It had been morning when he'd taken his newly christened boat for her maiden voyage. He'd planned on sailing out a couple of miles, to test her seaworthieness. Always a careful man, he'd kept the shore in sight on the western horizon. A light land breeze assisted him on his way out with the ebbing tide.
A freak storm had blown in without warning from the West, pushing his small craft out farther than it had ever been meant to travel. The sea had been merciless in its attempt to claim Gregory for its own. The howling wind shrieking and wailing with the lungs of the mothers who had ever lost their sons at sea. The small craft had never meant to take on a storm of this magnitude and was quickly swamped, pitching Gregory into the roiling waves.
For an unknown ammount of time, Gregory was battered about by the storm. The rain pelted his skin as he traveled up and down on the swells, fighting to tread water and survive. Jagged arcs of lightning were thrown down from the clouds as thunder fought to be heard over the wind and blowing foam. Eventually, exaustion played its heavy toll on the man....with his last bit of strength, he whispered "I'm sorry...." before slipping beneath the waves.
***
"Ungh...." Greg groand, rolling over to his back on the wet sand. "What happened?" he thought as he cracked his eyes open to a late afternoon sky. Every muscle in his body felt bruised and drained. His stomach still roiled from when he'd vomited up the salt water before collapsing above the high tide line. He couldn't even remember crawling out of the waves, or how he'd gotten here, or even how long he'd lain there, but judging by the mild sunburn on his now bare back, it'd had been some 2 hours since he'd landed and probably 6 hours since he'd left home.
Getting weakly to his knees, he crawled toward the line of scrub and bushes away from the beach, barely making it into the shade before collapsing again into a feotal position, and blissfull unconsiousness.
(( "The waking Life is but a dream, but it is dreams for that we live." - Unknown
"All men of action are dreamers." - James G. Huneker ))
[/ QUOTE ]
Surf. Rolling in gently. Chattering with its eternal voice to the shore.
Seagulls. Yelling stridently at each other over some morsel washed in by the waves.
Wind. Kissing the leaves of the scrub bush that Gregory had crawled to, rustling softly as the breeze meandered in from the water. On that breeze, the smell of meat roasting over an open fire maddened the senses of the sleeping tempest survivor.
Gregory awoke suddenly, clawing upwards from his unconsiousness, staring at his unfamiliar surroundings. From where he was now sitting, the beach appeared bare and empty to the limits of his vision, curving away with the shape of the island. Trees gave way to scrub and sand and finally to the ocean itself. The horizon, devoid of any definition save the flat line of the ocean, offered a clear view of Apollos Chariot as it followed its path to the underworld.
What the
.??? Gregory thought with a start. He blinked, rubbed his eyes and looked again at the sky. There was no change. A muscular man stood in a golden chariot, holding the reins to four firey steeds. These horses were spirited, to be sure, but also literally on fire, the light from them reflecting off of the polished gold of the trailing carriage.
Ok, youve completely lost it. Grade A bonkers, Greg muttered.
On the contrary, my dear friend, I would beg to differ! a male voice called from his right.
((Posting my Origin story here for anyone to read. I've compiled it the main sources inside the Whitmoore Thread))
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Amazingly, Greece was relatively untouched by the Rikti invasion. With so few economical interests for the Rikti to control the country was largely ignored. There were a few exploratory incursions, but most of the damage was confined to other Mediterranian countries. Some may even say that there had been other "divine" intervention that steered away the decending ships, but who could really know for sure? After the monkeys were beaten back, life continued on as it had for thousands of years.
While not wealthy, the Nikolidias family had lead a comfortable life on the shores of the Spartan province of Greece. A small vinyard, a grove of olive trees, a small copse of hardwoods, and access to the sea was all that Georgos Nikolidias needed. He met and married Atina Polopolis in the new spring of 1980. She died ten months later giving birth to Gregory.
Gregory had been sailing his whole life, making runs around the Agean Sea with his father. Learning how to read the waves, clouds, sun, and stars was his life from the time he could run a line up the jib. The major routes that his father's merchant company had owned were as ingrained into his memory as the calouses on his hands. Trade goods from Naxos to Melos, Aegina to Thera, Paros to Athens, and Cythera to Rhodes flowed under his father's watchful eye and stewardship. Olive oil, timber, gold and silver, iron ore, bauxite, live goods and even the occasional passenger or family.
There was even time for schooling and instruction. Especially during the more turbulant winter months. Entranced by the bedtime stories that his father would tell him, Gregory learned how to sketch and draw plans to build scale, one person crafts of the great ships of Troy and Sparta. Drinking in the lore of his homeland, he built a model of the ship of Jason of Iolcus and named it "The Beta Argo"
It was not difficult to find the lumber for the boat. A recent wind storm had blown down several hardwoods near the shore. Gregory took an axe, trimmed the limbs off, and then sectioned them with an old buck saw. Using his neighbor's draft team, he was able to manipulate the heavy timbers closer to the beach. Then he set about barking the wood, curing it and then cutting it up to make his ship.
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((OOC: I am NOT a shipbuilder, I am also decidedly not Greek, but I do know a thing or two about mythology. ))