Thursday, April 11, 2019

3.09: The Desires of Adresteia

Location: Eastern Mediterranean, Nearing the Peloponnese

Time Remaining: 8 Months, 18 days


Odysseus looked up at the stars. They were the best part of sailing. During a new moon, like this, with nothing but water on every horizon, it seemed as if you could see every detail, every point of light pricked in the tapestry of the heavens. The only obstruction to Odysseus’s view was the billowing sail of the Aegis of Wisdom. He thought about it for a while, and eventually decided there was no good reason to let the sail get in his way. Odysseus went down to the main deck, did one last check with the men running the rigging, and then clambered up the lines on the mast. Odysseus did not exactly have the agility of a cat, but being a lifelong sailor, he had less trouble scaling the rigging than he'd had ascending the tree in Africa.


He climbed up and out onto the upper yard arm, straddled it and leaned back against the mast. Since putting the pirates behind them, their course had become uncannily smooth. The wind blew steadily and the waves rocked the ship only slightly, threatening to put Odysseus to sleep. He was roused from his tranquil moment by the sharp cry of a bird, and he looked up to see Adresteia – a barely discernable shadow against the sea of stars – descending towards him. She landed on the yardarm in front of him as a bird, but shifted quickly into her human form.

Odysseus was surprised to see her without feathers, “What happened to avoiding prying eyes?” The light from the torch below disappeared, and when Odysseus looked down, all he saw was darkness.

“I’m bending the light away,” Adresteia said, “Even if they look straight at us, they won’t know what they’re looking at.”

Odysseus shrugged – it seemed to him like a black void above the ship would draw more concern than a mysterious woman, but she was likely right that the men wouldn’t even notice. “What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to say that I’m sorry for the men you lost to those pirates.”

“Thank you,” Odysseus nodded and stared up at the stars for a moment, trying to decide if he should come out with the question that had been bothering him. “Why didn’t you do anything to save them? Is not letting anyone see you that important?”

“Athena said it was that important,” Adresteia said.

“But she didn’t tell you why?”

“No.” Adresteia sighed, “Athena seldom tells anyone why she does anything. Partly because she often relies on secrecy to accomplish her goals, and I think partly because she wearies of explaining her strategies to the people around her. Her plans are next to impossible to guess, because they often rely on a confluence of seemingly improbable factors that she has cajoled into working in her favor.”

“So you have to take it on faith, then?”

Adresteia studied the expression on his face, “You’re surprised?”

“From what you told me about Zeus, I think in your position I would certainly have trouble putting my faith in the gods.”

“My faith in Athena is not the blind faith one places in a god. She’s earned my respect. Athena sought me out when no one else did. Helped me deal with what happened and move on.”

“How?” Odysseus was genuinely curious, “How do you move on from that sort of betrayal?”

“There’s no simple answer,” Adresteia said, “Zeus not only betrayed my trust, he terrorized and humiliated me. I ran for so long trying to escape him... and after he finally caught up to me, I was afraid, terrified, he would come back and do it all again. Years living with the knowledge that someone out there wants to hurt you in that way…. it wears you down. And the one thing that might have helped me through all of that would have been my faith in a just world with a benevolent master.”

“Which Zeus took away from you.”

“Yes. So, afterward… I had nothing. Everything I was had been defined by my loyalty to him and to Hera. When they turned on me, all I had left was the drive to escape them, and in that I ultimately failed. So then what did I have? No security, no sense of self, no identity, no purpose…”

“And Athena gave you a purpose?”

“No, she just reminded me what my purpose had been; to make the world just. And she gave me an opportunity to work towards that end, a mission.”

“To work against Zeus,” Odysseus whistled and shook his head. He had no doubt that the ‘god’ deserved whatever Adresteia could do to him, and more besides, but the thought of putting himself before the blade like that terrified him.

“Yes, but I must profess some confusion. Some doubts that… I am not comfortable discussing with Athena.”

“If you can’t go to her, I don’t know who you could. She is the goddess of wisdom.”

“No, she’s just wise,” Adresteia said, “and my faith in her is not blind to the difference. And my concerns are of a more… mortal nature. Things I’m not sure that she would understand.”

“You’re still afraid of Zeus?” Odysseus inferred.

Adresteia smiled slightly at him, “I thought you might understand.”

“Oh, I’m an expert in being frightened of things.”

“You do yourself a disservice, Odysseus,” Adresteia said, “I’ve seen you show no lack of courage.”

