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The temple lay just outside Sparta, surrounded by woods and fields of various flowers but mostly blooming hyacinths. Every few years, during the festival of Hyacinthia. The people would first grieve over the death of their spartian hero, then, march from the city. Carrying offerings and singing praises for the boy who had accidentally died. But also praises for his lover, the god Apollo.
Threnos walked silently among the flowers, letting the gentle breeze brush against his angelic face and slowly breathing in the parfume of those blooming hyacinths. He tried avoiding stepping over those flowers. Flowers that reminded him of someone special, someone he loved. No one knew him here. No one had ever heard of a Threnos, the griefing lover. And so, he could allow himself a moment of sadness. A moment of loneliness, of weakness. He knelt among the hyacinths and, finally, let himself cry. Not quietly, but in shuddering sobs that spoke of a loss too vast for words.
Doros, one of the devotees, noticed the stranger and approached cautiously. 'Are you… okay? Do you need someone to talk to, to confess those strong emotions and thoughts ?'
Threnos shook his head without looking up. 'No… I just want to be alone for a moment.' His voice was raspy because of his grief, sobs, cries. But it had a soft side, calming, even melodic. Like art through sadness, like a singing melancholy.
Doros imagined that, this stranger must use his voice to sing and chords with a lyre. Even in those conditions, his voice was hypnotising to hear and to listen to.
Doros lingered nearby, respectful, leaving him space for his weak moment. He didn’t know that stranger's name and didn't care to know it. He just wanted to help that tormented soul. Doros could describe that moment as awkward, yet somehow calming. He sometimes glanced down at the flowers at his feet rather than sitting beside that stranger, or looked up towards the sun. Source of warmth between this cold breeze. After a long pause, he tried again softly to speak to this young man, 'It feels good to cry, to... let it out.'
Threnos wiped his face in his hands, voice hoarse but breathy. 'Yeah… sometimes… when no one is looking, and you’re sure you’re completely alone.'
That stranger had beautiful blond hair, they could rivaled with the sun itself ! He had never seen him near Sparta or in the city before.
Doros hesitated, then asked, with a calm voice with hints of curiosity in it 'What happened to you?'
'What happened to me?" Threnos asked, taken aback from the question. 'Nothing..'
Doros frowned. 'Well, that ''nothing'' seems to have left you very sad and very lonely. Do you… mind explaining why?'
Threnos’s eyes softened, as he picked a hyacinth from the ground. 'I lost someone I cared for more than anything. Someone I loved… deeply. He was my support when I felt lost, my companion in ways no one else understood. I had loved and lost many before, many girls and many boys. But he was… different, special. I will never see him or find anyone like him ever again.'
Doros couldn’t see his face but knew he had a bitter smile decoring his masculine yet feminin face. Maybe he was remembering moments he had shared with him.
He held the flower close, tracing its petals with trembling fingers. 'I see him in these… in these blossoms.'
Doros studied him carefully, uncertainty creeping into his expression. 'These flowers... why does they remind you of him ? What do you see in those ?'
'Mainly his eyes, a sea of amethyst that would shine in my light..' Threnos admitted, voice breaking. 'I could look into them for hours… even when I held his body in my arms. It was all my fault…'
Doros’s eyes widened to those words.
His fault ?
'Your fault? What do you mean?' Doros asked, silently praying to the gods, to anyone who could hear his thoughts, that he wasn’t speaking to a killer.
'I don’t want to speak of it,' Threnos said quietly.
'And that’s… okay, you don't need to if you don't want to.' Doros replied gently, hoping his fear couldn’t be heard in his voice.
After some moment in perfect silence, broken only by the birds in the trees and the cicadas' song. Doros noticed his breaths, but not the other's. He thought he would turn deaf 'cause of his heart beating like crazy in his body, ringing in his ears like the screams of the furies tormenting the souls of mortals who done unimaginable things in their life, the souls of the monsters that hides inside of everyone and anyone.
Threnos lifted his gaze for the first time. His eyes were of a warm amber color, one had a spot that covered half of it. A mellow blue, similar to the sky during a hot summer day.
'Are you afraid of me Doros ?' He asked before looked back at that same hyacinth again.
Doros stilled, swallowed. Many thoughts were running in his mind; How does he know my name ? Why are his eyes of that color, I've never seen any eyes similar to his. There is something weird about him! Did he kill his lover ? And is it why he said it was his fault ?
But Doros stayed silent, next to that mysterious man. Hoping he just misunderstood everything he said and imagined it all, imagined their conversation, imagined that young man. But he knew he could never had imagined that, their conservation, him..
'How do you know my name ?' Asked Doros, now he really start to fear the man next to him.
'No magicians explains their tricks. And I am no exception' Threnos explained cryptically, as if that counted as an explanation.
Doros swallowed, unsure what to make of the stranger. But he stayed silent, like a witness of grieving, and to love that even death could not erase.