, the only tree. How odd that it was there, born betwixt two boulders. The set sun, thoroughly finished with the light if not the heat, left me propped against a root, doomed to slumber, wondering if I’ll even be seen again, let alone seen by those in need of this information. Sleep took me in the roots atop the dead petals, lush as they decayed.

Whether dream or delusion of my hunger thwarting my wit, I’m met with a violent glow of lavender, impossibly enveloping my limbs with the maddening grips of soft skin with strength unparalleled. I fight as my scrawny frame felt give in smokey hands, but only my tongue may freely rebel against their masked will. They must hear me; someone must hear me. Their intention was to drag me into the base of the mountain, where there was no trail up or around and no access, and it became a carry as my rabid jostling showed too much for the holder of my right leg. A figure in a black and gold mask with a realistic tongue effect of blood pouring at the mouth hole too small for the appendage. The fade into the purple refusing to incline took this from real to an Imaginarium that could not be my own.

“What manner of vision befalls me, you lush forms of creatures from my suffering?” It was then that I had heard my voice for the first time, and with it came my first response from my kidnappers.

“But he’s too far from where he must be.”

The feminine voice, the one leading me into the sinking earth revealing a path through, not up, spoke to further the abduction inside. “Then let this be what prepares him for the drink.”

“Stop. I must deliver—” blinding as it chooses to be, the rumbling came to change my orientation in earthquakes only I seemed to notice. The massive eye above blinked with the moisture that soaked its lashes that, if a tear dropped fell, it would drown me thrice over where I lay. Paralyzed to a slab I couldn’t feel beneath me, I was under a triremes-sized eye about to cry a sea upon me. Breathing was salty and coarse as petals seemed to desire to play filter in my throat. The chant began. ‘Contra ventum, sycophantam adduce domum,’ partnered with dance and cackling at my demise.

“Well done, Kydiomos.”

The voice woke me, but I could not find their source. I sat under the mast facing the sunrise. In a panic of choppy waves and rouge splashes from the bow, I searched myself for the scroll of all things. There it was, but I appeared to be missing, if not here, but from where I was, only the top page. I wanted to revel in a job well done, yet the crew was tired of my frantic behavior, still in a fight from the nightmare I couldn’t accept was over or ever started. The shrinking land mass in my rears left my appreciation for the warm wool blanket and the fresh clothing underneath a ruse of my own creation. Lunging for the Captain was the final straw that brought a few passengers to the ready, and thus I was subdued. After a strike across the jaw from a rower going easy on me, I couldn’t blame them, and my senses could be gathered. At least I earned enough pity to keep the captain from throwing me overboard. That may have just been my malnourished size.

“If I may, where is this vessel headed? I dare not overstate an emperor’s desire, but I must, at the bare minimum, be heading north.” I hoped the dagger to my throat would not be disturbed by my throat more in my anxious gulp of dried spit and seawater.

“Then your anxiety is for not. If Poseidon allows, our goal is Loutra Edisou. Will you be a problem much more?”

“No, Captain, no. My most sincere apologies. And thank you for a place on your vessel. What I have is yours, to an extent, upon landing, and my hands are of service until then.”

“If anything, your presence has allowed me drink preference at port. Paid and full. You must be sharing our need for a powerful thirst. Be wary of your moods.”

My youthful galivanting as a drunken dullard doddering defenselessly, you don’t question a gift until it’s paid up. I took my seat and leaned against where I started inside my blanket. Strange stares echoed the unease of the others while rowers, big burly men as rough as the untreated wood they sat on, seemed afraid at what sat just behind me. Calming them with a dash of fevered charmed would have to wait as I examined my new attire down to the undergarments up to the silver-lined medallion, blacker than the depths glimmering with a symbol I didn’t recognize. As I positioned it for a better view, I came to the knowledge that it was as part of my discomfort as it was theirs.

