Proteus

Proteus shows up secondhand, in a story Menelaus tells through the night in Sparta. The fleet had been driven all the way to Egypt. Stuck. No wind. Menelaus needed answers and the only way to get them was to catch the Old Man of the Sea, an ancient shape-shifting god who came ashore at Pharos to count his seals. Menelaus and three men hid under sealskins, jumped him, and held on. Proteus turned into a lion. They held on. He turned into a serpent, a panther, a wild boar, running water, a tall tree. They held on. When he finally went still, he answered the questions. One of them was about Odysseus. He lived. Trapped by a goddess on an island where no mortal ship could sail. That single sentence is how Telemachus first hears his father is alive. The whole shape-shifting ordeal exists in this retelling to deliver one piece of news.