The Flight of Icarus: From Freedom to Freefall

I. That First Town... After The Underworld or I. The Gardener and His Troubles

(This chapter has been edited from the original)

Far below a deep blue sky a miniscule town lined the Aegean Sea. If you'd entered this town through its main gate you would have seen a delicately painted sign naming the town: Sylius. Following the stone lined street to the center, obviously marked by a rather large and maybe even gaudy fountain and a four-way parting of ways, you would turn left in your trek. And here, at the end of a stone paved lane like all the rest, (save for an obscene number of potted plants at the last flat), you would find the resident gardener, soundly sleeping. 

As of now, he was just waking. His ears finally hearing the sound of the persistent and lounging birds while his eyes stirred behind closed lids. Though he knew he needed to be getting ready for his long hours of caring for a serious array of plant life his lazy leaning mind couldn't conjure up a reason to care. If only the bright sun could take a hike and give him a few extra hours, or maybe he should replace these linen curtains? Begrudgingly, he did pull himself from the sheets, warm with sleep. The air was light and cool enough for a summer's day, and the sun warmed it enough not to chill. So, as he stepped from his bed to the wood floor he sighed. The contact was cold, not jump out of your skin, a comfortable coolness that settled over the gardener's feet, so warm they might've ached. He noted that he was slightly sticky with sweat. 

'Another dream then', he concluded.

His mind was cloudy, he couldn't focus on anything. 'What had last night's dream been about?' Hard as he tried, he couldn't remember. For as long as the gardener had lived in Sylius he'd had strange dreams, maybe that's not even what they were, he could never tell. They made his mind as useful as a smoothie, and as soon as they came, they went, forgotten in the blur of another day's work and toil and business. It would get swept up in what Ms. Nefeli had said to him today about her neighbor Ellia and how she was still unmarried even though she was so kind or how the man carrying stock to the Agora marketplace had dropped another dozen eggs.
But then he would come home at night and be here again in his bed. And suddenly he would turn into a fearful child, the dream would return, the nightmare, and he would be alone. Always alone. Maybe that was what scared him, not the dreams but the loneliness... Dear Gods, he'd wished someone could silence his overactive mind. 

'Gods?' The gardener stood from his bed and pulled off his dark night tunic and scoffed in disgust. It was damp. He took this and tossed it into a woven basket in the corner tucked beneath a waist height table. What did Gods have to do with anything? As far as he was concerned, or knew, deities were nothing but arrogant beings that made a mess of everything they were involved in because they thought of humanity as nothing but scum and filth that pillaged what the world had to offer for themselves. With this last thought the small man caught a glance of himself in the mirror above the table, where a bowl and pitcher full of fresh water reflected itself beside his image. Striding across the room to stop in front of it he gazed deeper. He was short, stocky, closer to the soft side than strong looking. His wide shoulders were an awful contrast to his thin neck and small face, his chest was large and his hips oddly round, he stuck out at all the wrong angles. 

'Sort of like a painting', he thought.

'Like a painting... sure, one that was made by someone who'd practiced by drawing nothing but horses beforehand not knowing they were making a man at all.'

Inwardly at least he chuckled. No, they wouldn't have known they were painting a man at all. Simply enough he'd not always known he'd been one. The restricting strophium that bound his chest tirelessly day in and out was a testament enough to that. No matter the amount of work, or how hot it was, or how deep in the dirt he got, he wore it like a lifeline, because in mind it was. If anyone really knew what he was they wouldn't want him as the gardener anymore, would they? Many people already asked why he never visited the bath houses when invited, the suspicion was there, all they needed was one mistake and he would be ostracized.