How calm seas could be my fault, I haven’t the idea, but it was why Livanates was nearly my final stop. To participate in jovial rebellion as the night a shore grows old is what my youth is for. Despite the agreed-upon sunrise departure, I caught the captain in the fog before dawn, drifting us in the misted pier. Beyond calling my dedication to devotion to Olympiad training, nothing was started about his haste.

My arrival on the shores of Aidipsos was two meters leading to a poorly judged speed that roused the men to row in reverse from a dead sleep. The dock hand, weary-eyed but clearly got word that someone was to be greeted on a vessel at this hour; meanwhile, the other patrons seemed to be in a breathless fog amidst a slow escape. Each zombified blank face was blistered with a burden that something in their sacks or rock in their hands could fix on the beach. It was the kerplunk off the dock that brought their attention to those disembarking. They showed no signs of concern, and one or two cracked a smile without eyes matching the glee. Coerced will mind-melded into a pact for a vile retreat from their homes, and I’ve counted twenty of them as the captain helped folk off the boat. He didn’t seem all too worried. “Don’t waste a second, messenger. This be your stop, then? Then don’t prolong your presence around me.”

His men returned to their boat no matter the need for rest they blatantly would have taken if the place was on fire on the way here, taking only my thanks. My lament at preventing a child from sinking into the depth a decent ways down the coast as I shouted for their attention; I didn’t need additional images that came with the splashes. Tenfold it increased as a loved one’s agonizing cries passed me by, calling for their loved one’s rational mind to wake to reason. As the captain halted the mother’s irrationality, I forced my focus to the town that sent them. The outer layer of the scroll bored a clue that suggested the center of the market. It also said I’d be drawn to it like a symbol of my true home. Seeing it on the back of a message beyond my responsibilities, I couldn’t fathom there not being some clarity I was missing and furiously so. The town awakened as the sun whisked away the dampness in the air. How blind a bliss—How blissful a blind as cheery merchants offering fresh fruit as children picking them from the lower rows expecting me to be an unwilling accomplice. Or were they mine; I’ve not eaten in a day, and he indeed had the juiciest apple for ages.

Hours of wondering for nothing and the spontaneous King Nico expected no message and wouldn’t see me to witness my proof. Caesar’s name merely added to his paranoia, and his eyes seemed to not like my new belt either. That was a stolen Drachmae had not seen such a waste in use. Desperate, I became a superficial local, scanning street by street, waving and conversing until I landed at a place with good wine at the edge of time. The comfort I feel around the reprobates skirting the Spartans, shunned by their mothers, who won’t allow their offspring to face them in the daylight, lumbered around like they were trapped, lost in the wrong town. Kissing the tip of Aidisos, my new sash on my waist coaxed an alive intrigue. I enter without pause despite the express angst of either a protector paid by the owner or a loyal patron unable to appreciate my thirst. I pray for whatever the barkeep can get to my face the quickest. I wasn’t given a chance to exclaim a preference when they called down a concoction, gratis, of course; that signal took the brute’s hands off my shoulder. “You drink like a lost man, but you’re so young. So, determined in the brow, Woulielmos of Athens.”

“Excuse my lack of enthusiasm for your trick. I sit before you in failure despite my efforts.”

“So, you need your drink if what illudes you will be clear.”

“Sir, you appear to be familiar with me and my life but let this nap upon your bar illustrate my disregard for your mission in spite of my heart’s fire. I assume you—”

“But you’re early, around half an hour, I’d say. Nap away.”

“Have I asked for an appointment? The one of the lines golden streams to be crossed at dawn a hammer lighter than air? Such madness,” I finished.

“The walkers,” They began, “I believe you arrived to greet, have been blamed on an intoxicant imbibed unknowingly. All the commotion didn’t hinder you; take the praise while you can.”

I leaned in, fearing the hovering steps of curious ears, not that I saw anyone else; I only now worryingly admitted, “This ruler seems like the rightful receiver with only my puny peak at the interior of my scroll. Two characters repeated unmistakenly with great craft, quite an intense shade of red. What is this kidnapping—and that thing above you wine stock--”

“Are you here to complete your task,” he said, partnered with a second.

