Author's P.O. was not a time when anyone remembered anything other than the manner in which things were. The cobble-stoned streets were always cracked and jagged and scalding to the foot not clad in sandels. The smooth, dry walls of every home as it ascended further and further up the face of the cliffs by way of stairs and carefully constructed architecture remained as such. The sparse wells here and there continued to overflow with the life-sustaining oasis that helped us survive the unforgiving Eye of Hades in the sky, gave us hope that perhaps the next day would somehow be cooler than the next. But, as stagnant and unchanging as all of these factors were, one thing remained beyond a doubt. One thing stood tall and proud at the very highest point of our village, stood where the sun would stop glaring momentarily to gaze with a loving fondness of a mother gazing upon her first born as he grows strong and independent-oh, Apollo did shine brightly, indeed.
With such majesty, in fact, that we could not all help but to emerge from the perpetual gutters in which we resided, from the blacksmithing huts to the fisherman's shade beneath overturned boats, from wet nurse's quarters to the brothels in which my brother and I lived, we all had to emerge in some form to at the very least gaze upon the majesty that was this untouched artifact. Perhaps, we thought, that if we were to brave the day and the wrath of Apollo, even for an instance, that same beauty and grace and profound godliness would somehow rub off on us, and we would become something more than those upon who's back society was built and sustained.
For a moment, perhaps even more than that, we could feel as if we were not being drowned by Poseidon in a whirlpool of our own damned existence, selling all that we were and ever could be for the right to see another sunrise. In just a few short years-I have no recollection of my age, but I am sure to be somewhere between eighteen and twenty one years- the love that once resided in my heart has become gelatinous and rotten, the hope of a child replaced by the contempt of a soldier. But were I anything but? Throughout the tortures of man, where I had no one but my adoptive brother to keep me going long enough to survive into another year, through every odd job, every futile attack, and every regretted regrettable action I dare not speak of, the love of life and of passion and of my fellowman has become blurred, perverse and nearly unattainable.
But this was nothing new.
This was simply Greece.