The Soulless Thieves (Οι Χωρίς Ψυχή Κλέφτες)

-From The Meletic Tales.

The moon had risen full over the coast of Thespiai, casting pale light upon the olive trees that bordered the sea. Beneath their silvered leaves, two men moved like shades—silent, swift and familiar with the language of theft.

Thalios and Phaidros who were brothers had travelled many roads together, their bond sealed not by trust but by survival. They were thieves by trade, by instinct, and by some claim, by inheritance. Wherever they passed, treasures vanished and the poor grew poorer, yet none could ever say they were seen or heard in their acts.

That night, they arrived at a village that barely clung to the hillside, its whitewashed walls and simple roofs curled around a small temple of Apollo. There were no guards. No dogs barked. Even the wind, it seemed, respected the quiet.

Thalios surveyed the scene and scoffed. ‘There is nothing here’, he muttered.

Phaidros, whose eyes were always sharper, raised a brow. ‘Then why do I feel watched?’

They entered the village under the shroud of night, expecting to find easy pickings: grain, amphorae of oil, perhaps a bronze tool or two, but they discovered something they could not name. The people, although modest in dress and means, walked with a calm they had never encountered before. There were no locks on the doors. No fear in the glances. It was as though the village had nothing to protect, yet everything was protected.

‘They are fools’, Thalios declared as he lifted a carved wooden pendant from a windowsill. ‘Leaving their lives open like scrolls’.

Phaidros looked at the pendant, carved with a simple spiral symbol, like the swirl of a shell. He said nothing.

They slept in the dark shadows of the vineyard walls that night. In the morning, a child walked by and left bread between the stones without a word or a glance.

‘Did you see that?’ Phaidros asked.

Thalios chuckled. ‘Perhaps they think we are spirits in need of feeding’.

‘Or perhaps, they are not as blind as others', Phaidros said slowly.

That afternoon, they watched a small crowd gather at the edge of the cliffs. The villagers stood in silence as a man in plain linen robes spoke a few words, then stepped aside. No incense. No chorus. Just silence. They watched the sea for a time, then returned to their lives.

Phaidros turned to Thalios. ‘There’s something wrong with this place that I can't figure out'.

‘Wrong?’ Thalios frowned. ‘No. Just... unnerving. As though they carry something inside them we’ve long buried’.

That evening, Phaidros suggested they visit the hermit who lived near the cliffs. ‘I heard the potter speak of him. He teaches, but not from scrolls. They say he knows things not even the Oracle at Delphi could grasp.’

Thalios snorted. ‘Let him try to teach a man who has no intention of learning'.

He followed. The hermit’s dwelling was carved into the stone itself, its doorway shaded by a fig tree bent with age. They approached quietly, but the man within called out before they could knock.

‘Come in, Thalios. You too, Phaidros’.

They exchanged wary glances.

Inside, the air was cool. The walls were lined with clay tablets and fragments of sculpture. In the centre sat a man of indeterminate age, with a face as still as water and eyes like polished stone. His name was Kleisthenes.

He poured them water from a terracotta jug and gestured for them to sit.

‘So, what is it you seek to steal from me?’

Neither spoke. Kleisthenes smiled. ‘You take what you believe fills you. And yet, you grow emptier with each act’.

Thalios scowled. ‘You know nothing of what we are or about our lives’.

‘I know that you are not what you were meant to be’.

Phaidros swallowed. ‘What do you mean?’

The old man looked at them not with accusation, but instant sorrow.

‘You have stolen for so long you have forgotten the shape of your soul. You think your hunger is for bread or coins, but what you crave cannot be carried in your hands’.

Thalios stood. ‘Come, Phaidros. This one speaks like the wind—soft and useless in his words. I have heard enough'.

Phaidros lingered. ‘Have you always been here?’ He asked.

‘Not always. Long enough to watch men return to themselves, removing their disguises', Kleisthenes replied.

That night, Phaidros did not sleep. He dreamt of a child crying without voice, holding out an empty bowl that dripped blood instead of wine. In the morning, he found Thalios pale and sweating beside the olive press.

‘Did you dream too?’ Phaidros asked.

Thalios rubbed his brow. ‘A black sea. No stars. No bottom. Just... falling’.

Over the next days, the village revealed its rhythm to them. No one spoke of wealth, only of weather, crops and stories. Old stories, about To Ena, the One—the first and final presence, not a god but a harmony in all things. A few spoke of it as light, some as stillness. Others said it was the voice that remains when all others fade.

