Temptation
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Oh! How hard he tried to resist the temptation. The word itself called to him, as the sirens did, as the lotus eaters had, as Calypso and Circe themselves tried. But he insisted on going on, because nothing - even temptation itself (oh, that Gods-awful word) would stop him.
And yet. . .
It was so, so tempting to just give up and stay with the natives, to eat their succulent fruit, and to forget about home. But he persisted, and trekked forward in his endless tribulation(s). (Did he regret doing so? Maybe, if he'd give it a long and hard thought, but since it was never allowed to be brought to the top of his to-do list (he was busy doing OTHER important things), he never really considered living off of that. . .that fruit.)
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And his limits were tested yet again by them, the ones who sang their awful, Gods-forsaken song. (And yes, he meant the gods, every single one of them.) Those beautiful words - can words even be called beautiful? - had made him long to jump overboard, and he was quite sure, when he pondered it afterwards, that he had gone quite mad then. What had possessed him, to make him want to abandon his men, his son, his wife even! Words certainly weren't that powerful, no matter how they came to be, were they? But he knew better, and maybe he could have done something about it, but he was just (oh-so!) busy.
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By the time he came around to the first witch - the one that tried to turn him into an animal, you know - he was quite used to the glorious (so very glorious) bounties that temptation would throw at him. And, for once, he gave into the temptation, if you could call what he did giving in. But he didn't want to do it - Olympus knows that he didn't want to! - but since the messenger god insisted. . . And so he let himself enter her bed. Yes, he did it to get his men free, and maybe Hermes did tell him to do it, and yada-yada-yada, but that doesn't change the fact that he did it. Did he feel guilty? Well, he did stay with her for a year afterwards, if you'd believe it. . .
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And finally there was the greatest (and longest, I might add) temptation of them all. The motherload. Calypso's island. That she demon kept him there for seven whole years. Seven years away from any other human (if you can call that thing human) contact. Did he like it? Not at all. He spent every day on the shore, longing for the day he'd return to his beloved family. All she wanted was to hold hands, kiss - or make out - , and probably 'get it on' with him. And he definitely wanted no part of that. Essentially, given the circumstances, he probably could've done something on that island, but he chose to remain faithful. So faithful, she had to cast a spell on him just so she could hold his hand at night. Desperate much? It wasn't that she was ugly - Calypso was pretty darn hot, actually - but he wanted to remain faithful (that is, if you forget that little incident at Circe's place) to his wife. And so he was released, hardly a dent in him.
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And he returned to his wife and beloved son mostly intact, faithful as ever. (Like we said before, apparently Circe doesn't count in his book). So he sits in his house now, the gears in his brilliant mind turing as he muses the topics breached during his strenuous journey. Did he ever truly sucumb to temptation?
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That, my friends, was my first (and probably my last) Odyssey fanfic. Good? Bad? Confusing?
And yeah, it's kind of short...heheh...