“Haven’t made the request—” but my shoulder was invaded again by a massive man-like creature. My leap moved me from my seat, betraying my gruff demeanor I expressed as bassy coughs and whisper-growling talk thanks to that caused. I was told this was the designated time for water or water-based drinks, but the form of the barkeep was equally challenging to understand. That toothy thing consumed air in a vibrant whirlwind above their head, but no one seemed disturbed. Where my dagger was pointing, as the other patrons kept asking, I could’ve sworn was the reason for the grotesque transformation of human to oatmeal puddle to a slop of wet hair. From everyone’s reaction that swiftly plucked me from the top of the counter of drinks, its destruction did what I thought, regardless of not knowing how it would, they didn’t enjoy my sudden visual over that rock, the world of black ash pouring on a violet star’s light. That barkeep didn’t look like that when I first opened the door, and when the hell did they switch? I did see two bodies clutching their abdomens in puddles I can’t recall walking through just before they refused to lower me before carrying me through the archway. I had never been more launched by human hands in my life. I rolled so far upon landing; the teamwork had to be respected, which made me remorseful, for they slid into the forming to mob on their side to where I gravel at my misunderstanding of my accusers.

“Sir, thank you. I beg you take your scroll—”

I pushed him back, “And you take your drink and your words with no end, and I’m done with your hospitality.”

“Go now!”

That damn flurry of stones on my already unstable delirium, seeding my spastic steps in the dust, still perplexes me to this day. “What’s that—I,” I struggled to make sense of the lush foliage of their desire to inflict pain as slowly as possible. “Please, where are my eyes taking me? Oh, by the gods, I need of them now.” A light to replace the fading pursuers? A humble fire of a lone traveler or flames from nostrils with acidic drool awaiting my naïve approach? I want the curse this night for the rumbling at my feet as the stampede of one addressing me and my tiny dagger. With the vanishing stars and their smokey wildlife hairstyle, I woke on the steps of a prophet’s den, nearly lulled by the Xeria River back to slumber. The scroll minus a page added scaring to my brow.

The ten mille passuses to the coast war rip with an advancing thought to be so massive, its name was right around the last bend. At the pace of a spartan, I trek the distance in silence between settlements away from the path—any path that would suit my sandals more. But how? I fought to my feet with good intent, avoiding a detour for a healthy ass without an owner if a steed cannot be procured. No more. These tests of Caeser or Gaia or frenzied Olympian mortified by some mortal with a delivery route are stretching my soul, ripping seams from my likeness for an effort physical exertion cannot pay enough for debt contract with the interest, forcing my mind out of its depths. My home is extended now; feels as if I’ve never heard of Greece watching the hunchback work. Strange folk to the eye, unsettled in my vision as they stand balanced and firm, must have been former residents of Tartarus staying in character harshly in plain sight. Am I all that remains of humanity in this world? Where’s the outrage?

On a steeple’s steps, sore in thought over my new title below or above messenger with a mercenary implication at peak interpretations, this glee remains stained upon my mouth between each course direction, running future truths of my own trajectory through examination. What foul corruption has perverted more of my secure self in ways strong drink and mountain fruits to buckle into failure? To ask for, to be opened merely flooded the avenue with regret. However, I’ve sought this blissful thought to lead by my mind’s cornea to the two stades and night’s rest at the edge of Nikolaos, where to resist the pull to Sporades is to court doom in the form of an incomplete journey.

To land in the cove of Skoplelos’ harbor was to meet fate at its gambling hall with the wrong currency with a crowd favorite on a lucky streak. They could reject my call for a wild to trump a rogue toss or go all in on a rigged match. A profitable dare to some, I was weighed down with stone feet, fearing the final portion of the deceiver wearing Caeser’s power. Even the hunched fellow What a mission that would’ve been to out the paranoia gone array with spies and armies to satiate an unknowable lust. My knees fell into a wobble through the wildlife of a man as witnessed to its flustered end as the absence of passion left smiles amongst the victims. Invading forces, angry to kill, happy to oblige the local affection, except there wasn’t any in the people—my people to take. The villains were clear, yet the people’s feelings toward them were the same as he felt he would be accepted joining the rank, senseless violent ender of life. But this was between sword slashes aimed at whatever piece of me they wanted while missing their temporary enemy.

