Prometheus' Wool

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*The following is a short story inspired by Homer's The Odyssey and The Illiad, a story revolving around Prometheus throwing lamb's wool in the air (clouds) to warn humans of a coming storm, The Myth of Sisyphus, and Albert Camus article of the same name.

He watched the fires burn, bouncing off the black sea before him. Trees on fire. Buildings on fire. Homes on fire, the voices inside muted by distance but still audible. The flames danced on the Aegean and looked like stars twinkling, flickering, and exploding into nothing, only to be replaced by the dip of a wave. The oar in his hand cut into his hand, the way it always did, but the callouses held up so well that he barely felt anything, just the ache, the dead, constant ache of bones and tendons slowly being pulled out of place. It was backbreaking work and it had been ten years of it and countless years before holed up on a beach somewhere in Asia Minor, surviving off of stale, tasteless bread and meat so salted it was hard to even tell it was meat at that point. Instead, it tastes of harsh, chalky mineral, like something from far beneath the earth, like tasteless sand.
Mutiny at this point was out of the question. The men had been at sea and at war for so long that the idea of a life before that seemed like a long, distant misery. Some of the men feasted on that life. Some men were born to tear things apart and leave a trail of wreckage in their waste. Some men though, went to war assuming they’d be able to return home heroes and wed and grow families. Though, to call any of them men, or rather, the vast majority of them, would be inaccurate, to say the least; at least by modern standards. Most of them weren’t even capable of growing full beards. Some weren’t even capable of peach fuzz. Some even lacked hair in their armpits and their voices hadn’t quite lost the squeak of adolescence.
“Looks warmer there, doesn’t it?” said a voice behind the soldier. He turned, his greasy fare hair rolling of his shoulders as he extended to look into the face of a man who looked nearly half a century but was definitely half of that at best.
“Does,” said he in reply to the half-century man and then finished with, “but I’d rather be out here than there…with the screams and the…gore of warfare.”
“Still not used to it yet?”
“Defects within the head make a man used to death. Nothing more.”
“And me?”
“A lie, told to yourself, perhaps.”
“A lie?”
“One about honor, or masculinity. Yes, a lie.”
The soldier turned back to the sparkling city, placing the bearded man behind him, the muscles on his back rolling in defiance in the man’s face with each oar stroke.
“You rode with another man beside you yesterday, did you not?” said the bearded man, his voice rising with mischievous jest.
The solder turned back. The oar kept rolling in his fingers. He nodded.
“What happened to him?”
The soldier turned back to the city, the oar rolled.
“A sword took him away.”
“A sword?”
“Yes.”
“Where? Where’d it get him?”
The soldier turned back to the man.”
“In the heart.” The soldier turned his back on the man.
There was a pause for a second or two as the only sound was the lapping of the wave against the boat’s wooden side.
“Quiet a romantic end.”
“Your humor is tiring.”
“No humor here. Just an attempt at cleverness.”
“Cleverness? Be careful, the gods punish a clever man far more than an honest man.”
“Do they?”
“Eh, they do.” The soldier turns back, a smile in his eye. “Might find yourself pushing a boulder up a hill for all eternity.”
“Is that a punishment?”
“How isn’t it?”
“How long have we been at sea?”
The soldier turns back to the sea, then looks around the boat.
“It’s hard to say. Too many sunrises to count. If I had to guess, I’d say well over ten.”
“And how many at war?”
“Can’t accurately say.”
“And yet, we remain, our cracked palms beating splinters into the depths of our once fleshy fingers.”
“What other choice have we?”
“A dip over the side to Poseidon’s palace? May he choose to invite us in.”
The soldier looked over the boat’s edge and felt the temptation of cold death and a slow loss of air. In front of him vanished his mother, his father, a family that he’d never seen before, a family that wasn’t yet.
“There’s hope for something at home.”
“Hope? For what?”
“Family?”
“To make other children ripe for war? I’ll pass.”
“Then what?”
The bearded man didn’t say anything for a while, the oar in his hand slowing. Then:
“What did your father do…for a living, that is?”
“He was a fisherman.”
“My father was a sheep farmer.”
The bearded man pauses for a second.
“It was boring, being a sheep farmer. I mean, you just stood there all day and moved them from one place to another. I hated it. I hated that it was my future, which is why I left for Troy. But in hindsight, I regret that. I bet your friend regretted it, too, eh?”
“I would hold your tongue if you intend to keep it.”
“I mean no harm.”
The soldier turned back to the bearded man.
“I only mean that life is but a brief season between here and Elysium. Do you think he’d trade it for tomorrow?”
“Why would he?”
“Would you trade it?”
The solder looked down and away. “I suppose I might,” he said, quietly.
The bearded man nodded and continued rowing, the sound of the waves bouncing through the darkness surrounding them.
“I hated being a sheep farmer. I hated the prospect of it being my life, but I would trade this for that boring, mundane existence.”
The soldier didn’t respond, he just kept rowing, his head bowed in thought.
“Most of the time I stood for hours, walked for hours, over rocky, dry gravel, even in the cold, blistering months of the winter. It was tedium. Pointless tedium. And sometimes, I would walk over a hill, assuming I was destined to walk down into another valley only to continue upward again at the other side, and a storm would be rolling in over the sea. For you, for your father, I would assume that to be devastating, but for me, it was beautiful. Sometimes I would stop and stare into space and watch the clouds roll in. Like a respite on the way downhill, with the knowledge that at the top of the next hill I would have my view again. In all of that tedium, there was something to hold onto.”
The soldier turned back to the man and nodded. “I would trade this for that. Though I will row until then.”
“‘Spose your friend would, too?”
“I ‘spose he would. Yes, I ‘spose he would.”
The soldier turned forward as the rowing beat a dance through the dark. Then, a call came out and the rowing was stopped and the sails flew up and as it did a bit of dew flung out and for a second it felt like it was raining.

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