The Forgotten Island (Το Ξεχασμένο Νησί)

-From The Meletic Tales.

Off the coast of Naxos, where the waters shift between cerulean and cobalt colours, and the winds whisper old tales to those people who dare listen, a lone ship floundered against a churning sea. The vessel, once proud with its painted hull and ivory sails, was now a fragmented skeleton swallowed by Poseidon's wrath. Of all who had manned her, only one remained—a sailor named Thalos.

Thallos, hardened by years at sea, found himself clinging to a broken plank, eyes half-shut against the brine and storm. The gods had not been merciful, and yet, when he awoke on the beach, coughing up seafoam and sand, he found the sun had returned to the sky as though no tempest had ever passed. Before him stretched a shore unfamiliar—its sands silver-grey, its trees gnarled like ancient hands grasping at the wind with full force.

He soon discovered he was not on Naxos, but some smaller isle, unmarked upon any chart he had ever seen. The place bore the ruinous echo of abandonment. Villas crumbled in silence, market stalls decayed beneath creeper vines, and roads lay broken under the weight of forgotten years. It was as though time had exhaled here, long ago, and never breathed again.

For days, Thallos wandered through the absolute ruins, hoping for another soul, another sign of life to manifest. He found broken amphorae, shattered statues of forgotten deities and rusted tools—all vivid remnants of a once-thriving people who had vanished into the fold of time. There was no laughter, no footsteps, no breath stirred the air.

Until one morning, following the scent of olive smoke, he came upon a modest temple perched atop a solitary hill. Unlike the rest of the island, the temple was pristine in its natural form.

At the temple’s threshold sat a distinct group of elders, clothed in simple linen robes, their hair long and silvered. They sat cross-legged in silence, their eyes closed, their breaths slow and measured. They bore an air of serenity that contrasted starkly with the island’s desolation.

As Thallos stepped closer, one of them opened his eyes. The gaze that met his was steady, neither surprised nor afraid of the stranger that had approached them.

'You have come', the elder said simply.

'I—I did not mean to'. Thallos stammered. 'I am shipwrecked… My crew… are all gone'.

'You are the only one who arrived', the sage replied, rising slowly to his feet. 'Come. Let us speak then. You must be hungry and thirsty in your travels'.

Inside the temple, there were no visible idols, no familiar altars. Only a circle of cushions on the stone floor, a copper basin of water, and incense smoke curling towards the ceiling. The elder offered him food—dates, olives, barley bread, wine—and Thallos accepted with gratitude expresed.

'My name is Thallos of Paros', he said at last. 'What is this place, if I may ask?'

'This', the elder said, 'Was once called Kymelos. A thriving isle of trade and celebration. but now it is forgotten, as all things are that consume themselves in the end with greed'.

The words struck him strangely. 'What exactly happened?'

'A great cyclone came, but that was not the sole cause of its ruin. That was only the instrument. The true storm brewed long before in time', the sage replied.

The sage, whose name was Pelagon, explained that the people of Kymelos had become obsessed with excessive wealth and stature. Their society flourished—temples to fortune, games of power and contests of splendour. With their prosperity came pride, then greed, and then ultimately the rivalry that sealed their doom or exile.

'When we warned them', Pelagon said, 'They laughed. When we spoke of the balance of life and nature, they mocked us. When we built this temple—not for worship, but for reflection—they called us mad and indigents'.

He explained that the sages had studied the sea, the skies, the patterns of the earth. They foresaw the cyclone not through divine prophecy, but through observation and wisdom that led to their foresight. They had prepared, but the others chose not to listen to their clear warning.

'Some people fled to the nearby caverns when the raging winds began', said Pelagon, his eyes distant. 'Some escaped by sea. Those who remained were lost to the misery of their illusions. When the skies cleared, only ruin remained. None ever returned. We never left'.

Thallos listened intently. He could sense that these sages—followers of a way unlike any he had known—were not keepers of dogma or myth, but of something quieter, subtler. Something that he would discover to be Meleticism.

In the days that followed, he remained with them. His injuries healed slowly, and though they offered him the means to leave, he found himself curiously unwilling at the time. He wandered through the ruins, trying to imagine the lives once lived there. The more he walked, the more he began to feel a strange weight in the silence that encompassed the island. Not grief—but guilt. The island itself seemed ashamed of its unworthy past.

One afternoon, whilst sheltering from the midday heat, Thallos took refuge in what had once been a stately home. Its walls were cracked, but a staircase still held, and he descended into what seemed to be a storage chamber that was abandoned.

There, hidden beneath a half-buried stone slab, he found it—a chest of ornate gold, encrusted with lapis and carved in relief with the figures of nymphs and lions. Inside: jewels, coins, ivory ornaments. Enough treasure to buy an entire fleet, if he so desired.

