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This is my interpretation of the story of Icarus, with many deviations from the original Greek tragedy,
just because I wanted to share it in a more palatable manner.
Daedalus was a genius. No, he was the genius. He was the smartest inventor
Greece had ever seen, and kings and emperors beyond count had at a time
wished for his services of wit and his inventions, which seemed to make the
impossible possible.
King Minos was cursed. He had dared to destroy the temple of Poseidon on his
island of Crete. Even being Zeus’s own child couldn’t save him from godly
wrath. He was cursed for his first progeny to be a monster. His wife, Pasiphae
birthed a child which was half man and half bull, large and ferocious, the
Minotaur. Minos was scared by this seemingly senseless beast. He paid
Daedalus riches beyond count to construct an impossible maze, infinitely long,
where escape was unthinkable,
Daedalus did it, but Minos wasn’t done. He realized that Daedalus was the only
one that could help the Minotaur escape, so he locked him and his young son, a
bright kid named Icarus on top of Crete’s highest tower.
Daedalus however, had some tricks up his sleeve. He would spend the next 12
years collecting materials for his great escape. The leftover wax of candles, some
random cutlery for meltable iron, he made his plans and eventually built his
greatest creation: Wings! He had invented flight for humanity!
In the meanwhile, Icarus made friends. He would wave to the ocean and the
ocean waved back. He would talk to the stars, and the stars would sing him a
lullaby each night. But his greatest friend, his love, was the sun, or more
appropriately, the sun god Apollo.
They would talk and talk each day, the sunlight would rejuvenate Icarus and
make his world so much brighter, whilst Apollo finally had a companion on his
long daily trek through the sky. He grew from a naïve 7-year-old to a
headstrong 19-year-old, ready to experience a life he had never gotten a taste of,
with the sun and the stars by his side.
Yet, the impossible distance between him and his friends was his greatest
sorrow, the loneliness unbearable. Each evening, when the sun was setting, and
the stars were yet to rise, when he was truly and utterly alone, he would cry,
and cry and cry. He wondered how the afterlife would be, sitting on the
window ledge thousands of feet in the sky.
The only reason he wouldn’t, couldn’t just end it there and then, was Apollo.
Icarus couldn’t live without his bright smile to light up his days, and he waited,
waited for one day to finally leave his solitude and spend his days with the Sun.
One day Daedalus approached Icarus with his plan. Thus far in life, their
conversations had always been short and dry, Daedalus being too invested in
his work to spend real time with Icarus. Icarus didn’t mind it that much, having
gotten used to it.
The plan was using the wax wings Daedalus had made to fly to freedom. Icarus
readily agreed. Daedalus instructed him about the flight “Don’t fly too low, or
the cold winds will freeze the wax and you shall fall. Don’t fly too high, or the
sun’s heat would melt your waxen wings and you shall fall.”
Unfortunately, Icarus didn’t pay heed. He was ready.
Ready to meet the stars and thank them for company on his lonely nights.
Ready to meet his love Apollo and finally be able to hold his hand and soar
through the sky with him.
The day came, and they flew. Icarus laughed, veered left and right, getting
accustomed to soaring higher than any mortal ever had.
He flew to the stars, expressing his gratitude. The stars fell and cried in joy, but
yet they warned him “Don’t yet approach the sun, lest you fall!”
When it became obvious that Icarus would not listen to reason, they sung him
one last song and they cried for him.
And Icarus flew and flew, higher and higher, went on and on to the Sun.
There stood Apollo, but where once was a joyous expression, as bright as the
sun, lay only one of sorrow, dark as an eclipse. All apollo did, and could do
when Icarus approached him, was to lay a gentle, warm kiss on his cheek and
promise and apologize profusely.
“I am so sorry, my dear. I promise you won’t be forgotten till the end of times, I
vow to make sure of it”, he said, as Icarus’s waxen wings melted, and...
He fell.
He plummeted to the ocean.
No body was ever found.
Daedalus lived for a few more years before succumbing to disease, his only
regret being too much an inventor and too little a father.
. . .
“Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight,
For the greatest tragedy of them all,
is never to feel the burning light.”
-Oscar Wilde