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Odysseus and the Oath of a Warrior

She had lived through life upon life — and for what?

Jillian Spiridon
3 min readOct 9, 2023

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Photo by Godz1 on Unsplash

The only mortal who had never taken the ambrosia was Odysseus.

But Athena would not let him rest. His soul, bidden by Hades and Thanatos, instead went through cycle upon cycle — what was called reincarnation by mortal means. Odysseus was the only mortal who could lay claim to such fame.

Until the lifetime when he was instead born a she.

Odysseus — called Odette in this life, born to a linguistics professor and a retired ballerina — stood before a mirror each day, seeing lank hair and dark eyes, even though her dreams were alight with wars from times she should not have been able to remember. It seemed that Odysseus, tired of the wear and tear to his soul, had not drunk of the River Lethe upon his last cycle through the underworld. It was a crime he — no, she would never admit to having committed.

When Odette was eighteen, she bought her first sword. It felt right in her hand as she held it up to the light. In another age, she might have run the blade against her long locks, shearing the hair from her head before she went off to battle for the betterment of lives she would never know.

The truth was that Odette could decide the war of the gods — if only her chaos were not a…

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Jillian Spiridon
Jillian Spiridon

Written by Jillian Spiridon

just another writer with too many cats

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