Children sat and listened. Elders nodded in silence, and still, no one ever asked the two strangers who they were. As if they already knew.

Phaidros began to carve again—something he had not done since boyhood. He found a piece of driftwood by the shore and shaped it into a dolphin leaping from the sea. It brought him no gain, only quiet.

Thalios watched him with a strange tension. ‘What are you doing?’ He demanded.

'Thinking'.

‘You forget yourself’.

‘Perhaps I am remembering’.

One evening, they returned to Kleisthenes. This time, Thalios did not stand. ‘What are we?’ He asked simply.

Kleistenes replied, ‘You are men who buried their essence beneath years of running. You have not lost your souls. You have hidden them without knowing it'.

‘Why?’ Thalios whispered.

‘Because pain made you believe it was safer to feel nothing than to risk feeling sorrow again’.

Phaidros looked at his own hands. ‘How do we unbury what we’ve forgotten?’

‘With virtue. With silence. With acts that serve not the self but the greater balance. With awareness of To Ena in all things—even your own breath', Kleisthenes answered.

The days turned into weeks. They helped the villagers rebuild a broken wall after a storm. They fetched water for the old and helped carry baskets. No one thanked them. No one needed to.

One morning, a child returned the pendant Thalios had stolen. He placed it in the thief’s hand and said simply:

‘It was never meant to be yours. But now, it can remind you of who you were’.

Thalios stared at the spiral. A tear touched the corner of his eye and vanished.

In the final chapter of their stay, Kleisthenes walked with them to the cliffs. The sea stretched far below, infinite and calm.

‘Shall we ever be whole again?’ Thalios asked.

‘Wholeness is not perfection. It is return. Even the most broken soul remembers the way', Kleisthenes said.

Phaidros nodded. ‘Then we shall walk. Not to steal, but to serve. Not to hide, but to live’.

Kleisthenes smiled. ‘Then you are no longer soulless. You are seekers, and that is enough’.

They remained in the village through the final harvest moon, working amongst those villagers they had once considered marks. No one asked them to stay, nor to leave. The villagers simply lived alongside them, as though they had always belonged.

Thalios, once brash and sceptical, grew quieter. He no longer scanned rooftops for points of entry, nor kept count of the coins in his head. He rose with the sun and helped the potter shape new vessels. At first his hands were unsteady, but each day they steadied. Each pot he helped fire, he carried to the well himself, feeling its warmth long after the clay had cooled.

Phaidros, meanwhile, returned to the sea. He fished not for trade, but for balance—wading into the tide each morning with a woven net, humming the chants of his youth. He began to speak again, not only with Thalios, but with himself, aloud, beneath the olive trees.

‘We forgot what it meant to hear silence and not be afraid of it', he once said, staring into the leaves.

Thalios, sitting nearby, nodded. ‘I used to think silence was failure, but now… it’s a voice I never knew was speaking’.

They spoke often of To Ena—not in worship, nor in structured prayer, but in the way farmers spoke of the seasons. It became a word to place between moments, like a breath. They would attempt to explain it, sensing its shape, presence, clarity and stillness. That which had always been.

One morning, whilst splitting reeds to repair a thatched roof, Thalios cut his hand. He curst, instinctively, but Phaidros only smiled.

‘That’s the first thing you’ve stolen in weeks which fortunately are only words at best’.

Thalios looked at the blood welling from his palm. He chuckled faintly. ‘Perhaps fate is being stubborn'.

‘Life my brother, reminds us of our fate daily', Phaidros replied.

Later that week, a travelling merchant passed through the village. His cart was heavy with bronze mirrors, salted fish and foreign spices. He watched the two men work in the sun and called to them.

‘You there! You look strong. Help me lift this jar, and I’ll pay you in olives or drachmae for your effort’.

Phaidros helped without a word. Thalios followed. As they hoisted the heavy amphora into the man’s cart, the merchant squinted.

‘Have we met? I swear I’ve seen you both before. In Thebes or was it Plataea?’

‘Possibly, but we are not those men now'. Thalios said without hesitation.

The merchant laughed. ‘A change of name or a change of soul?’

‘Both', said Phaidros.

The merchant shook his head and rode on, muttering to his mule.

That night, Kleisthenes invited them once more to sit by the cliffs. The sea whispered far below. The sky hung with stars, distant and eternal.

‘I have watched you, and you are no longer thieves in my eyes', the old man responded.

