Calypso's Island A Retelling Of Odysseus's Journey At Calypso's Island From Odysseus's Point Of View.
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My eyes fluttered open to stare into the vibrant blue eyes of a young lady. Her light and gentle smile lit up across her pale face, filling me with unnecessary joy.
" You're awake, finally." The women said, light and carefree. I sat up quickly and my head began to throb. I laid back down on the soft, silky sheet and the pain was relieved.
" Where am I?" I slurred, my lips feeling numb and dry as the words came out. The girl tilted her head and ran her slender fingers through my brown hair. A tingling sensation ran through my body as if I had been touched by a god.
" You're in Ogygia now." She said, handing me a goblet of red wine. I took it greedily, the sweet liquid feeling like heaven against my dry lips and my parched tongue.
" And who are you if I may ask?" I asked, wondering if I should tell her my name yet. If I could even remember my name.
" My name is Calypso, and welcome to my island." She replied. calypso. The name sounded a bit familiar but I couldn't recall exactly who she was. The last thing I remember is leaving my wife, Penelope and our son. I was heading off to, to some war. The Trojan War maybe?
" What happened?" I asked Calypso. She pursed her lips and flattened her silky white gown.
" I found you washed up on my shore. Your ship was torn to pieces and you were all alone. You were soaked from head to toe and out cold. A lot of cuts and scrapes," she shook her head, taking the empty goblet from my hand and setting it aside.
" I cleaned your wounds and nursed you back to health. You didn't wake for four days, until today Odysseus." Her voice soft and soothing.
My eyes narrowed as I watched Calypso; her chocolate brown hair blowing softly in the summer wind.
I coughed softly, " How did you know my name?" Suddenly suspicious of this Calypso I tried sitting up again, a little slower this time.
Calypso simply looked away, obviously not in the mood to answer my question. Calypso handed my a slice of bread, the taste of food in my mouth was spectacular. But the slice of bread just dropped to the bottom of my empty stomach and made me hungrier. Calypso handed me another slice as she chewed softly on her own.
I forgot about the throbbing in my head and the mysterious girl who called herself Calypso and feasted on bread and wine.
* * *
The sound of the waves crashing against the sand awoke me as memories flooded into my mind. After a few moments my eyes adjusted to the darkness outside that extended into the cave I was resting in. I saw Calypso's outline sitting on the sand beside me, holding a candle in my face with a concerned look in her eyes.
" Are you okay?" She whispered. I shook my head, tears dripping down my chin.
"My crew, they're all dead. The gods did this. We made them angry. Oh my gods, no!" I screeched, wishing I was dead. Dead and with the rest of my men. That or back home to Ithaca with my family.
Calypso put her hand on my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek.
" It's okay." She said quietly. I turned my head to look into her electric blue eyes and stood up, ignoring the pain it brought to my head.
" No! It's not okay! I have to go home. I appreciate your help put I'm leaving!" I screamed at her, expecting her to scream back, or tell me to sit back down. But she stayed calm, standing up to face me.
" But Odysseus, dear, you can stay here. Marry me and you can be immortal. We can be together. Forever," she breathed into my ear. She took me by surprise; and I gasped.
Clearing my throat I calmed myself down, " I can't do that, Calypso. I am married. I need to go back to Penelope." I told her, gently but firmly.
" No. That's simply just not possible," she said. Calypso chuckled. My mouth fell open.
" You can't just keep me prisoner here! I'm a person I can make my own choices!" I heard my voice start to raise but that didn't stop me. " Give me one reasons why I can't leave this place!" I shouted, but Calypso didn't look a bit intimidated. She crossed her arms over her chest and rolled her eyes at me.
" Well, I am certainly not going to give you a boat if I had one am I? And If you plan on swimming there then that's just foolish!" She snapped at me, walking out of the shelter and out into the moonlight. I slammed my foot on the ground and nibbled at my dirty fingernails.
* * *
Seven years have passed since I arrived at this horrid place called Ogygia. The salt water felt refreshing against my bare feet. The sun beamed against my back. The warm wind whipped against my now long and stringy hair, stinging my eyes.
I turned to see where the soft whispers were coming from and saw shadows in Calypso's tent. I removed my comfortable sandals that had been a gift from Calypso and walked silently towards her tent. The cool sand was soft and cool beneath my feet. I stood with my back against the side of the tent, the fabric blowing against my back.
I heard Calypso's soft voice talking to the other figure, " Hermes, your visit is a true honor. What can I do for you?" She said. Hermes! The messenger of the gods!
" Calypso, I have word from Zeus to let your prisoner free. Give him food and help him build a raft to take with him on his journey," Hermes spoke in a firm yet soft voice.
Calypso sighed, obviously not happy with Zeus's request.
" Very well Hermes. He will set sail tomorrow." Calypso said. I side stepped as Hermes stepped out of the tent. He waved goodbye to Calypso and the little wings on his sandals began to flap. Hermes disappeared into the sky.
