Costas Komborozos

Queen of Sparta Costas Komborozos

Gorgo holds her husband's shredded scarlet cloak. She feels freedom echoing far beyond dust and bones. She feels that Leonidas still lives, and that he is fighting for freedom's echo to move deeper into the future. She feels him being submerged by history's tide, which takes him far. The Spartan king feels himself drifting into the abyss. But then he feels the will to live, to live freedom and let freedom live. He wills the tide to move from formlessness to form. Freedom or death. There is no other choice. Leonidas breathes in this freedom as the tide moves forward. Seconds pass while history marches on. The king opens his eyes faintly in the tide's rolling shadows. He hears voices emerging from the tide. The voices become one. They merge with the freedom that the tide embodies. He meanders through the depths, reaching for the shore. Tyranny obscures the light shining on the tide. The voices are drowned out by silence, but then the voices merge again and become one. The warrior feels the voice echoing deep inside the tide, and he knows that he must fight for that voice. A bloodied silhouette treads upon silence. The sun shines against its dark frame, and light passes through the bright, fleeting wound on its shoulder. Its light briefly illuminates the figure's upper body. Light falls from the shadowy man's face. Small rivulets of sunlight appear near the man's eyes. But the light seems adverse to the indifferent shape it falls upon. It drifts right through the darkened man's bleeding gaze, which takes in the light but then lets it stream out aimlessly into the air. The figure stands rigidly upright and watches as the tide swirls a spectacularly long swirl. It now walks against the bright shimmering tide, which remains in a swirl. Then the silvery outline of the shadow becomes sharper, and the tide makes the silhouetted figure become fully visible and known. As soon as the figure becomes fully known, the tide finally moves beyond its swirl and crashes on rocky outcrops. The Spartan king stands a short distance from where the man is standing. He sees the man fully emerge into the brightness. The man becomes fully illuminated, and his brightened frame fully mirrors the unwavering light of the tide. Leonidas beholds the man with curiosity. He watches as the man becomes nearly inseparable from the tide. Then he realizes that the tide is a manifestation of the tide. The man is the tide in human form, he thinks. He was previously enshrouded in blackness, but then he shone with a brightness unmatched even by the most searingly white daylight. The man suddenly turns to look at Leonidas, who remains transfixed by the man's bewildering presence. And then the man looks away as the tide emerges. He walks into the tide and merges with it. Leonidas opens his eyes. The remnants of the dream linger inside the drumbeat of the fresh new seconds he has just awakened to. Time passes imperceptibly as the tide maintains its momentum. The Spartan king flows inside the tide. Sleep overcame him for a only brief second, and yet he saw the tide become fully manifest to him. The tide spoke to him in the shift from darkness to light. Then Leonidas feels that the tide is heading in a new direction. He sinks inside the dark depths, but then he emerges fully as before. He emerges from the darkness and sees a bright new shore.