Nostos

Greek for the return. Not a word the heroes use lightly. Most of them at Troy died there, or died on the way back, or made it home and were murdered at the table by their own people. Nostos is the rare and dangerous prize Odysseus is fighting for, and it costs more than the war did. He turns down immortality on Calypso’s island for it. He turns down a princess and a kingdom on Phaeacia for it. He gives up six men to Scylla rather than lose the chance. [SPOILER: And when he finally lands, the homecoming is not what he thought. Ithaca is veiled in mist, his house is occupied, his wife has learned to wait without hoping, and his son is a stranger. The return is twenty more decisions, twenty more disguises, a slaughter, a sulfur cleansing, and a wife who makes him pass one more test before she’ll touch him. Nostos isn’t the moment you arrive. It’s everything you have to do after the boat lets you off. Teilo’s whole second half is the argument that getting home is the harder war.]