Lavrio, Attica, Greece, near Cape Sounion. 2018.

Rock on gold dust woman
Take your silver spoon
Dig your grave

Saga POV

Saga drank his espresso absently, his eyes unfocused, without much to think about in his head. Which was a miracle, since Saga was always thinking about something, creating anguish for himself. He looked up and focused on his brother Kanon, who was typing on his laptop, extremely focused on what should be his thirtieth attempt to write some part of his doctoral thesis. His forehead was furrowed, with blue eyebrows together, and Saga knew he was extremely focused, as his hair was slightly tied and he was chewing on his own tongue, a curious habit he had since he was a kid when he strained his intellect for a long time.

Saga found the scene very comforting and smiled slightly.

Saga has always admired Kanon for his effort. Things never came easy for your brother, but that never stopped him from trying. Her old grandmother, who died when they were still children, said that fate liked to play tricks, and to make people be guided by stars of luck or chance.

Kanon was the unlucky star, he was sure.

But that was exactly what Saga admired so much about his twin. Even when everyone said that he was not capable, that he would be a mere shadow of his brother, Kanon went and did, he gathered all the determination that he had, just to prove that he was capable. Sometimes Saga was afraid, because Kanon's determination could turn to hatred, and God knew what would happen when someone aroused his brother's fury.

Since he was a child, Kanon was fragile and withered. Everyone compared him to Saga, everyone said he was the example, while Kanon stood aside, like a shadow that accompanied a body full of light.

And Kanon has become someone who has nothing to lose, and everything to gain. And this is dangerous.

Kanon has always been ambitious. And smart. He had a fierce tongue and an acidic mood for his young age. Primary school teachers said he was cunning, as he always had an argument on the tip of his tongue. Even with his parents, Kanon always had good arguments for everything. His adolescence came and not only he continued with the ferocious tongue, but he also became, with all due respect to his brother, a first-rate rascal. He easily deceived colleagues and teachers. Whenever he got into trouble, he always used his lip service to get away with it. Even with his parents, he knew how to play tricks and manipulations, and managed to achieve his goals.

Kanon was not mean. He was not a bad person, and he was extremely sweet and kind to those who knew how to deal with him. The problem is that, for a good part of his life, that person was just Saga. So Kanon could outwit everyone and pretend he was in control of everything, but Saga knew when he spoke the truth and when he lied.

Saga admired him because, unlike him, Kanon had the courage to face problems. Saga knew that he liked to be perfect, and he had a terrible habit of thinking that he always had to follow the rules, all right. Saga thought that this way, people would accept him, love him, and treat him well. So, he tried to be as perfect as possible, the best possible, because it was necessary, because he wanted to be relevant, he wanted glory. Who would not? So, he did everything the way everyone believed it should be done, to win everyone's admiration.

But Kanon was not like that, Kanon laughed at the rules. He was always very questioning. He did not understand and did not accept a "because it is not" as an answer. At school, he always asked why he was learning that, if it would be useful for his life. He did not understand hierarchical positions and saw no reason to respect someone just because he was superior to him. Kanon had a love for debate and, despite being contradictorily shy, he had an eloquence he never saw in anyone, always getting incredibly good grades in simulations and oral discussions.

And he still had one more: sometimes Kanon broke rules for the simple pleasure it gave him.

Kanon and he once saw an uncle of them fishing when they were children. The uncle caught a fish, which was struggling on the ground and Kanon cried, asking him to release the fish in the sea back. And you know, Kanon was a child, and children are usually sensitive about these things. It was just to explain to Kanon that death was a life process, and that the fish would not die in vain, but would be their food.

But his uncle did no such a thing.

His uncle not only laughed at his face but humiliated him (at least, that's how Kanon saw him), claiming that he would be a weak man, because he didn't know how to fish, because he would never be a male. There, Saga saw the strength of his brother's hatred for the first time, when he saw him with dry, hard eyes against his uncle, and fists closed. From that day on, Kanon would never put a spoonful of meat in his mouth again, no matter how much their mother begged or how much their father fought. And everyone knows how strict mothers and fathers are, they viewed Kanon's vegetarianism as an affront, someone who wastes food while there are people who are starving. But that did not stop Kanon from going on hunger strike, from crying, from kicking and accepting all the consequences.

