Chapter Text
They were running.
Not from danger, not from anything, really.
Just running.
The path was open, and their laughter was louder than sense.
The hill came suddenly.
Grass tearing at their feet.
Air burning their lungs.
Victory close enough to taste.
Polites reached the top first.
And then…
He stopped.
Odysseus almost crashed into him. “Poli…?”
But he wasn’t looking at him.
He was looking at the sky.
The sun was sinking low, slow and unafraid, spilling itself across the field below.
Green turned gold.
Shadows softened.
The world held its breath.
Yellow everywhere.
Not blinding, just there.
It found Polites.
Wrapped him in light.
Caught in his hair, his smile, the curve of his shoulders.
Turned him radiant,
Like the day itself had chosen him.
Like nothing cruel could reach him there.
Like fate would pass him by and look elsewhere.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t have to.
Some moments don’t need to be spoken.
They need to be remembered.
Odysseus didn’t know then that a memory could become a wound.
That beauty could learn how to hurt.
That light could turn to longing.
He only knew this:
Yellow felt safe.
Yellow felt like joy without consequence.
Like warmth without the burn.
Like a promise that the world hadn’t broken yet.
Polites squinted at the horizon, shielding his eyes with one dirty hand.
Grass stains on his knees.
Mud on his cheek.
“Did I win?” he asked, breathless, grinning, like winning was the only thing that mattered.
Odysseus snorted. “You stopped running.”
“That’s not an answer,” he said, still smiling at the sky like it might smile back.
The sun dipped lower.
The yellow deepened.
Gold clung to everything.
“You always miss it,” Polites said. “The best parts.”
“The best parts of what?” He asked.
“Of the world,” he said, shrugging, easy, certain—the way only children are.
Odysseus kicked a rock down the hill and watched it disappear. “We’re going to be late.”
“So?” Polites finally looked at him then.
Eyes bright.
Fearless.
“So we’ll get in trouble.”
Polites laughed.
A real laugh.
The kind that didn’t know how to be careful yet.
“Then we’ll say we were busy,” he said.
“Busy doing what?”
Polites gestured to the field, the sky, the light wrapped around them like a secret.
“Watching this.”
They sat in the grass after that.
Shoulders touching.
Sweaty.
Unimportant.
Eternal.
Neither of them knew how big the moment was.
How breakable it would become.
They didn’t know about ships.
Or storms.
Or how the world learns your name only so it can take something from you.
They were just boys on a hill.
Watching the sun go down.
Believing—stupidly, beautifully—that days like this went on forever.
Now the color still finds him.
In banners.
In fields.
In the last light before night.
And it hurts.
Because yellow still meant warmth.
Still meant laughter.
Still meant a boy who thought the world was kind.
That same boy who stopped running just to watch the sun go down.
Odysseus carries that moment with him like a fragile thing.
Like if he held it too tightly, it would finally break.
Because once—
Before the sea,
Before the blood,
Before he learned how merciless tomorrow could be,
Yellow wrapped around Polites made him untouchable.
And ever since then, Odysseus had loved the color yellow.
Not because it was bright.
Not because it was beautiful—even though it was both of those things.
But because yellow made everything look safe.
Because if the sun could love Polites that gently,
Then maybe—
Just maybe—
The world had meant to as well.
And sometimes when he finds himself looking into a sunset, he can almost feel the presence of Polites beside him.
Shoulder to shoulder.
Singing softly:
You can relax, my friend…