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"Cyclops! If any man asks how you came by your blindness..."
Polyphemus sleeps fitfully and wakes with a mournful groan, having forgotten for a brief moment that opening his eye will bring him no sight, will only bring sharp agony lancing through his skull. He sits and rocks for a while, covering the wide wound of his eye with both hands, gasping at every surge of pain, each one building and building and building upon the next until it fills him completely. He takes comfort only in the gentle bleating of his flock around him, and the soft feel of their wool when they brush up against his thighs. He is careful not to crush any of them when he pushes, with great effort, to his feet, and takes a first shuffling step toward the mouth of his cave. If he had not spent centuries here, if he had not learned to navigate this cavern, and this island, even in the dark, he would be utterly helpless.
A pang pierces him, through his skull and down into his heart.
He heaves the boulder aside and sits beside it, waits and recovers his strength as his sheep make their slow, trotting, carefree way out of the cave and down toward the meadow. Already, they seem to have forgotten all about the wicked intruders. There have been intruders from the sea before, squealing two-eyed little things that scurry into Polyphemus’ cave and nibble his cheese and slaughter his sheep, but never so many all at once. He likes the way those little things taste, those humans, those men. He never thought of them as possessing any real intelligence, they were just scavengers that became prey, just thieves.
Their voices are soft and squeaking and impossible to understand. Their armor is pleasantly chewy. They become just like sheep when he approaches and reaches for them, freezing, wide-eyed and thoughtless. They are less than sheep. And now they are gone.
He still doesn't quite understand what happened. Only that it hurts.
With a moan he goes to his knees, crawls from the cave, and stands on unsteady legs in the warmth of sunlight he cannot see. It occurs to him with a deep, crippling ache that he may never behold beautiful rosy-fingered Dawn again. But he staggers his way down the stones, the familiar path to the meadow — only to pause and turn in the direction of the beach instead. The wound of his eye is crusted shut when he touches it, tacky with drying blood and pus. The sting was terrible yesterday when he chased the wicked intruders into his father's sea, but it needs to be cleaned.
And he needs his father.
So he steps into the warm, breathing ocean, sighing with relief as he wades in to his knees, then waist, then shoulders. The water's touch is soft and soothing, familiar to his soul. He was born of the sea. All creatures were, he knows, for the sea is the womb of the world, but this is especially true of Cyclopes. Usually he would watch the rolling blue for a while, then close his eyes to feel and breathe the sea's divine essence, but there is no blue now. There is only throbbing black and red darkness. A warm salt-scented breeze dances past him, beckoning.
He ducks his head down under the water, and howls, warped and gurgling, at the vicious sting. He rips his head from the water and realizes, weeping bitterly, his tears thick hot blood, that he will never be rid of this pain. The rest of his days will be dark agony.
The sea moves against him as he trembles in its embrace. What begins as gentle waves solidifies into strong coils that wind around him, steadying him on the shifting sand, telling him that his father has come.
His heart leaps despite the pain. His father is always with him, surrounding his island, rolling against his shores, providing vast shoals of fish for him to eat, cradling him when he lies in the waves, but it is rare for his father to visit this way, to take true form. Polyphemus only wishes he could see, for his father's true form is glorious to behold. His father is a being of waves and wind and foam, ever-shifting, adorned with glittering scales and silver and gold, seeing all with piercing white eyes.
Now there is only darkness, and a safe, familiar presence washing over Polyphemus. A broad hand, the skin warm and dripping wet, cradles the nape of his neck. His head is guided forward to rest against a massive sluicing thigh, like a waterfall-draped mountain. His father's powerful breath cascades down over him, caressing him from the top of his head to the base of his spine, all warm salty air and safety. Calming smells of sulfur, brine and seaweed fill his nose. He shudders and leans all his weight on his father's strength, as another giant hand soothes down his back like a gentle stream.
"My son." His father's voice is, all at once, the rumbling crash of waves against stone and the shrill cry of gulls in the wind. A song. "My poor son. I have heard your cries."
"Father!" He whimpers and clutches at the solid water of his father's skin. His father is hot sea ice, melting slowly under his hands; his father, though he never truly leaves, never stays solid for long. "It was — a man," Polyphemus manages. “Odysseus.”
Not Nobody. It was a man and a liar.
"I know." His father strokes along his heaving shoulders; warm water trickles down Polyphemus’ spine. "He suffers now, this man. This Odysseus. If I have it my way, his suffering will never end. We shall have our vengeance."
"Kill him," Polyphemus begs.
His father sighs deeply, the sea gust so powerful that it would throw him backwards were his father not holding him steady. "My gray-eyed niece favors this man and places him under her protection. Do not ask me why, I cannot understand it. And my brother..." His father's voice darkens to a hurricane rumble, the waves crash violently against the shore. If Polyphemus had his vision, he knows he would see the sea darken and thrash. "He says this man's destiny is not to die in my domain."
Polyphemus snarls in protest, grips his father pleadingly.
"He may live, but he will be punished. I will make his agony worse than yours. I will show him such horrors, he will wish his sight were gone. He will regret the day he harmed my son." His father tilts his head back, exposing the wound of his eye. He whimpers as two warm seawater fingers circle the source of his agony, but he does not — would never — recoil from his father's touch. "I cannot restore your sight, but I will heal you and end your pain," his father says.
The fingers press inside, two thick streams of saltwater flooding the socket, and he wails at the sting, the torture — only to gasp with deep relief when the pain is instantly gone, drained away as the water leaves the clean closed wound. It flows down his face like tears. The world is still dark, but there is no more red or throbbing, and when he gingerly touches his eye, it feels like a soft painless scar. He smiles.
"Thank you, Father." He presses his cheek to his father's hip in grateful prayer.
"Polyphemus," the sea whispers fondly.
A tall, powerful wave crashes over him without collapsing him, slides him carefully backwards until he stands on the warm damp sand and his father is one with the sea once more. But not gone, never gone.
Polyphemus walks on steady legs across the beach, toward the meadow where his sheep await their shepherd. He mourns still for his lost sight, for everything he will never see as the centuries unfold, but his father has heartened him. He will not go unavenged. And he hears his sheep bleating sweetly, calling for him.