He stared at it. His heart pounded, his eyes opened wide. With such wealth, he could return not only to Paros, but to possess power. No longer a sailor—he could be a lord, a benefactor, a man of influence. The thought wrapped itself around him like a cloak of fire.

The silence of the ruin unsettled him. He shut the lid, sat back against the wall, and thought of what Pelagon had said in his words of wisdom. He could sense that he was growing in his character.

That night, he brought the tale of the treasure to the sages. 'Do with it what you will. I no longer know if it is a gift or a curse', he said.

The eldest amongst the sages, a woman named Eirene, looked at him with a gentle smile. 'You are beginning to understand. What the villagers never did. Their greed had brought the curse upon them', she professed.

'Tell me', Thallos said, 'What is it you practise? Why did your temple survive when all else fell into ruin?'

'We practised temperance', Eirene replied.

It was a familiar word he’d heard before, but never tasted nor experienced.

'Temperance is not denial, nor is it austerity. It is balance. It is knowing when enough is enough. The islanders or villagers could not see the end of their wanting. We prepared not because we feared the storm, but because we did not fear of life of simplicity and virtues', she explained.

In time, Thallos came to see that the true treasure was not buried beneath any hardened stone, but in the quiet manner the sages lived. They took what they needed, not more. They observed life, studied it, reflected upon it. By doing so, they had not only survived the cyclone—they had endured the passage of time itself, which was unbelievable to fathom.

He stayed for weeks—then moons. The longer he remained, the less he yearned for the world beyond. He learnt to still his thoughts, to listen to the rhythm of the earth. He began meditating with them at sunrise, speaking less and seeing more of the surrounding nature.

Once, as they sat in silence, Pelagon said, 'The island is not forgotten, Thallos. It remembers through you and through us'.

He understood then. He had not been shipwrecked. He had been redirected in his journey of life.

The years passed. A boat arrived from Naxos with fishermen, who had spotted the island from afar. They offered him passage back to known civilisation. He declined.

'I am where I am meant to be', he told them.

They left puzzled, never to return, seeing the total ruin of the island and its villages.

Eventually, Thallos took on the linen robe. He never called himself a sage. The Meletic path became his own. The treasure in the ruined house had been kept concealed. It remained, a reminder of what once had been and what must never be again.

One day, a young traveller arrived, cast adrift by fate. Thallos welcomed him with dates and water, and offered no answers, only presence. The cycle continued.

The years folded into decades. Thallos aged, his beard now white, his body weathered. Still, he walked the broken roads of Kymelos, tending to olive trees that had outlived kings, and watching the stars at night from atop the same cliffs where he had once beheld the island’s mystery. He wrote down thoughts—short reflections, not sermons—in a scroll he hid beneath the temple’s stone bench.

One entry read: 'We mistake permanence for power, but the stone that yields to the wind survives where civilisations fall'.

Another: 'To seek meaning is to admit there is more than self. Temperance is not the end of desire, but its refinement'.

In his final years, Thallos sat each evening at the entrance to the temple. Birds roosted above, the sea sighed below, and those few adventurers who came by boat seeking wisdom never left empty-handed—even if they departed with no more than a clearer mind and realisation of the downfall of one's fate.

The island, though never mapped anew, became legend. Not for its treasure, but for its unique tale.

The forgotten island remained unspoken in maps and songs, untouched by merchants or kings. It was not empty. In the temple by the olive trees, in the silence between thoughts, and in the breath of one man who came to understand the virtue of enough—it endured.

For what is forgotten by the world may still be remembered by the soul, and that is sometimes enough.

One spring morning, a child from the mainland arrived with his father, a merchant who had lost everything in a terrible fire. Thallos sat with the boy beneath the olive trees and asked him nothing. For the first time in months, the boy smiled.

'Does the island heal people?' The father asked.

'No. But it remembers how to overcome the pain', Thallos answered.

He taught them both how to breathe with the wind, how to sit with silence, and how to befriend uncertainty. When they departed, they carried no treasure—but something weightless and enduring that was the virtue of temperance.

The child would later become a storyteller. Although he never spoke of Kymelos by name, its silence echoed in every tale he told. His words carried an awareness, and those who heard him often felt changed without knowing why. Somewhere deep within them, the memory of the forgotten island stirred like a distant wind across water.

Thallos continued his quiet service to the island. He repaired the temple roof when storms thinned the tiles. He planted fig trees beside the olives and carved smooth stone steps down the hillside, so that those villagers who visited in the future could walk safely amongst the ruins. He left messages in the cracks of old houses—not words, but small tokens: a dried blossom, a folded leaf, a pebble placed with care.

Each day began the same way. He rose before dawn and walked barefoot across the threshold of the temple. Facing the sea, he bowed his head not in prayer, but in awareness. He would whisper a single phrase—sometimes in memory of a lost soul, sometimes in honour of an unseen truth—and then sit until the sun touched the earth with gold.

He lived not to be remembered, but to remember.

