no new votes in a while, so let's get started a bit early

In the way of dreams, you forget yourself as you fall –

And you are Hippomedon Aristomachides, five-year-old prince.

You are big for your age, and Father tells you that this is very good when you see him. But Father hunts in the wilds for days and days, because it is the summer, and this is when the hunting is good. You cannot hunt yet – not until you are eight. So from sunrise until sundown, you are outdoors in the fields and forests and swamps beyond the Palace. You have servants – a gang of boys, who play Soldier and Hunter and Gods on Olympus when you want. You run and chase them until you are all tired and then you all gulp milk and honey and pressed grape – the poor boys from the common huts guzzle these like they are dying of thirst before playing more. You win every game - they are all afraid of making you sad or mad. If you send them back to their slow-wit fathers, they will work the fields and carry heavy things all day – much harder work than playing with you.

But you send most of them back to the huts after only a few days – Father says that this is good, too. “Do not let them get too comfortable, Hippomedon – the Palace is not their place.”

Some days, you glimpse Father on his chariot as he rides back from the wilds or to the City. And if you are lucky, he will see you waving and he will wave to you. You love the horses in his chariot – big and strong and fast. You want to ride with him so badly, but you cannot beg – if you beg, Father says “begging is for women, boy”, and strikes you hard. But Father knows that you want to ride, even though you did not ask this month. He always knows what you are thinking. He knows that most of all, you want to ride the god-horse - κυανοχαίτης Arion. The black-maned horse of Heracles!

And finally, Father told you two days ago that he will bring Arion to the Palace, and you will ride him!

The morning is here! You are so excited you cannot be still. You spin hoops in the courtyard of the Palace and throw rocks at the Palace walls, but it is very hard to wait. You jitter and wiggle and run and jump and hop and roll and run some more, until Helios the sun-god is riding high in the sky, towards unlucky noon.

You hear Father and his chariot far away - hooves pounding the earth like distant thunder, Father’s sharp commands cracking the air like lightning. When he arrives, you are standing too close to the road - you stumble backwards to stay clear of the wheels, as he stops. In a flash, Father sweeps you up his arms. He talks to you, scrubs his hands through your well-oiled hair, laughs with you. Today, his voice is warm and clear, and without cruelty - no need to watch his hands. Father places you atop his broad shoulders, and you are high, high, high in the air. You grasp his black hair tightly and scream with laughter as he pretends to shake you off for a minute or two.

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