"ἀνερρίφθω κύβος" (anerrhī́phthō kýbos) Plutarch
"Alea iacta est" Suetonius
Julius Caesar 10 January 49 BC crossing the Rubicon
Far away... The waves, like forgotten prayers, whisper litanies cursing against the carcass of a burned shipwreck. A broken shell of blackened wood stretching, gasping, among the sand dunes, a corpse swallowed by salt and time. Drowsy, or rather slumped to the ground, two figures in a tomb-like silence, their faces hidden in shadow, their hands rough like driftwood. Between them, only two dice.
Their hands, made of salt and scars, move in a slow and ritualistic dance, forms of men sculpted in time, in confidence with Fate, intent on a propitiatory ceremony of misfortunes. Thrown, the dice violently strike the wood, a subdued, ineluctable, and atrocious, mocking repercussion. With each throw, the waves seem to gather, huddled at the waterline, shrunken to listen more closely, more attentively, more inexorably. The undertow suddenly awakens with a start and seems to disperse, betrayed in the shimmering of the sea. A breeze rises, brazen, then a gust, and finally something colder, deeper strips the void, branding intertwined destinies, and rusted metal, inlaid and baptized in blood.
The sea, aquamarine, turquoise, emerald, and sapphire immediately becomes cerulean, then changes its tone to a livid violet. It intones an ancient lament... then red, blood red.
Above them, the sky shatters then grumbles, curses, admonishes severely.
Far, distant, the thunder rolls cumbersome, more powerful than a presage.
The two men do not speak to each other, they only cast the dice, forms of wood and bone. Totemic fragments consumed by wrath, fierce and ancient rage, a challenge to boredom. A challenge to the fear of forgetting honor and selling out the value of a wound. Salt. Illusion and blurred vision, as if the game itself could delay what is already on its way. Each throw evokes an imprecated dithyramb, a grating sound. A subdued scream made not only of lightning and storm, but also of metal scarring metal turned on distant embers, metal like a buried blade that re-emerges brazenly.
...in the trembling twilight, a form takes shape, revealed to rust and salt.
The Armor.
At first only an outline in the fog, then slowly taking shape, greaves, helmet, mangled bracers, piece after piece insulted, contended for, and forgotten. Stale blood immortalized in the breastplate as if from an invisible wounded source. Tears, sand, and brine. The armor, sacred and revered, does not stand as a relic, but as a final reckoning.
Fate, ancient and implacable, was no longer a metaphor