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Feeding Baby fresh fairies, the tale of Hechtor

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Digital art based on my own material
This picture is still available

Hechtor Teresiasson's Journey is one of the better hero stories,
sadly lost with the sack of Troy.
The hodgepodge a certain Homer made of his history
several centuries later has little connection with reality. 
The true tale chronicles how the future warlord was left
in the forest by the huntsman who couldn't bring
himself to kill the piteous crying baby.
He told the king he had killed little Hechtor and
showed his lord the left hand
of his own still-born son as proof.
 "I hacked off his hands and feet 
and offered them to the ravens.
His head I left for the bristly boar
who loves acorns
but isn't averse to a bloodier tidbit."

Hechtor however was found by the Two-headed Hag 
and fed on freshly killed fairies and screech-owls.
He learned the wolf-lore of the woods:
how to drink the blood of stones and
to fletch an arrow with crow-feathers
so it would always skewer the liver
of Hechtor's intended prey.

Hechtor swiftly grew to manhood
and his first lover was the nymph Calypso.
She gave him his owl-winged sandals
and the Whispering Dagger.
The dagger would always warn him
when an enemy was near.
The price was high, though.
For every time the dagger saved his life Hechtor would
lose one of his friends or lovers.
One of the lines suggests that the dagger
wasn't a love gift exactly,
but quite the opposite.
"I know you are leaving me for a life most perilous (Calypso said)
and that any arms
wherein you'll find your ease
won't be mine."
She clearly knew of Hechtor's tryst with her sister
and only handed him the two gifts when he had told her
he would leave the very next morning. 
"To free my people from an ogre who sucks their lifeblood".

The owl-winged sandals were problematical, too.
He could instantly fly away but the sandals never allowed
him to retrace his route and usually put him
down a thousand leagues away.
That way he lost princess Amirada and
the little shepherdess of the third tale.
Both turned out to be pregnant and their daughters
would later (The nineteenth tale) seek out their
absent father and try kill him.

The story of Hechtor reads more like a saga than a Greek tragedy,
though the end is tragic enough:

"Usurpator-king Hechtor,
clad in golden armor,
his peacock plumes waving,
stood on the high hill
and gazed out at his still smoldering city,
where sons fought their fathers,
daughters their grandmothers. 

He told the wheeling ravens
and black headed vultures:
"I ruled the City of Cities,
a worse king by far than my father
who only exposed his first-born son,
warned by the Sibyl
that I would be
the ruin of his kingdom.
He never killed any other kin.
Not a single one of his gracious nieces
or valiant nephews,
nary an uncle or aunt, 
whose blood still drips,
no gushes! 
from my hands!'"

And then his last surviving squire,
faithful Gundor, pointed to the horizon.

"My Lord, I see a hundred red sails approaching.
It must be the fleet of the savage Sea Reavers
from far Mycene, the Lion-gated City 
to take our families in bondage
and tear down the last walls
of our fair city!"
Hechtor took his sword,
the famed Killer of Ogres, and doffed his helmet.
"I'll stand and fall with my own city!
That is the least a true king can do!"
But his owl-winged sandals stirred.
They lifted him in the sky,
swifter than even the wide-winged eagle can fly,
and put him down a thousand leagues away,
on the other side of the sea."
 
More illustrated stories taisteng.deviantart.com/galler…
 
 
Image size
1831x2747px 3.24 MB
Make
Canon
Model
Canon PowerShot G12
Shutter Speed
1/251 second
Aperture
F/5.6
Focal Length
6 mm
ISO Speed
200
Date Taken
Jul 27, 2014, 4:09:08 PM
Sensor Size
3mm
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