He angered his parents, his uncle, his aunt (who was his uncle's wife) and his cousins. And he did it just to arrive at family parties and show his uncle that he was not weak, despite not eating meat. And he made a point of remembering to speak bad things of his uncle to everyone, in front of his own relative, who according to himself, traumatized him for the rest of his life and all Uncle Yiorgos' children are all deviated, look at the father that has. Every. Fucking. Party.

And there were several other examples.

As a teenager, Kanon was quite rebellious. He harassed his cousins, saying that they were ugly and futile. At Christmas meetings, he liked to counter the typical conservatism of family members for simple and pure pleasure. He had friendships with homosexuals, lesbians, prostitutes, bohemians and the unemployed, at the time when having friends with such people would make an orthodox mother like theirs cry and make the father tear his mustache hair out of anger. And inside, Saga supported him, because he wanted to have the courage that Kanon had and... Conservative relatives were kind of boring, anyway.

And to make matters worse, when he arrived at university, Kanon got involved with politics.

Saga thought politics was interesting, but that is it. He liked to read about war tactics, some philosophers, but not too much, it was just because he was an intelligent man who prided himself on being born in the homeland that was the mother of democracy. He had his political opinion and his candidates, of course, but he was reserved and did not take discussions to places other than his personal circle.

But not Kanon.

It was to be expected that someone with Kanon's cleverness would sooner or later get involved with these types of people. Saga would not imagine that someone so skittish, yet so eloquent, would like so much to get into this kind of confusion. But Kanon loved it, and very much. When Saga saw it, his brother was handing out leaflets from political parties that Saga considered dangerous by the college and getting in trouble with the professors. He went to political acts and was beaten by the police. Once again, Kanon rebelled, his mother cried, his father pulled off his mustaches and Saga was in exasperation, but still helped him with the damn rubber bullet he had taken in one of the protests.

When the master's degree started, Kanon took some time to rest. It was what he thought.

After all, Kanon was - heh - famous.

Not the kind that when they go out on the street, there are millions of paparazzi following him, or crazy women running after him, because he is so handsome. But they could not reveal the location of his home, as Kanon was in danger.

Even in that Kanon had bad luck.

At the end of the master's degree, Kanon discovered that some oil deposits in the Mediterranean Sea were leaking, damaging the marine fauna and flora of the region. Obviously, neither he nor his work team were concerned with the economic damage that large companies would suffer, but with trying to save as many species as they could.

Then Kanon discovered, and only God knows how, that the Graad Foundation was involved in the region's oil spill. The darling foundation of Greece, which in all its benevolence helped the poorest and most needy, which supported the oppressed and who even had environmental awareness campaigns, were involved in this shit.

His brother no longer liked the Most Wanted Foundation of Greece, and he liked even less the businesswoman who ran the Foundation, the socialite Saori Kido, because he, with all his rebelliousness, considered Saori an explorer since she was a filthy rich and if she was a filthy rich, she had to have exploited a lot of people to get so much money.

So obviously, Kanon showed the documents to the media, in the most Edward Snowden style possible. Of course, unlike Edward Snowden himself, he had the intelligence not to show his face, which saved him a lot of confusion. Until a few months ago, everyone knew his face. And good, thankfully it was just his face, because Kanon would hate to move out of Cape Sounion because of a socialite.

Public opinion believed in Kanon at first. But then he was seen as a conspiracist, someone who is trying to wipe out the country's businessmen and economy, an ally of the far left, a communist who wants to kill little children, etc. The fact some things were true did not cooperate, and he really did not care about companies, since the most important thing, for him, was to save the life of the region. And he always talked about it openly.

It also did not help that we were living in strange times. At least, that was what Saga thought, because he saw people not believing in global warming and climate change. Or worse, they did not believe that the Earth was spherical, they believed it was flat (for the last ones, every night Saga planned countless methods of torture until he proved that, no, the Earth was not fucking flat).

So, people stopped believing in him, and when he showed his face to the audience, he met... negative opinions. But that was Kanon, a natural questioner, someone who would follow his principles until proven otherwise, a stubborn nature who lives by what he believes.

Kanon needs to prove himself, to prove his worth, what he believes and what he can do all the time. Saga wanted to take that weight off him, to say that he does not have to worry about it, that he was valuable even without proving himself to anyone, least of all to him. Watch me Saga. It was the phrase he said the most in his childhood and adolescence. He never said anything, but the desire to say it was there is no need. You don't have to prove anything to anyone.

