Photo by Sue Vincent

I don’t remember ever being so hungry.  Starved.  What an awful journey!  I cursed our captain and king, and went over the ridge.

Just think, we had been staying in a land where the fruit was unlimited.  There was nothing to do but sit back, eat, sleep and enjoy ourselves.  After all of those years of war, what more could a man ask for?  But no, we had to move on, continue our journey.

The idiot.

I stopped and pointed.  The weeds had been close cropped, so I assumed there was something edible around, but my suspicions were proved correct when I spotted the sheep.

Oh, delicious mutton!  Lamb steaks!  Lamb chops!

Actually, any meat would do, but this was glorious.

Did I say I was starved and was trying to get our silly leader to go back to the island of unlimited food?  Oh well, the sheep would help!

I was about to go up and grab a close by sheep when my mate knocked me down.  What was that about?  But then I noticed it too – the tree at the top of the hill moved.

The large tree resolved itself into the silhouette of a giant herder, 25 or 30 feet tall!  Maybe 40!

I was about to go back to the ship to tell the captain that it was no good, when I realized we were surrounded by people.

The fools!  We were sent as scouts, but they couldn’t wait. No, they had to check on their own before they we could tell them if it were safe or not.  Idiots.  OK, I know.  As I said, I was starved, and so where they.  Unfortunately they were also weak in muscle and brain with hunger.

Before I could warn the others, the tree man was on us.  An ugly brute, he was, too.  One big eye, right in the middle of his forehead.  I’m not joking!  He rounded us up and led us to his cave along with his flock of sheep.  As we were walking, he just picked poor Periphetes up by a leg and bit his head off!  He spat it out, of course, but then just chewed his body up, spitting out only bones.  Gross.

I am not even going to tell you about that stinking cave.  I don’t know how long we were there nor how many of us he ate.  It is a memory I want to repress!

I do have to say, even though I call him silly and an idiot, that our “nobody” leader was pretty clever in this situation.  Poked that one eye out, letting us escape by riding under the belly of the sheep as they went out to graze.  And when we were out, the monster kept yelling that “Nobody” had hurt him!  Clever.

But here we are, on our never ending journey once again.

And still hungry.

Our silly leader seems to be overly confident, but I’m not so sure.

By Zeus, if any of us survive I’ll bet that we’ll compare every long strange journey to this one!  As long as they name it after our brave men and not our silly leader….

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Move over, Homer ;)

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Written for Sue Vincent‘s #writephoto challenge.  This weeks challenge, “Journey”, is here.