Where Is Your Rider?

Chapter II: Athens

There was no memorial for the memories I buried. No flesh underneath a gravestone for the creatures below to feed on. Yet I was sure a seed would be able to sprout from all the water I had shed. I should have drunk more water, as I despise headaches. I tried to stop drinking alcohol as well, yet I gave up on that dream before the vacation was over. I needed something to numb my emotions. It didn't work too often.

Two days we spent in Athens before we would return home. On the first day, we visited the Temple of Poseidon and the Acropolis, to worship The God of the Sea and the Goddess of Wisdom respectively. I liked Athena a decent amount, but it was hard to like any of the Greek deities. Dike is the Goddess of Morality, which explains why basically all the other gods lack any. Hades, Hestia, and Artemis were the only ones I could think of to which I could ascribe the trait 'moral'. Artemis was always my favourite. Goddess of the Moon; the moon I find as I raise my eyes to the sky. Every night, I longed to see its beauty, but only in the deep hours, when victories and defeats were forgotten and only one's bed mattered. You would be asleep and the giant shining crystal floating in the sky would be mine alone. Artemis is also a virgin goddess and her hunters were also unspoiled. If I were one of Artemis' hunters, you would not be with my child now. Artemis, if only I had remained yours.

There was a temple to worship my beloved Goddess of the Hunt only forty minutes away from our hotel. So, I did as any fool would. I hailed a cab and found myself near the temple. I walked the rest of the way to the temple. Well, I wouldn't call it a temple. Not anymore. Only some remnants remained, scattered between the thorny bushes and some trees I couldn't identify. Few traces of the temple's foundation layer remained. How disappointed I was. I had taken few things with me and my throat was dry. I stumbled around for a bit, trying to collect my thoughts and scolding myself for being such an idiot for going there, late at night. For some reason, I had hoped to find a statue of her here so I could pray. I had sought many answers and many ways to relieve my pain. I remember I met a woman once, who was so deluded in her faith in her god that it became self-destructive. I always wondered what her poison was, and I always wondered if it could soothe me. After all, love was a strange disease too. One with one of the strangest of antidotes; time.

I did not long for an antidote, and all I had left was time. Time, and my life. The passing of time pained me so, and I had always been too cowardly to commit the final deed a man can commit. Yet that night, I think something inside me broke. I had begun to crumble slowly and now I was small enough to be washed away by the waves.

Not far away from the temple, the land ended and the sea began. It was the Aegean Sea, where King Aegeus, the father of Theseus who slew the minotaur, committed suicide after his son made a stupid mistake. He had made Theseus promise him he would change his black sails to white, to show his father he was alive. Theseus forgot to do so and returned to his father with sails as black as charcoal. Aegeus saw the black sails, thought his son was dead, and then drowned himself in the sea that was later named after him. Foolish Theseus.

Yet I stood where Aegeus could have waited for his child's return with great yearning.

My child would not return to me. It would never even come to me. The sea held nothing for me but to bathe in fugue and to drink from the river Lethe.

And I tried to do just that. It was dark, I was tired, and I would find no way to return. The water was pleasantly warm, yet I had not undressed and my clothing felt awkward as it stuck to my skin. The ocean breeze was much colder and unpleasant to my hands and cheeks. The moon was a perfect white orb before me. The stars were sprinkled across the sky and I felt like I could pinch them between my fingers, though I surely just felt the wrinkles. I stood there in the water for a long time, water reaching to my chest. I kept my arms spread on the water and my feet planted firmly onto the rough pebbled seafloor. I think I was afraid to face the darkness underwater. After all, whenever I closed my eyes, I saw your face printed against my eyelids. In the darkness, I imagined how you brushed against my skin, how I felt a passion I now longed for. One that lit the hearth inside my wicked heart.

How I craved to rest beside you, in our bed, that same moon showering us in a thin cloak of light through the window as we stare at the sky, talking about what is wrong with our world. There was a crow, always the same one, that would sometimes land near our window and sing the song of its people. A drunk crow, who drank too much wine, we imagined. You would smoke, I would not. I would sing, you would not. I let myself slowly fall backward until I floated on top of the sea that I wished would swallow me as if we were back in our bed. I wondered what you would be doing. You would be asleep, of course. Tired and ill. You were pregnant, after all. How were you doing in life? Would you survive without me? Would you continue to create art, practice the guitar and forget to water your plants? You would still be whole without me, I was sure.

I felt the bitter water as a gentle wave washed over my lips, yet all I could taste was the honey as I imagined you touching mine. The water numbed me.

I never should have loved you, but I did.