It was night. Saga walked to the balcony, facing the beach. That house was their parents' house, the only thing left for them. It was extremely painful to live with their memory, but Kanon made everything lighter. He took out his telescope and looked at the skies, admiring the stars. It was amazing how those little dots of light were plasma balls that were maintained through gravity and radiation, and their light goes through the universe, which is so big, but so big, that probably when the light goes off made it observable here on Earth, the star has ceased to exist, no matter how high the speed of light was. Even the chaos of the universe had rules.

He aimed the telescope at his favorite constellation. Gemini.

What most intrigued the Saga beyond the Universe, was the human mind. How did people look at the sky and identify patterns in the chaos of the stars? From the abstraction, they created concrete forms, drawings traced in the celestial vault and not only that, but they also created stories about the drawings they saw in the sky. It happened to your favorite constellation.

He had many reasons to like that constellation. It was not just because of the fact that he had a twin brother or because their signs were Gemini. But he also liked the story of the twins who blessed the constellation.

Castor and Pollux.

Zeus disguised himself as a swan to try to seduce Leda, who was Tyndareos's wife. In this, two boys were born, but with different parents: Pollux was the son of Zeus and, therefore, graced with immortality. Castor, on the other hand, was Tyndareos' son, and thus a mortal. They had a huge friendship between them and were inseparable. But one day, they challenged Idas and Lynceus, who were other twins, and Castor died. Pollux wanted to die with Castor, but he could not, as he was immortal. Zeus took pity on the tragedy of the two and, to honor brotherly love, immortalized them in the constellation of Gemini.

"What are you looking for in the sky, Saga?"

Saga was startled and looked back, seeing his brother entering the balcony, with a sad and tired smile on his lips.

He walked to the balcony, looked at the sky and the sea, and sighed. His eyes always turned to the sea in a melancholy way, like a sailor who has lost a precious jewel to the ocean. His greenish eyes saw the waves of the Mediterranean and Saga wondered why his brother was so sorrowful. His brother's smiles were never happy after the mermaid disappeared from his life. Saga imagined how terrible it must be to live with the doubt if the most beautiful being he has ever seen in life was real or not, if the most remarkable event in history really happened or if it was the invention of his head.

If the mermaid loved him or if she just bewitched.

Saga has promised to believe more in the stories of fishermen since then.

"Finished the chapter, Kanon?"- Saga said, trying to distract him.

"I'm done, but I'll probably rewrite everything again tomorrow."

The two smiled. Kanon looked at the sky.

"Gemini constellation?" Asked Kanon.

"Yes. The stars are beautiful today."

Kanon smiled again and said:

"Remember when we were children and we read that Greek mythology book at school..."

"And we spent weeks fighting to define which one of us would be Castor and Pollux?" ended Saga.

"Sa, you never let me be Pollux!"

"Pollux was the oldest!"

"You got that information out of your ass! They were born from an egg!"

"But Castor was cool too!"

"Then why weren't you Castor?"

"In my head, it made a lot of sense that you were Castor. You loved the sea and Poseidon was your favorite god. Poseidon was the god of horses, and Castor was the best horse tamer in existence. I liked to read books on war strategies, my favorite goddess was Athena, and Pollux was a good warrior."

"This does not make sense; it seems to me a lame excuse for not admitting that you always just wanted to be the strongest."

"It does make sense."

"Both were called Dioscuri! Sons of Zeus! They had no connection with those gods you are talking about."

"We were children Kan! Children! It wasn't supposed to be logical!"

The two laughed again.

"There is a subject that we cannot stop fighting, right?" said Saga.

"Certain grievances are never resolved," said Kanon.

Saga shook his head, still smiling.

Things would be fine. He believed that.

And that was the chapter of our Gold Dust Man! I love this Stevie Nicks' song and I think it fits the Saga I'm going to build.

Well, let's go. Some observations.

I remember doing a huge text explaining the more "political" side of the series, giving the justifications. The real thing is that this text will not be posted because: the justification does not exist (yet). It will perform throughout the series, don't worry.

"But Dragão Marinho, my political opinions are different from the character!" Look, just respect it, and it's okay, no one gets hurt. This space can be, for this type of discussion, as long as there are no fights or confusions.

Oh, and I can't be neutral, I'm sorry. There is no neutrality here.

I apologize for the more "firm" tone it is just to ensure that no one is going to piss me off because "the character is from left/right!".

In addition, I hope you like it and comment!