The flat rock jutted far out into the sea. It had retained the warmth of day and the youth sitting there was not in the least disturbed by the fresh gusts of wind that found their way between the cliffs. The sea, invisible in the darkness of night, splashed faintly against the foot of the rock.

The young man stared into the distance, contemplating the point at which the end of that silver band called the Milky Way disappeared into the darkness. He was watching the falling stars; a cluster of them had flashed up to pierce the sky with their fiery needles, and disappear behind the horizon, fading like burning arrows falling into the water. Again the fiery arrows flashed across the heavens, flying into the unknown, to the fabled lands that lay beyond the sea on the very borders of Oicumene. (Oicumene — the name given by the ancient Greeks to the inhabited world which was surrounded by water, Oceanos.)

“I will ask grandad where they fall,” decided the youth and thought how wonderful it would be to fly like that through the sky direct to some unknown destination.

But then he was no longer a youth — a few more days and he would attain the age of a warrior. He would never be a warrior, however, but would become a famous artist, a sculptor of renown. His innate ability to see true forms in nature, to sense and remember them, made him different from most people… Or so his teacher, the sculptor Agenor, had told him. And so it was, for there, where others passed indifferently by, he would halt in sheer amazement, seeing that which he could neither comprehend nor explain. The countless manifestations of nature charmed him by their constant mutations. Later his vision grew clearer and he learned to distinguish the beautiful and retain it in his memory. There was elusive beauty in all things, in the curve of the crest of a running wave, in the locks of Thessa’s hair when the wind played in them, in the stately columns of the pine trunks and in the menacing rocks that rose proudly over the seashore. From the moment he first became conscious of this he had made the creation of beautiful forms his aim in life. He wanted to show beauty to those unable to perceive it for themselves. And what could be more beautiful than the human body! To mould it, however, was the most difficult of all the arts…