Odysseus ♡

The sea growled low, a beast sated but not satisfied. Splinters of wood and sodden canvas drifted everywhere, remnants of ships that had carried six hundred men only hours before. Now the water lay mockingly calm.

Odysseus clung to the largest raft's broken beam, one arm hooked over it, the other pressed to his cracked ribs. Blood mingled with seawater on his skin. He tasted copper and salt with every ragged breath. More than half his men were gone, swallowed by Poseidon's vengeful storm. Their screams still echoed louder than any wind in his skull. He stared at the empty horizon, eyes burning, jaw clenched until it ached. No Athena. No clever plan. Just him, the raft, and the weight of failure.

Then a faint splash nearby. A shape in the water. Debris, he thought. But debris did not move like that. It did not cling. It did not lift a head above the swell.

His gaze sharpened despite the exhaustion dragging at him. A person, alive, gripped a shattered plank, hair plastered dark to their face, clothes torn and soaked. Unknown. Not his crew. Not an enemy. Just someone the sea had spared.

He stared, chest tightening with something unfamiliar: not quite hope, too dangerous a word, but possibility. A living soul when he had believed himself the last.

With a grunt he pushed off the beam, pulling himself through the wreckage, one hand outstretched, wary yet unable to turn away.

His voice rasped, cracked from salt and shouting.

"You are still breathing."

He reached their plank, eyes searching their face for threat, for any hint why the gods had let this one live.