Time, which felt endless when Philistos and I were battling monsters in the sun, suddenly rushed forward. I don't remember the specifics, just the dull, heavy feeling of the news. Philistos's family was moving. Far away, to another city by the coast. Not just across the olive grove, or to the next village over the hill where the air smelled of different flowers. Gone. It was the year I turned thirteen. The sun didn't feel as warm on my skin after that, even when it was high in the sky, and the shadows seemed to cling to the ground longer. The dust tasted like... finality. A heavy, dry taste that coated my tongue and made my throat feel tight.
The last few days felt muted, like the colours had been washed out of the world. Our games of Hektor continued, but the usual fierce joy was overlaid with a quiet, aching sadness. The roar of the monster felt less convincing, Philistos's heart wasn't fully in it, and the hero's triumph felt less bright, less earned, because the energy wasn't truly there. We tried to pretend, going through the familiar motions, speaking the lines, but the knowledge of the coming separation was a cold, undeniable shadow that even the bravest Hektor Anepsios couldn't defeat with a stick sword. It was like trying to build our world on ground that was already crumbling.
"You'll still play, right?" Philistos asked, kicking aimlessly at a stone the day before he left. His voice was quieter than usual, without the usual spark of mischief.
I nodded, the simple movement feeling stiff. But the word felt hollow in my throat, like a small, dry pebble I couldn't swallow. "Of course. Who will play the monster?" The question hung in the air between us, heavy and unanswered.
He shrugged, his gaze distant, fixed on the road that would soon take him away. "Maybe you can fight... anything. The wind. The dust." He didn't look at me when he said it, just watched the stone roll away into the weeds. The idea of fighting the wind or the dust felt impossibly sad. Our monsters were powerful, terrifying things conjured from our shared imagination, not formless, everyday things.
We didn't play the full act that final day. The energy for it just wasn't there. We just sat for a while in our usual spot, the patch of ground that had been our stage for so long, the sun-warmed earth feeling suddenly cool and unfamiliar beneath us. The air here didn't feel wavy with chances anymore. It just felt like air, ordinary and thin. The silence between us was louder than any roar we'd ever created.
When they came to call him, his family was standing by a wagon packed high with their belongings – bundles of cloth, pots, wooden chests. It looked like they were taking their whole world with them. Philistos turned to me. His pale green eyes, which had always shone with shared secrets and the light of our games, were serious now, filled with a kind of quiet knowing that went beyond our years. He didn't hug me like Euboa sometimes hugged me when she was shy, or make a big show of saying goodbye in front of our families. Just a look. A long, shared look that held the weight of years of friendship and the understanding that something fundamental was ending. It was a simple, clear message that needed no words, but it hurt more than any shouted farewell could have.
As he turned to join his family, his hand already on the side of the wagon, he paused. "Himerios?" he said, his voice low, meant just for me, a sound that seemed to hang in the still air. "Tell Euboa... tell her I wish her well." He didn't say anything else, just nodded slightly, a small, quick movement of his head. He didn't say "tell her I liked watching you" or "tell her I liked when you were quiet near our games." He didn't say "tell her I wish you weren't scared of talking to me," or remember the few times she'd tentatively smiled back at him when I wasn't patting her head. Just the simple, formal courtesy of "wish her well." It wasn't what I expected, a strange request at the end of our wild, shared world, but I nodded again, the tight feeling in my throat preventing any other answer. "I will."
There weren't grand farewells, no dramatic promises to write (letters traveled slowly, were often lost, and we were only boys stepping, unprepared, out of a world of imagination into a world of harsh reality). Just a shared look, a quiet request, and then he was walking away, climbing onto the wagon that would carry him far from the dusty stages we had known.
Watching him walk away with his family, the wagon rattling slowly down the road, his small figure shrinking, then just a shape, then gone, felt like watching a part of myself leave too. The stage we had shared was suddenly, profoundly empty. The monsters were gone, vanished back into the air from which we'd conjured them, and so was my audience of one, the one who shared the creating with me, the one who made the world feel less lonely just by being in it.
The ease with which I used to talk, to laugh loudly, to seek out company… it began, subtly at first, to dim. It was like a light being slowly extinguished. The bright, social boy I had been seemed to be shrinking away, like cloth pulled tight in the rain, becoming smaller, quieter. A shyness I hadn't known before started to creep in, a cold mist settling over me whenever I was around other children or even grown-ups I didn't know well. I felt their eyes on me more, or imagined I did, wondering why I was standing alone, why I wasn't talking and laughing like I used to. The words that had once come so easily now felt heavy and clumsy on my tongue. Without Philistos there to share the light of our created world, without his energy pulling me forward, the world outside felt a little less welcoming, a little more daunting, and my own voice a little less confident. The vibrant chaos of the market square, which I had once moved through so easily, now seemed too loud, too full of unfamiliar faces. I started finding excuses to avoid gatherings, staying closer to home, preferring the quiet corners.
Even after Philistos left, even as the shyness grew, the urge to become Hektor didn't entirely fade. It was like a root that had gone too deep to simply wither away. But it changed. The town square felt too exposed now, too full of people I felt shy around. I felt their gaze, and the fear of being seen, of being judged for playing make-believe at my age, was a cold wave that washed over the urge. So, I found new stages – the quiet corner of the yard behind the house, where Mother's drying herbs smelled strong and familiar, a scent of comfort in the changing world; a secluded spot down by the less-used part of the stream, where the water sounds felt like a soft blanket over the air, making the world feel closed in and safe. Places where wandering eyes were less likely to see me, places that felt more private, more mine alone.
My monsters became invisible, conjured only from the air and my own head, from the shadows of trees that stretched long and thin in the afternoon sun, from the anxieties that were starting to coil in my gut like small, unpleasant snakes. The stick was still my sword, my spear. I'd leap and parry and strike at empty space, the physical movement a release for the tightness in my chest, sweat dripping from my brow just the same as when Philistos was there.
"Stand back, foul beast! Your reign of terror ends here!" I'd call out, maybe a little less loudly now, the words spoken more for myself than for any audience, the sound swallowed by the rustling leaves or the murmur of the stream. The sounds I made for the monster were only in my head, or maybe just sounds I made myself, quieter, less fierce than Philistos's had been. But the feeling was still there, a flicker of the old fire.
The rush of embodying that courage, the brief escape from the awkwardness that was starting to cling to me whenever I wasn't alone. For those moments, I could push back against the growing shyness, against the feeling of being lost. Outside of these moments on my solitary stage, I was quiet, hesitant to meet people's eyes, fumbling for words I used to find so easily. The social boy I had been seemed to be shrinking away, like cloth pulled tight in the rain, becoming smaller, quieter, less visible.
Yet, I wasn't entirely alone on my makeshift stages. My sister, Euboa, was often there. She was two years younger than me, and even more reserved than I was becoming. She rarely spoke, her voice a soft sound when she did, preferring to watch the world from a distance, content within her own quiet thoughts. She wouldn't sit close to where I was playing, or cheer, or pretend to be part of the battle like Philistos did. She would just... be there. Sometimes perched on a low wall at the edge of the yard, sometimes half-hidden behind a bush near the stream, her small shape still, her quiet eyes following my movements with that steady, unreadable gaze.
She never said anything about it. Never asked what I was doing, or why I was still playing the game alone. She didn't need to. She just watched. Her presence was a constant, silent acknowledgment of this thing I still felt compelled to do, this need to become the hero even when there was no one to fight or witness. I knew she was there, my only, quiet, constant audience in those changing, increasingly lonely years after Philistos left, before the strange, unwelcome sounds inside my head began to fill the silence.