The Last of the Wine: Morning on Lykabettos
Title: Morning on Lykabettos
Author: millamant_
Book: The Last of the Wine
Rating: All audiences
Summary: Alexias looks back at the course of his life one morning
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters and make no profit from them.
Author's note: I've been lurking for a while. This is my first fanfic (Mary Renault or otherwise-eek!), so any feedback is appreciated.
It was an early morning, not long after the end of the harvest, but the chill of autumn had already descended into Attica, crisping the grass with frost and turning the smell of the air sharp with the smoke of shepherds' fires. I felt fit and set off with long strides, checking the hare traps here and there as I climbed the mountain path, and keeping a look out for signs of the wild pig and deer that roam these woods. The pines stood dark and cold yet with the night's rime still on them, and their cool resin scent spoke of the owl and fox that had crept to their nests at first light.
On days such as these, I tell my sons that I am going in search of food for their supper tables, but in truth it pleases me to come up out of the City, even away from the farm, into these empty spaces where I can walk with the full length of my legs, and run a little too, to keep my body well knit and strong. My mind also I let pace and climb, but that is a harder exercise than ever body undergoes (as Sokrates well knew), and the mind is more wayward and difficult to train.
Presently I saw a small shoat clinging to an outcropping above me, precarious and exposed, and I aimed my javelin at it and killed it cleanly. I leapt up to it, gutted and dressed it, and laid it in my hunting bag. Soon a pheasant fluttered up out of the brush in a dying fall and several quail, but I did not try to catch these, as I did not have my snares by me. I stopped to rest, high up on the hill now, and as I turned to sit, my gaze fell upon the wide expanse of pine and stone below me, Piraeus huddled against its rocky shore, and spreading out like the mantle of Apollo, the sea, turning and glinting like the the thousand scales of a magic serpent.
I don't know why it should have loosened my mind as it did, and cast me back to old times, for it's a scene I've looked often enough. Perhaps the slant of the light brought back to me the embarkation of our ships for Sicily, in that fateful year when our City lived on hope as a spendthrift does on credit. We Athenians could not then imagine the woes that lay before us, but for me that time was blessed by the gods, for it was during those years that Lysis entered my life and rearranged the whole interlocking pattern and chain of it.
In a rush it came to me, the smell of his cloak, filled as it was with the scent of his body, and the way he would suddenly glance at me and favor me with that most open and extraordinary of smiles. I recalled how our bodies fit together, not just in the embrace of night, but even more in the way his arm and his hip sat so sweetly next to mine, while Sokrates spoke to us in the Lykeion gardens, so sweetly that at times I could barely breathe, for fear his beauty and his nearness would vanish if I moved. Or the way he would give of his food to the men of his troop who were cleaved by hunger after a long day's march, as generously and lightly as if he had let a sparrow fly from his finger. Truly his goodness knew no bounds, with me or with anyone.
Then I felt a stinging at my eyes, but it was not the tang of the salt air. And my throat seized up, but it was not the hounds of Eros that sought their prey. The tears came unbidden and fell on my forearm in great splotches, glistening bright in the sun-flooded air. As we grow older, it may be that the gods grant us calm and proportion, and sometimes, to the luckiest, wisdom, but they do not seal up those secret springs of feeling that lie hidden and dark within us.
A hare bounded before me, a little distance away from where I sat, picking its way down the mountain, its fur the color of honeyed limestone, and I knew that I would find it later caught in one of the traps I had set below. Then the Furies twisted my heart like a small knife and remorse overcame me, for what had I set but another trap when I called Lysis' name that fateful night and he fell and the color drained out of life for many days and months thereafter? My mother, the infant brother whose life I stole to keep for myself, Sokrates--my father. They too came crowding round me, until I thought the pain of it would flatten my chest as if beneath a great stone. What was left of any of them? Had I honored them fully--did I do honor to them now in these later days? Would they fade away entirely from the earth when my own life ended, as the stories I recounted of an evening to my sons and their sons, scattered to the winds and were forgotten. Then I thought of the words I had written down, resting contentedly in their quiet pages, tucked away in the chest that sat at the foot of my bed, and my heart ceased its fiery prickling for the moment and felt some measure of peace.
After a time, glancing at Helios' path in the sky, I knew that my wife would be waiting for me with the noonday meal. She would have begun to worry about me, and so I stood up, gathered up my old cloak and bag and spark and started for home.
