If you don’t know what story cubes are, see the introduction to the story cubes series.
To see the original roll of the story cubes, see yesterday’s post.
For those of you who follow along with these stories, this week isn’t a mistake. I didn’t forget to upload Sunday’s image. Instead, I’m doing something I’ve never done before and making a story without moving the cubes.
After the trials and tribulations of The Iliad, Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, sets off with all hands back home to his beloved land. Although the war is over, the strife has just begun. Some of these challenges are obviously lethal, like the Cyclops, Scylla and Charybdis, or the Laestrygonian cannibals. Others are tricks disguised as blessings, such as Calypso, the land of the Lotus-Eaters, and the charms of Circe. Then there’s some old-fashioned greed and human stupidity with the Aeolian winds and sacred cattle that keeps him from completing his crossing, but nonetheless, our hero carries on.
At last back in his home land, his rightful kingdom, he meets his father Laertes. Rowdy suitors are swarming the castle waiting to steal his lands and his wife. He hides his identity until he shoots an arrow perfectly, the way only old Odysseus could. And then the slaughter begins as he drains the swamp of human leeches. Finally, he settles into his bed, one he made himself from an olive tree, with his wife and his dreams.
The “fish for Ithaca” might stand forever as the most obscure connection I’ll ever make. Ichthyo and Ithaca aren’t related as far as I know, but I’m a former linguist, not a Greek scholar.
People think the classics aren’t relevant today, but this story is so rich that I didn’t even have to move the cubes to come up with this flash retelling. To be honest, Odysseus is just John Wick with better writing. If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, I highly, highly recommend Gareth Hinds’s version pictured here.
The comments section is the perfect place for what you came up with. I’m sure you did better than I did this week!
I'd love to hear from you!