Odysseus stared at the sky, Zeus’s light glowing through the dense clouds above. He held the bloodied head of Hector in his left hand- his sword, still tensed in his right. Odysseus waited, watching the Watcher.
“Have I done well, my Lord?!” he cried out such that the heavens shook. Artemis landed before him. She sent herself on a moonbeam and walked on ground. Her hips swayed like the tall grasses that grew in the pond she bathes in with her virgins. Imagine: there, the light of the moon herself bathing in her own moonlight, the very image of self-completion- there she was, as Odysseus still held tense in his moment of crises.
“I’ve come to offer you peace, noble Odysseus.”
His fingers gripped the black, blood-soaked hair of his enemy tighter, now. He cringed and his fingers opened; the head dropped to the bloody sod below. He looked skyward, waiting for the Light to speak. His body held in space. “My Lord!” and he felt the spirit wake in Zeus’s mouth. “Speak!”
Zeus was very wroth. But very sad. But very angry. Zeus held his tongue and shut himself out from the sky above Odysseus’ head. Odysseus crumbled down, lower than Hector in his fate.
Hector, still a might frightened from his death, spied, within his tiny ray of light, the crisis in Odysseus’ heart. He felt somehow grieved by it, despite his shock of death. He felt he knew the heart of this man as well as he knew his own- and yet, Odysseus was far wiser, he knew. “Look, even at final victory, his heart breaks in want of Truth.” Hector, looked skyward to Odysseus’ Lord. “Will you talk to me, the enemy of Odysseus?” Hector asked the sky.
Zeus immediately took form upon the grey, as Odysseus’ face lit up with hope. “Yes, my Lord?” Zeus turned his face against Odysseus, but shot an arrow of His Light into Hector’s now hopeful spirit.
Hector trembled, his spirit rippled from His force. “Hello… Father of Gods and men. Hello.”
“You have done well to die and yet feel compassion for compassion where it lives in Odysseus’ soul. It was not well with him to withhold his sword when you begged for your life. I fault you in courage this once, but otherwise am pleased.”
Hector rose with Zeus’ hand and walked as on a moving beam of light upward, so that Zeus could whisper more intimately His knowledge in Hector’s ear.
Stutz's Fairy Tales and Poems 