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One dark night Alexios looks out over the city, a city he once knew. Many things have changed, himself included. He has stopped putting the gold beads in his hair, he does not add the braids either. It has been a century since he last felt like he looked like himself, but he has grown his hair long again at least. He wonders, kicking a bare foot against the concrete beneath him, whether his mother would recognize him in the garb of a modern man. Would she welcome the durable blue of his jeans, the brilliant white of his t-shirt? Would she tell him how foreign he looked, or assume this was just one more way her odd son deferred from a Spartan. Ah, but a man in Lakonia would look about the same, now. It does not matter. His mother has been dead for over two thousand years.
He can hear the distant thud of a nightclub, can imagine the way people look. The music is exciting, he likes this era’s music. They have even made electricity into music, mixing it with horns. The stringed instruments that are nothing like a lyre, new types of drums. He likes this new music, yes, but sometimes he misses the simpler tunes of a lone musician in the street. This time has them too, buskers, but they do not know the songs he used to listen to on the corner of Athenian streets. He wonders if the poets he knew would enjoy these new verses. He thinks of Lykinos, on a hill different from this one.
He gets in moods like this every few years, disappears from whomever is in his current group of friends or from whatever job it is he’s taken to pass the time. He takes something, a sabbatical, a pilgrimage, a vacation. It doesn’t matter what it is called, he chides himself. At this point, he has stopped trying to explain his long life to new people.
The modes of transport have changed as well. It has been a long time since he last bought a horse and named it Phobos. It is not that horses don’t exist! Oh, how he would have trouble explaining this. Alexios chuckles to himself, takes a drag of his cigarette. He knows, now, that it is a filthy habit. If anyone else were to do this, he’d complain. He thinks perhaps any of his old lovers would wrinkle their noses at the stench that lingers on his clothing. But he has to have some vices, does he not? Ah, no one is left to explain it too. No, it doesn’t matter. Earlier today he boarded a bus. A large beast of metal. Gleaming chrome, enameled black, white, and orange. The world is so fast now, he knows that even running top speed he cannot keep up.
Greece itself has changed, land gaining and losing borders over years and wars. It was painful to witness at times. Time has given him so many wounds. Even the language has evolved so that the old words feel strange on the tongues of people milling below. Even if Alexios uses an Athenian accent, they will ask him where he is from. A more studious type might notice older patterns of speech, but even those will comment he speaks like an old man. Uses terminology only their grandfathers might distantly remember. He has seen empires come and go, cultures mix and merge. Alexios tongue still remembers the way it felt as a boy, millennium ago in Sparta. Now he only whispers it to himself, or bellows it out when drunk. It is strange to be ancient and still young. Who can he trust to explain this too, as he speaks a dead version of a language, as he laments things lost.
There is good too, in the changes. He knows it, stubbing out the cigarette against the plastic chair he is perched in as it starts to rain. Perhaps, in a time like this, Brasidas would have laid beside him in clean sheets. They could have touched fingertips at a cafe, or bought each other souvlaki for three drachmas. He has not had a Spartan stew for so long he wonders if he can remember the taste. He can smell the scent of flowers in the air, a scent he knows has not changed at least. Alexios smiles, turns his head up to the sky. It’s time, he thinks, to return to his roots. But not to Sparta, no.
As Alexios goes inside, looking for his wallet and a rainjacket, he thinks of the way his friends. Alcibiades would have thrived here, Alexios decides, though it is hard to picture him as a modern man. There is a resurgence of dresses fashioned vaguely like chiton, Alexios can imagine Aspasia in them, walking down the sidewalk in heels. He would have liked to buy Phoibe these bright, colorful dresses that this era has brought. She would have enjoyed the boldness of the future, he thinks. He cannot picture his mother in them, nor Deimos. The thought is amusing.
It is impulsive, the drive out of Athens. Alexios knows this, but it doesn’t matter. He is driven by a sense of purpose. The night lit by the yellow of his headlights, Alexios is as fast as the muddy roads allow. The moon moved through the sky, unchanging and as eternal as he is.
It is over a day later when Alexios arrives to Amphipolis. He parks at the side of the road, there is something strange in the area where the city had been. Tents, a group of people. A dig, he realizes. These are archeologists, uncovering the past as he wishes he could do. He looks the area over cautiously, curiously. It does not take long for a plan to form.
“Brasidas”, he murmurs. The name is like a long held rumble in his chest. Alexios takes a deep breath, looks skywards at the stars. They too have shifted, but they saw the world just as he had all that time ago. The drops of water on his face close enough to be tears that he is satisfied. It’s impulsive, but if he cannot go to him, he will bring him back. He cannot make it to the Styx, but he will carry him out. He will bring the man he loves back to this world, if there is anything left to uncover.