Slowly, Kymelos began to change. Not in a way that made noise, nor in a way that demanded notice, but life once so absent, began to return. Swallows made nests amongst the eaves. Wild thyme reclaimed the stone terraces. A spring bubbled up near the northern ridge, long hidden by time.

With the water came new visitors. Not many, never all at once, but over the years, more came—wanderers, seekers, those who had lost their way and needed no map. Some stayed for a night. Others for a season. A few, like Thalos once had, stayed forever. These people had learnt the virtue of temperance and began to rebuild the villages of the island.

Amongst them was a woman named Lysa, a potter from Delos, who had given up her craft after her son drowned. She brought clay with her, shaped by salt and ash. On the island, she began again—creating vessels not for trade, but for offering: to hold spring water, to catch the light, to carry silence. Her pots bore no inscription, save a small ripple around the rim, a reminder of waves.

Another, a former soldier from Thebes named Dorion, laid down his sword and took up stones. He repaired the broken fountain in the village square, not to restore the past, but to honour it. He learnt from Thallos how to listen before building. 'Not all ruins need mending by wealth', Thallos would say. 'Some must simply be seen to be tended to'.

As these souls arrived, the island slowly became a haven—not for prosperity, but for presence. There were no declarations, no banners, no festivals. Just shared meals, quiet labour, and long walks through the olive groves where stories flowed like gentle brooks. These people had embraced Meleticism.

Thallos never claimed to lead them. He remained what he had always become—a student of simplicity. When asked what should be done next, he would answer, 'Observe. Let the island speak before you do'.

One autumn, as the leaves turned bronze and saffron, Thallos fell ill. He did not fear it. He lay on a woven mat in the temple, surrounded by those people who had come to call him friend. He said little, but when he did, it was often to ask how the wind felt, or if the olives had ripened.

On the final morning of his life, he asked to be carried to the highest point on the island. Four of them bore him on a wooden pallet to the hilltop above the temple, where the ruins of a watchtower overlooked the sea.

He opened his eyes, now pale as morning mist, and smiled faintly. 'It was never about being saved', he murmured. 'It was always about remembering'.

Then, like a wave drawing gently from the shore, he exhaled one last time. They buried him beneath the olive tree he had tended the most, not with stone or epitaph, but with silence and the planting of wildflowers. Beneath the earth, the roots grew around him. In time, no one could tell where he lay, but the tree bore fruit sweeter than all others.

The temple remained, but none called it sacred. The treasure in the ruined house would be buried and forgotten. When a child once asked why it had not been taken, Lysa answered, 'Because we already have what we need, and greed is not of those needs'.

The island still did not appear on maps as decades passed, yet more came. A poet who had lost his artistic voice. A healer who had forgotten her own worth. A scholar who no longer believed in the depth of his knowledge.

In all of them, Kymelos offered not answers, but space. They learnt the ways of Meletic balance—not through doctrine, but through days lived in reflection, humility and quiet joy. They harvested only what was needed. They built with intention. They remembered the cyclone not as a punishment, but as a turning point in life. A lesson to be learnt.

One day, a young girl found the old scroll Thallos had left beneath the temple bench. Its parchment was faded, but the words remained. 'We are not what we own, but what we observe. The one who sees without reaching has already begun the path to To Ena, the One'.

She read it aloud to others, and though no one told her to, she began writing new reflections of her own. The scroll grew—first one hand, then another, and in time, it became known simply as 'The Living Silence'. It was never published, but it was always read.

Thus, the forgotten island of Kymelos never re-entered the world through conquest, tyranny or fame. It endured in the quiet ripples it sent outwardly—into stories, into dreams, into those people who had touched its soil and been changed.

Somewhere, in the breath of each dawn, the presence of Thallos stirred—not in the wind, nor in the olive, nor even in the temple—but in the stillness left behind by those Meletics who chose temperance.

For what is remembered by the soul cannot be forgotten by the world forever. And that, too, is enough.

The years passed, and then decades, and yet the island remained untouched by banners and ships. No conqueror raised his standard. No merchant set up his wares. It was as if Kymelos, by its own quiet will, had chosen to be seen only by those persons who sought not gain, but grounding.

Occasionally, someone would arrive—drawn not by map, but by some unspoken yearning. They would walk the ruins, sit beneath the olive trees, and feel something shift within them, something that asked for no name. Most left again, not with riches or knowledge, but with a new awareness—a gentleness in the way they spoke, or a quiet in the way they now listened.

One traveller, a former magistrate from the mainland, later wrote in his private journal: 'I came to Kymelos seeking silence. I left with a question: what if silence was never absence, but presence misunderstood?'

The scroll he penned was never published, but it passed from hand to hand—amongst seekers, wanderers and the quietly disillusioned. In its margins, others began to write. Thoughts. Reflections. Small truths.

In that growing and quiet lineage, the memory of Kymelos lived on. Not as a place lost, but as a state remembered.

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