“Doesn’t mean I wasn’t afraid,” he said, “When we encountered that mechanical man, when Ladon first appeared, and those monsters… I feared for my life, which is something I personally put very high value on.”

Adresteia nodded, “When I was Zeus’s servant, all I cared about was completing whatever mission he gave me. My only fear was failure. When he betrayed me I had this visceral instinct to escape, but then after he finally caught me, I lost that as well. When Athena came to me and invited me to join her cause, that became my purpose; my own welfare continued to be a triviality.”

“But that’s changed?”

“What is your purpose, Odysseus?”

Odysseus shrugged, “I have a duty to my father, and to our people. And hopefully I’ll wed Penelope; then I will also have her and our children to think of. I’ll eventually be a king, a husband, and a father. I suppose my purpose is to do those things well.”

“Why?”

“There was a time I would have told you, ‘because that’s what’s expected of me,’” Odysseus said, “But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to want those things. I want to raise children, to build a home with Penelope, and to serve my people. I’ll admit I’m afraid of the responsibility, but I guess love sometimes takes precedence over fear.”

“I live on a different time scale,” Adresteia said, “You likely cannot even name your ancestors from the time I was born into. Yet… I feel much the same thing.”

The ship hit a sudden swell, rocked hard, and Adresteia nearly tipped forward off the yardarm. Odysseus without hesitation reached out to steady her. His intention was to grab her arm, but fumbling in the dim light he managed to place his hand squarely on her breast.

“I’m sorry!” he jerked his hand away, “I thought you were going to fall.”

Adresteia smiled at him mischievously, “You remember I can fly, right?”

“Well… yes, now I do. I would never… I mean, I’m not the sort of man who grabs a woman without her permission…”

“You would… if you had my permission?”

“What?” Odysseus felt like the conversation had taken a sudden jot to the left and he’d turned right.

Adresteia sighed and shook her head, “I’m…” she bit her lip. The problem was not only finding the right words but committing to saying them out loud, “I’m afraid of challenging Zeus, because I’m actually afraid to die.”

“Okay,” Odysseus said, “that sounds entirely reasonable.”

“Fifteen years ago I wouldn’t have cared,” Adresteia said, “But now that I’ve had time to decide who I want to be… I feel my purpose is less defined, yet my life has more value to me. There are things I want to do, that I want to feel... I want to have a life beyond the mission Athena gave me. And I feel… guilt? For wanting those things.”

“Why?” Odysseus asked, “Why would you feel badly about that? Don’t you think you deserve to be happy?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe I’m afraid if I don’t completely commit to Athena’s cause I’ll lose myself again. Or maybe… maybe I feel like after what Zeus did… moving on from that would be betraying myself. That it would somehow… I don’t know.”

“Let him off the hook?” Odysseus asked.

Adresteia shrugged, “In a way.”

“You moving on after decades doesn’t make what he did okay. Moving on immediately afterward wouldn’t have made it okay. What he did was just wrong. It was cruel and perverse. You wanting to be happy, or actually being happy, doesn’t change that.”

Adresteia had tried to come to the same conclusion countless times in the past few years, but finally hearing a voice outside herself say those words brought her far closer to believing them. She looked at him in the dark. Even in human form, her eyesight in the dim light was far better than his. She’d imagined this conversation going a few different ways. In one version of their conversation she had been bold enough to swing her leg over the yardarm and fall backward into him. She’d invited his touch and melted in his arms. That she wanted that was part of what bothered her. Romance was not something she had any direct experience with. She wasn’t sure why she wanted to make herself vulnerable in that way, or why Odysseus seemed to stir that desire enough for her to actually consider acting upon them. She’d imagined the feeling of his hands running lightly across her bare skin, the taste of his lips, and the smell of his sweat.

But then her mind had strayed back to memories burned into her mind. The pain, fear, and helplessness. She remembered the smell of Zeus and the feeling of him inside her, and her stomach lurched. She wanted to think about Odysseus instead, she even closed her eyes and tried to will herself back to the fantasies that warmed her from the inside, but the more she tried the further they seemed to slip through her fingers. It was the same feeling now. Her teeth ground against each other in frustration and her fingers dug into the wooden beam underneath her.

“What’s wrong?” Odysseus asked.

“Nothing,” Adresteia lied, “I’m just… I just realized how tired I am. I probably ought to call it a night.” She dropped off the yardarm and flew away.

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