Many drank to the evening’s occasion; children ran busy with games tripping on the cobble and weaving through sloshing gatherers. To see smiles so close to combat it bothered me immensely with my attempts to herd them into alleys to another path not mildly highlighted by fornicators melding screams of an opposite motivator behind the outcries. It continued devolving the streets, the essence unseen until a once crafty blacksmith was sparked into an argument with me on the grounds that we hadn’t met before, and it bothered the hell out of him. Plainly, while they took a second to catch his wind before swiping his axe for blood’s sake, I asked him in jest if the hill would yield aid in my journey. His rage became unbound, and his potential slashes meant to separate limbs of men hardier than I tenfold. Still, each miss completed his message that sent me right up the mountainous path I had dreaded in my exhaustion, barely out surviving my blacksmith’s attention span. A climb to calm my overzealousness from the chants on the other side of my last turn. A peek as quick as light reveals the freed flesh as the foundation of their released inhibitions, drenched in wine as putrid as a fermented corpse.

The center glow to light the readings before the altar, a pillar aflame creeping lower and lower towards the ground dressed for a funeral pyre. Joining the chants only required your enthusiasm as the nude or robed individuals libated themselves to lunacy as they leaped into the circle that could contain the forty souls in gibberish-laced harmony. “You have come with haste. Your place sits before you, and now you become timid?”

The voice sounded like she sat behind me, and with that confirmed wrong, I entered the circle to see only one of them facing me and too far to have delicately whispered their invitation. I ignored it to an extent. “I have your scroll, but I feel there is more to me handed it to you, miss,” I said.

“You’re correct. Where’s your curiosity? We’ve chosen you and you us. In a way, this is for you.”

“What choice? Your fate—the Fates have lost a string—”

“And you took it. When did you realize it wasn’t Caeser?” she, the unrecognizable feat of extraordinary beauty, said, meeting me before my stroll met her.

“Maybe a trick to his guards, but they made eye contact with me when I entered, and their help didn’t catch me as obviously as I made the flirtatious move.”

“And we saw that,” she started, “You are more than a cocky youth. You stand against what you don’t like with a drive to not just seek but uncover. Do you understand?”

“Why did you make me kill,” I asked. Her face soured, and a formally overzealous cultist stopped.

“It couldn’t be stopped, and you stopped it. You were lost, and we set you right. Morals do not change the Fates. And murder hangs heavy in our memory. Unless you need time to experience the perks of becoming available to his Mysteries before your induction.”

An induction listed on the scroll, open and in my hands as it realized that she was signaling me to read my mail. Step one: reach the caves on the coast of Demeter; reaching into Hades set your soul to be sampled. Step two: grow familiar with his wine to hold accountable the last thief of the Thyrsus. Do Not spare the co-conspirators. Step three: Give up your physical self; dance with him. I didn’t need to look up to deny the drink offered from the masked right hand of the statuesque divinity waiting for me to admit I’d finished reading a minute ago. Their slyly spoken “a message delivered deserves a reward” was all the time I had to find the previous exit strategy, rocked over as if I fell from a phoenix into the center as my arrival. Eyes all around me behind masks piercing my chest as they missed my eyes, putting the fire’s smoke in my lungs like there was nowhere else it could go.

“What is this? I—I don’t want this,” I barked to the crowd stepping closer. An elbow to a gut later, I was swinging a torch backing toward my hopefully detailed hallucination. Still, she met me as my back bounced off the rocky wall, looking down at me.

“It’s the fear he craves. And I’m here to tell you that it’s not necessary.” I’ll never know who struck my lights out or how I was found in a field outside of Athens four months later, waking to its demise. Baking screams and a gizzard streams, sick to my stomach of what I’ve been.