Calypso stepped out of the tent, walking directly towards me. I cursed silently to myself, she noticed me. As much as I expected her to slap me across the face, she didn't.
" I'm guessing you heard that." She said. Her hair blowing over her bright blue eyes. I nodded honestly.
" Okay. I will be right back, stay there," she said. She disappeared into her tent and emerged moments later with an ax and a brown waterproof pouch of some kind of skin.
She handed the pouch to me, " Inside is a gallon of fresh water wrapped in sheep skin, a little bit of animal meat, and two slices of bread. Now, go cut the wood for your raft. You set sail at sun high next morning."
* * *
The water lapped against the wood. I paddled myself off the shore and checked to make sure the ax still clung to my belt as well as the pouch. Calypso breathed heavily and a warm wind swept me off into the clear blue ocean. I clung with one hand to the side of my raft and waved good bye to Calypso with the other. She raised her hand to wave back. I smiled and she smiled back. I was swept away in the current. I'm going home
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Resources
Wikipedia Calypso
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calypso_(mythology)
Tales From The Odyssey: Part Two By Mary Pope Osborne
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,856 Reviews
Hey Jessica, here to review!
You don't open your eyes and stare at somebody, maybe you open your eyes to see somebody staring at you.When you do speech, you need a comma before the quotation marks. "The" should not be capitilized, it should be treated like one sentence. Unless you have a name after the quotes, you don't capitilize it. You do this a lot, I suggest going threw and fixing these.
Also, "women" should not be plural, hense the face that there's only one lady. So it should be actually spelled "woman"
Th "c" should be capitilized, it's a name of somebody.
Alrighty, this story could use a lot of depth and description. What does the women really look like? To really capture the meaning of the myth you're adapting, I think you need a lot of description and meaning in your writing.
Why did he think it would have been the Trojan War? As of now in the story, for all the reader knows it could be the American Revolution.
"put" I think should be "but" Also, starting a sentence with but isn't cool. : D Just in opinion.
These are like fragments, or really tiny sentences that lack detail. I found a bunch, I suggest adding depth and lenth to them without making them run on setences.
One thing I don't get is that if she's not happy with this request, then why is she agreeing to this so easily. I mean, yeah, he's a god and all but if she's not happy shouldn't she at least try to reason with him. That's just my opinion.
Okay, overall, I liked this. I'm a fan of Greek mythology, and I liked this. I suggest adding lots of detail to this and depth too. One hint I would give you is to maybe try being a lot more descriptive with the characters, setting, and pretty much everything. Overall, I enjoyed reading this. : D
~ Teardrop
Thank You!
Good Luck To You Too!
- Jessica
Hiya,
So, I see you've entered this into Blink's contest--best of luck!
Before I get into the meat of the review, I just wanted to quickly mention something about your dialogue. There were a few common mistakes that I noticed, which I will adress individually. First--
Punctuation. A tag of dialogue is just a part of a sentence, right? Therefore, you would need a comma rather then a period. You will also need to to uncaptalize the T. Also, why is there a space between the opening quote and the first word? You don't need it. Properly formatted, it should look something like this:
"You're awake, finally," the woman said, light and carefree.
If you need any further information regarding dialogue punctuation, you can read this lovely article.
Second--
Tags. You do do this a few times throughout the story, but this is just one example. Think about it-can you really chuckle a message? No. Can you smile or sigh a message? Again, no. But I could talk between laughs, or smile as I was saying something, right? So, 'she said, chuckling' might be better. Another thing you could do is punctuate it differently. Like so-
"No, that's simply just not possible." She chuckled.
Notice how I placed the period and then started ' She chuckled' as a new sentence. This implies that the speaker of the dialogue said their line, and then performed the action.
Anyways, on to the story! There were some nice parts of description and imagery, but I think my main problem with this is how passive it seems. There isn't much of a story arc-all you do is relay vague information about what Calypso is like. It feels like it should be a scene in a larger story. On its own, it may be interesting to read, but leaves the reader a bit cold.
A few issues with this opening line. First, if you'll noticed the blue highlighted portion in the first sentence, you'll see that wording is a little off. 'Opening to stare' sounds like it was planned, and you can't exactly do that when you're asleep, especially if you don't know where you're going to wake up. Second, 'unnecessary' doesn't sound like the best word. I suppose it could work, but then you'd have to explain why the joy was unnecessary. 'Unexpected' sounds like it be better.
On top of that, for an opening line, it's not very interesting. Describe to us more what the woman looks like. Right now, there's not much of a visual image in our heads of her. Right now you give us hair and eye color, which is fine for basics! We're not really given much an insight into her personality either, throughout the piece. She just kind of idly speaks dialogue. We can Calypso desires the narrator, but that's pretty much it. As I read later on into the story, I can tell the decision whether to stay or go is a hard one for your narrator. So, show us why, and it will make the internal conflict of this piece shine through and be tons more enjoyable to read.
That's it! Again, I wish you luck in the contest! Feel free to drop me a PM if you need anything else!
-Elinor x