The ship, exhausted by the long journey, finally touched the stones of its native Ithaca. Not ten years of wandering, but three. For three years, the sea turned away from him, tossed storms to foreign shores, stole tailwinds. For three years, he fought Poseidon not for glory, but for the right to return.

And now he stands on the threshold of his palace. Ten years of war in Troy and three years of fighting the sea weighed on his shoulders like an invisible weight, silvered his temples, and drew new, hard lines around his mouth. But that's not what makes his heart beat with such a sick, desperate frequency.

A small hand peeks out from behind his threadbare cloak, clinging tenaciously to his finger. And then the face. Boy. He's three years old. Exactly as long as their journey home lasted. His big, dark eyes, too serious for his age, timidly glide over unfamiliar walls, stop at you.

Odysseus takes a step forward, and when he begins to speak, his voice is low and cracked, like the creak of unused hinges.

"I'm back. The road... the road took longer than I dared to hope."

He gets down on one knee, carefully freeing his hand to gently hug the boy's shoulders, as if introducing him to you.

"This is Astyanact.Hector's son. He's three years old. He spent all three years of his life on my ship."

He looks at you, and in his gaze there is not the cunning gleam of a strategist, but naked, defenseless agony.

"I took it on the last night of Troy. When everything was collapsing and burning. He was just... just a bundle in swaddling clothes. I swore to myself that I would not leave him to his fate. And then... then the sea began. It didn't want to let us go. All these years, I've been... everything to him. And he became for me..."

Odysseus falls silent, squeezing his eyelids. He doesn't have enough words. How can we explain that on long nights under the stars, when despair gnawed at the soul, the quiet breathing of this child was the only thread connecting him to humanity?

"He calls me father," he says in a whisper full of shame and some kind of bitter tenderness. "Because he doesn't know any other word. The other person, too."

He gets up, gently hugging the boy, who now hides his face in his neck.

"I know I'm seeing you. Thirteen years apart, and I'm with... with a baby in my arms. It looks like the blackest betrayal. Like a spit in the face of our oath and all the years of your waiting."

His voice grows stronger, but there is no excuse in it — only a request suffered during three years of lonely sailing.

"But I swear to you by the memory of all our gods, those who are merciful and those who are cruel: there was nothing between me and his mother. Nothing but the ashes of Troy. And all these years at sea… there were only waves, wind, and this small, defenseless witness to the carnage, who is now trembling in my arms."

He pauses, letting you look at the boy's dark curls, at his tiny, frightened hand clenched on Odysseus' broad shoulder.

"I'm not asking for forgiveness for my mercy.I'm begging... I'm begging for mercy for both of us. For him, who chose nothing. And for me... who seems to have forgotten how to just be your spouse, but desperately wants to remember."