Author: millamant_
Book: The Last of the Wine
Rating: All audiences
Summary: Alexias looks back at the course of his life one morning
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters and make no profit from them.
Author's note: I've been lurking for a while. This is my first fanfic (Mary Renault or otherwise-eek!), so any feedback is appreciated.
It was an early morning, not long after the end of the harvest, but the chill of autumn had already descended into Attica, crisping the grass with frost and turning the smell of the air sharp with the smoke of shepherds' fires. I felt fit and set off with long strides, checking the hare traps here and there as I climbed the mountain path, and keeping a look out for signs of the wild pig and deer that roam these woods. The pines stood dark and cold yet with the night's rime still on them, and their cool resin scent spoke of the owl and fox that had crept to their nests at first light.
On days such as these, I tell my sons that I am going in search of food for their supper tables, but in truth it pleases me to come up out of the City, even away from the farm, into these empty spaces where I can walk with the full length of my legs, and run a little too, to keep my body well knit and strong. My mind also I let pace and climb, but that is a harder exercise than ever body undergoes (as Sokrates well knew), and the mind is more wayward and difficult to train.
Presently I saw a small shoat clinging to an outcropping above me, precarious and exposed, and I aimed my javelin at it and killed it cleanly. I leapt up to it, gutted and dressed it, and laid it in my hunting bag. Soon a pheasant fluttered up out of the brush in a dying fall and several quail, but I did not try to catch these, as I did not have my snares by me. I stopped to rest, high up on the hill now, and as I turned to sit, my gaze fell upon the wide expanse of pine and stone below me, Piraeus huddled against its rocky shore, and spreading out like the mantle of Apollo, the sea, turning and glinting like the the thousand scales of a magic serpent.
I don't know why it should have loosened my mind as it did, and cast me back to old times, for it's a scene I've looked often enough. Perhaps the slant of the light brought back to me the embarkation of our ships for Sicily, in that fateful year when our City lived on hope as a spendthrift does on credit. We Athenians could not then imagine the woes that lay before us, but for me that time was blessed by the gods, for it was during those years that Lysis entered my life and rearranged the whole interlocking pattern and chain of it.
In a rush it came to me, the smell of his cloak, filled as it was with the scent of his body, and the way he would suddenly glance at me and favor me with that most open and extraordinary of smiles. I recalled how our bodies fit together, not just in the embrace of night, but even more in the way his arm and his hip sat so sweetly next to mine, while Sokrates spoke to us in the Lykeion gardens, so sweetly that at times I could barely breathe, for fear his beauty and his nearness would vanish if I moved. Or the way he would give of his food to the men of his troop who were cleaved by hunger after a long day's march, as generously and lightly as if he had let a sparrow fly from his finger. Truly his goodness knew no bounds, with me or with anyone.
Then I felt a stinging at my eyes, but it was not the tang of the salt air. And my throat seized up, but it was not the hounds of Eros that sought their prey. The tears came unbidden and fell on my forearm in great splotches, glistening bright in the sun-flooded air. As we grow older, it may be that the gods grant us calm and proportion, and sometimes, to the luckiest, wisdom, but they do not seal up those secret springs of feeling that lie hidden and dark within us.
A hare bounded before me, a little distance away from where I sat, picking its way down the mountain, its fur the color of honeyed limestone, and I knew that I would find it later caught in one of the traps I had set below. Then the Furies twisted my heart like a small knife and remorse overcame me, for what had I set but another trap when I called Lysis' name that fateful night and he fell and the color drained out of life for many days and months thereafter? My mother, the infant brother whose life I stole to keep for myself, Sokrates--my father. They too came crowding round me, until I thought the pain of it would flatten my chest as if beneath a great stone. What was left of any of them? Had I honored them fully--did I do honor to them now in these later days? Would they fade away entirely from the earth when my own life ended, as the stories I recounted of an evening to my sons and their sons, scattered to the winds and were forgotten. Then I thought of the words I had written down, resting contentedly in their quiet pages, tucked away in the chest that sat at the foot of my bed, and my heart ceased its fiery prickling for the moment and felt some measure of peace.
After a time, glancing at Helios' path in the sky, I knew that my wife would be waiting for me with the noonday meal. She would have begun to worry about me, and so I stood up, gathered up my old cloak and bag and spark and started for home.