352. Odysseus, 8

(Rose)

We reached a different land along the coast. The heat from the sun has finally begun cooling down softly.

Following more dry lands, we found new fields, with herbs, trees, life.

But they are different species from what we had been accustomed to in the south.

They're more varied kinds, many of which we knew from before this journey begun.

We're back in the old Europe. With its usually softer climate already there to greet us.

Eating soups of roots is still pretty awful, but we find enough to go by between them and fishes.

We reach another dead city. With a completely different architecture from the other shores of the sea.

Here it's achromatic. Age certainly did not help. The empty streets are as hollow as they always are these days.

It's almost spooky though, and not as damaged overall from the previous ones we visited.

My eyes have lost their magic, but it still works for Bleue. She's the one now good at spotting interesting things in the distance that normal sight would miss.

Here the first odd thing we encounter is a tall bronze statue.

It shows a bull, with a man and a woman riding it fiercely. It seems out of place in this European landscape to me. It looks too greek? Hard to say. It might just be my misconceptions about this area.

As we venture through the city we encounter other statues that are queer to us. They're of historical people or mythological figures I don't recognise.

One of them shows a man with a helmet that looks German, and a kind of gasmask making him unrecognisable. Probably an unknown soldier. Bleue is even more puzzled than I am about this one. Was it the local Talos?

Bleue is also puzzled for a different reason.

These statues of mythical figures unknown to us reminded her of something we studied as children.

Herakles and his labours was it? Bleue is trying to remember something I hardly can today.

She says it was a monument of the antic literary culture. Hercules? I don't remember much of what it relates to, though I know the name is as important as Alexander in a way.

Bleue looks at these statues that now make her a little moved in a sad way. The situation gets to her.

Just now it really became painfully obvious for her that millennia of history, and stories, are lost.

The ground of our culture, even our language, they all are on the brink of extinction.

Bleue just realised, emotionally, the real extent of the downfall of our civilisation. Heroes of the past on which our culture articulated itself, were forgotten, entirely.

Oblivion.

Even our language, English is essentially dead.

Some of our friends and other things learnt it, from us or for us, but outside of us it's a dead language nowadays.

My friends spoke another one that sounded like Polish or Turkish. I have no clue.

The myths of the antiquity, they're now lost. Eons of culture we barely recall the names of.

Heroes, villains, leaders of armies and famous battles that shaped our world. All the history of humanity has essentially vanished now.

My friends knew it. That was why they said it was the year three at the time. Though it was mostly a misunderstanding, the truth is the Gregorian calendar had become obsolete. They didn't bother keeping it any longer.

What would other human survivors think?

I wouldn't know, because we haven't had the chance to meet any yet.

Bleue is looking at the statue of a fearsome hero, in the middle of a decaying square.

She's contemplating the oblivion with mixed feelings.

B - What do you remember of Ulysses?

R - Too little to sound right if I tried to talk about it.

B - I won't judge. Tell me.

I try to remember. I know so little. He left his wife to go to war, the Trojan war was it?

He then got lost at sea, and ventured from one strange place to the next, facing the trials of his gods along the way. When he returned home, many years later, his wife did not recognise him.

I recall that to prove his identity, he had to shoot an arrow through a collection of axes. Something that made no sense to me when I heard it for the first time as a child.

B - Doesn't that remind you of someone?

R - Are you implying I'm a modern Ulysses?

B - You're a modern Prometheus just like me, but also yes, you are a hero in my opinion.

Bleue is not looking at the statues with their buried past anymore. She's looking at me.

B - Hopefully, as long as there is life on Earth, there will be heroes to follow. Tales to be told. Legends to pass on... And I must say, I like yours.

R - I often find myself thinking... Dad would have loved hearing about this right there. He would have loved to hear about it, and written a beautiful tale with it.

B - I can relate to that... You need a good villain though.

I shiver a little. Bad memories.

I already had one. I'm not sure I want another one like that.

Actually, I'm rather sure I don't want to face another thing like that. I can feel my neck being strangled just thinking about it.

R - No thanks... I don't think I'm a good hero...

B - Don't be so modest Rose.

She's too kind.

We venture further, holding hands, leaving the tombstones of old history behind us.

Goodbye old human culture.

I wish more could survive through this age, unfortunately so little does.

~

R - I wonder how much was already lost when the white day happened. It's been centuries after all.

B - It's hard to see knowledge disappear because it's essentially not bound to matter. Not directly. Even in our old days, so much was already dead and lost, but we couldn't see it. I guess... We only realise it when we venture through ruins of a distant era. Only then can we truly witness the gap of what has been lost.

She's surely right. We just can't see the deads, whether they were once living things or just culture.

R - I guess that's also life...

~

R - I do remember a little the tale of Icarus however. So be careful with your wings. Don't go flying too close to the sun.

Bleue smiles.

B - Why would I? There's this hero I know. I know she would rush into the maze I'm being held in, and deliver me from the beast in time. I know she would.

~