Twenty years he has rowed and prayed and starved toward this beach. He arrives asleep on a Phaeacian ship, set down on the black sand among scattered gifts, and when he wakes the air smells right and the light is wrong and nothing speaks his name. Athena has put a mist on Ithaca. He cannot recognize the harbor of his birth. [SPOILER: She does this on purpose. He cannot walk up to his palace and announce himself. There are a hundred armed men in his hall who will kill him on sight. The mist is a kindness and a discipline at once. It tells him: you are not home yet. Home is no longer a place you arrive at. Home is something you have to take back. Recognize nothing. Trust nothing. Keep your name in your mouth.]
The Veiled Homecoming
He wakes on Ithaca's shore and does not recognize it. Athena holds the island in mist until he understands what he's come back to.