Narcissus

Long before his name became a flower, Narcissus was a boy born of riverlight and sorrow. Raised alongside the opalescent waters of the River Kephisos, cradled by the fountain nymph Liriope who loved too fiercely and too briefly, Narcissus entered the world with the curse of beauty and none of its wisdom.

Narcissus was raised in the merchant city of Thespiae, a town nestled between marble cliffs of the coast and the orchards of middle-Greece. His father was the river-god Kephisos, a minor nobleman responsible for the continual flow of water bearing trade inland from the sea. Lord Kephisos was distant but a good supporter to his family. His mother was the mystic concubine Liriope, who left him when he was ten. Whether drawn back to the fountains of her kind or simply exhausted by raising a child too lovely to belong to the mortal world, none could say.

As a teen, Narcissus was already known in whispered tones as the boy too beautiful to touch. Eyes of stormlight. Hair like a halo of honey. Limbs carved like a votive statue left forgotten by the gods. Girls wept in his presence. Boys forgot themselves. Poets bled their verses on tavern tables just for a glance at his chiseled face. Artists begged to paint him. Sculptors molded his likeness into marble. Priests called him “god-touched.”

But what none saw, what no lover or bard or passing soul could guess, was the hollowness that beauty bore into him. How could anyone love what they could not see beyond? He became cold. Proud. And lonely.

In the woods beyond Thespiae lived a girl named Ekho, a weak hill nymph all but banished to the high mountains and silver hills. The daughter of an olive farmer, she had eyes like dusk and a voice that betrayed her. A severe stammer, some said. Others said she had been kicked in the throat by a mule as a girl. Her father begged Hera for blessings upon his child, but it was clear that they were ignored or overlooked, too lowly to be heard. Yet despite Ekho’s difficult stammer, she grew into a beautiful girl.

Narcissus found her loitering on the edge of town, watching the revelry of parties she was never invited to attend. When he met her, he did not laugh. He listened. And when she stammered, he filled in her words gently, not to silence her, but to understand her. She loved him quickly. He loved her too, but only when no one was watching, and only when she was silent.

He always met her at dusk. In the shadows of stone ruins or under the canopy of olive trees. They lay in wildflowers and made love like desperate things, but when she asked if he would walk beside her through the city, he always pulled away.

“People wouldn’t understand,” he said. “It would ruin you.”

When she surprised him in the city, he pretended to not know her, and when she tugged his arm, he cast her off, cursing her for daring to touch something she did not deserve.

Ameinias came later. A gentle, bookish boy, heart full of trembling verses and flower petals tucked into letters. He loved Narcissus not only for his beauty, but because he believed naively and sweetly that he could reach the soul beneath it.

He brought gifts. Tokens. Songs on his flute. He followed Narcissus through the markets and watched him across courtyards. Narcissus humored him at first. Let him linger. Let him hope. Gave him half-smiles and insinuated hints. When Ameinias watched him through the window, he lingered in nakedness, posturing and teasing his audience like an actor on stage, but nothing was real.

Ameinias wrote poems and left them by Narcissus’ door. He waited in the rain for a chance to walk beside him. And when he finally confessed, fully, trembling, earnest, Narcissus crushed him publicly and cruelly.

“Leave your silly offerings at someone else’s door.” He declared with a hearty laugh. That night, Narcissus sent a present to Ameinias’ home: a dagger wrapped in silk. The accompanying note read: “You’re not what I want. You’re not even what I could be seen with. You shame yourself by being in my mere presence.”

But Ameinias couldn’t leave his broken heart unattended. Instead, he returned one final time bearing the dagger meant not for Narcissus, but for himself. “If you cannot love me,” he said, voice trembling like moonlight on water, “then let my blood stain the roots of your vanity.” And with that, he died at the gates to the House of Kephisos, raising his curse to Nemesis as he did.

The gods are slow to wrath, but they never forget, because Nemesis indeed heard Ameinias’ plea.

Spring bloomed late that year. Narcissus wandered further from Thespiae, bored of their small city and seeking something he could never name. His chest ached with dreams he couldn’t decipher. Ekho’s voice haunted the wind. Ameinias’s blood stained his sleep. He tried to escape both.

That was when, deep within the woods, he found the pool. It was clear, perfect, and breathtaking – just as he was. He bent to cup a drink of water when he saw the face of a boy seemingly carved of longing and light peering back at him. And for the first time, he felt a stirring in his heart.

He returned the next day. And the next. Talking softly to the figure in the water. Reaching, always reaching, but never touching. He stopped eating. He forgot the sun and the stars. His body withered, but his gaze did not stray. Not even when his own reflection dimmed. And when he realized the truth, that the one he loved could never love him back, that it was himself all along… It was already too late.

Some say he died of thirst. Others say he drove a blade into his own chest from the yearning.

Either way, when the villagers found the place weeks later, they found a body perfectly preserved by yellow flowers that grew up around it.

They call the yellow flower narcissus. It blooms near still water, always reaching toward its own reflection, as if to remind the world of the boy who shared the same name.

Other Lives

• Ozymandias Kassim, 1st Age DJ, nightlife icon, digital-era hedonist
• Don Juan, 7th Age adventurer