His Favourite Place in the World
Caça wasn't one to talk much about his past; he didn't like thinking that someone else could take advantage of his childhood weaknesses, not differently from his own fighting technique.
He had told nobody in the Atlantis realm of the times when his name was still Henrique and he played hide and seek between his grandfather's vineyards with his neighbors' children, winning every single time due to his burgeoning shape-shifting abilities, which he was still unaware of.
When Krishna came to talk to him at the Antarctic Pillar (they were nearest in age and Sea Dragon was as distant as Poseidon for them) and spoke of his Sri Lanka, of its temples, beaches and forests and then asked him where was he from and how was it like there, he'd just shrug, say his country's name was Portugal, in Europe and his hometown, Almeirim, had colorful houses and green, soft hills all around. He never got particularly specific, because although he was born there, he'd never felt particularly attached to it.
Even as a child, he'd felt like that was just not his place. As if he wasn't meant for those vineyards, for that countryside, for those green hills. For this reason, he didn't hold any particular pleasant memory of his time there.
There was, though, a memory of his past that he held precious in his heart about Portugal.
And it was Lisboa.
When he was eight years old, his school had organized a trip to the capital. He hadn't been much happy about it at first, since he thought the teacher would drag them from one museum to another, and he didn't like watching paintings.
His lack of enthusiasm was wiped away as soon as they got there.
Henrique had never been in such a big city before and most of all, he'd never been anywhere near the sea. And now he could feel its smell floating over every avenida, unknown and familiar at the same time. His eyes had grown wide in wonder at those enormous, elegant buildings, at the shiny azulejos that decorated walls and churches, with so many different designs, that merged together and shifted from one form to another almost seamlessly, leaving his young eyes confused and mesmerized.
He was restless when they got inside a museum or a palace, because he didn't care about paintings, he just wanted to get out and find the source of that smell, of that call he could feel inside, coming from somewhere in the city. He was baffled by the apathy his classmates and teachers seemed to be showing, their lack of understanding: how could they not feel it?
On their second day in Lisboa, Henrique could finally find out where the call came from. The teachers took the class at the newly-built Padrão dos Descobrimentos, an immense sculpture in white concrete representing a caravel with all the great Portuguese explorers, captained by Prince Henrique's figure, looking out towards the ocean, at the end of the Tejo river, on which shore the monument was.
While the guide told them about the great discoveries that made Portugal an empire thanks to the commerce of spices from India and how Prince Henrique, the first of many explorers, was honored by the monument having been built in 1960, five hundred years after his death, all that little Henrique could do was stare at the water on the horizon, where the river became sea, where land ceased to exist and it was only waves, and blue, and abyss, and adventure. He could feel the pull of curiosity and desire to find out what there was where the sky and the water blurred together, and felt akin to those statues, to those profiles staring far out. He could understand their inner need, as if he'd known them, and thought that the sculptures were looking longingly at the world an ocean away, the world they'd helped finding.
He felt at home. Surrounded by comrades of times gone by.
That was the day he understood that he was meant for the sea. He still couldn't know in which way, but he felt that his destiny would be among the waves and the space between the sky and the abyss.
When they got inside the Mosteiro dos Jéronimos he spent a good deal of time in front of Vasco de Gama's tomb. As if paying respect to a mentor. He felt an innate, burgeoning admiration for the man. His young, still naïve mind wished he'd become like him as an adult. He wished to be a deserving heir to his namesake, the Prince. He wished to be one with the oceans.
In later years, he'd feel a pang of saudade thinking about that school trip. He'd read as much as he could about the ocean, its myths and about the men that sailed on it, still wishing to become one of them. He learned more and more about the creatures living beneath its waves, fascinated by the squids and octopus that could change their shapes so perfectly as to look like an alga, a rock, or another animal; the way sharks could feel their prey through electricity produced by their heartbeat or their gills opening and closing; the stealth and force of sea predators, small and large alike, hitting and killing without the target even knowing they were in danger.
So, when he was a teen and the call became so strong that he couldn't just push it on the back of his mind anymore, it was most logical to him that he should answer it by going back to Lisboa.
And it was no surprise to him when the voice, the smell, guided him to the Padrão. And there, waiting for him, begging for him to follow them, a swarm of young women, glimmering faintly in the moonlight, fluid as water, eerily beautiful, ad ethereal as dreams. They sang to him, called him, in a language foreign to him but that he could understand nonetheless. Nymphs. Spirits. Sirens. He didn't care. He followed them.
He'd later learn from Sea Dragon that those creatures were Lymnades. Lake nymphs that named his Scale armor. They'd chosen him to serve Poseidon. The king of seas, who'd gifted him reign over the Antarctic Ocean. And they'd waited for him, all those years, since that school trip, to be ready for them.
There, under the Padrão, in Lisboa.
His favorite place in the world.
A.N.: Hey there! :)
This little one-shot was written for the "Saint FFic Fest" on Tumblr whose main topic was 'Nationality', to honour Saint Seiya characters' nationalities or countries they held most dear in their lives. My choice fell on an unusual character (unusual because it's hardly in my favourites list), Lymnades Caça. Although I don't like him much, his country of origin has a special feel for me. He comes from Portugal. I visited Lisbon when I was twelve with my parents and elder brother and was fascinated by it (especially by the Aquarium, which I couldn't use in this story do to chronological discrepancies)... it was (and is as of today) the only travel I've made outside of my home country's borders, I have good memories of it and I wanted to honour that.
I played on Caça's ambivalence in the way he feels about Portugal: his hometown , Almeirim, holds almost no interest to him, but Lisbon, where he first understood where he belonged to, is very dear to him and he wouldn't exchange it with any other city in the world.
The Padrão dos Descobrimentos and the Mosteiro dos Jéronimos are respectively a monument and a most famous church in Lisbon, placed very near each other (I remember crossing the distance between those two by foot when I visited them) and they're definitively worth a visit.
Read and Review, please! ^-^
Hyacinth Judy