Two Birds
Fiction. The son of a politician in Ancient Greece speaks to a new soldier.
Rated T, 3.2k. A priest of Aphrodite, secreted in a secluded fort for the benefit of his father, a politician, makes small talk with a new soldier. Adapted from a TweetFic.
Xanthippos sighs quietly as he looks out over the countryside, bored to his back teeth and considering escape once again. He’s never been much of a runner for the sprint or the long haul, but he supposes he has stealth on his side — and yet stealth for how long, and to what distance?
Here at the end of everything, mountains sprawling on every side, he would have to go for days on end to get anywhere, and weeks to get anywhere halfway good.
Sitting on one of the tower walls, he watches the skies change colour as the sun sets, sliding beneath the horizon like a discus sliding into its case. The bright blues of the afternoon have been giving way to sweet and easy peaches for some half an hour, and now those breezy pinks are darkening from red to deep, plummy purples. Soon those flowers, ripening to fruits, will ripen once again to nothing, and all will be black.
Turning his head, he sees a polemarch standing behind him — this must be the newest of them, Xanthippos supposes, this one not young but on the younger side, and quite brawny.