‘Then what are we?’ Thalios asked.

Kleisthenes turned his face towards the sea and said. ‘You are men in return, and return is the essence of the soul—it does not depart forever. It waits. It longs for you. You are finding your way back to what was always within you. You are no longer soulless thieves'.

‘How do we know if we’ve returned far enough?’ Asked Phaidros.

‘You will never arrive,’ Kleisthenes replied gently. ‘That is not the point. The soul is not a destination. It is a movement towards being. As long as you walk with awareness and virtue, and a quiet listening—you are on the Meletic path’.

Thalios sat in thought for a long while. Then he asked, in a voice almost lost to the wind, ‘Was it always this simple?’

‘No, but it was always this honest', said Kleisthenes.

In time, they left the village. Not in haste or shame, but as men who understood that their story was still unfolding elsewhere. The villagers gathered at the edge of the olive grove, offering them figs, wine and a woven cloth dyed deep blue—the colour of peace.

The child who once left bread by the wall came forth and placed a single olive pit in Thalios’s hand.

‘You have something now. So plant it’, he told Thalios.

Phaidros knelt and met the boy’s eyes. ‘Where do we plant it, little one?’

The boy shrugged. ‘Where the wind can find it. Where silence listens’.

They walked for many days. No longer did they move like shadows. They left footprints. They spoke. They laughed. They fell quiet.

In a nearby city, they offered to help mend a temple roof. In another, they gave shelter to a grieving widow. Word of them travelled, but not as before. They were not feared. They were remembered.

In every town they passed, they left behind no stolen thing, but something else entirely—the stillness of men who had once been hollow, now carrying within them the gentle weight of becoming whole, within the message of Meleticism.

Years later, a new traveller came to the village by the coast. He had heard stories of a place where peace lived between the olive trees. There, he met a potter, old and bent, who smiled as he worked.

‘Did you ever know men called Thalios and Phaidros?’ The traveller asked.

The potter nodded. ‘They passed through. Like rain, but they left something behind to be remembered’.

‘What did they leave?’

The potter gestured towards a carved tablet hanging on the wall. It bore only a spiral—like the swirl of a shell—and beneath it, three words in careful script: ‘Return to being, and you shall return to the soul'.

The road ahead was through cypress groves and broken stone paths, whispering of old ruins and forgotten places. The days were warm, and the evenings were softened by dusk birdsong and the rustling of leaves. Although they carried no coins, no scrolls and no visible purpose, Thalios and Phaidros felt no lack.

One morning, as they neared a crumbled outpost overgrown with ivy and moss, they came across a youth weeping beside the remains of a well. His sandals were torn, his face smudged with dirt, and a small bundle lay beside him.

‘Are you hurt?’ Phaidros asked, kneeling gently.

The boy shook his head. ‘They laughed. Said I was curst. That my dreams made no sense. So I left the village’.

Thalios sat beside him and asked, ‘What do you dream of?’

The boy hesitated, as though expecting scorn. ‘That I float above the world, and all the people are asleep with stones in their mouths. I try to speak to them, but they cannot hear. Only when I stop shouting do they begin to stir’.

Phaidros looked to Thalios. The two exchanged a glance that spoke of something deeply understood. ‘You dream like a soul that listens then', said Thalios.

‘Is that a curse?’ The boy asked.

‘No, but it will feel like one, if the world teaches you to stop listening', acknowledged Phaidros.

They invited the boy to walk with them, not as protectors, but as companions. He spoke little, but observed much. He asked no questions of their past, nor tried to name the silence that sometimes fell between them.

In a market town nestled between two low hills, they stayed a few days, helping a bookseller restore damaged scrolls after a fire. The boy, who gave his name as Linos, sat amongst the ruins of parchment and listened to the stories they repaired.

‘Every scroll is a voice. Only some people still know how to sing', the bookseller told him.

On the third day, a dispute broke out in the square. Two brothers argued loudly over inheritance—one clutched a ring, the other a deed. Their shouting disturbed the peace, drawing a crowd. Neither yielded, both burned with pride.

Thalios stepped forth and asked to speak. The brothers scoffed.

‘What do you know of our family?’

‘Nothing. I know the weight of what cannot be returned once taken', said Thalios.

‘What weight is that?’

‘The weight of your brother’s voice falling silent to your own’.

The crowd quieted. The younger brother looked down at the deed, then at the older.

‘What use is land, if we are no longer brothers?’

With that the ring passed back, and the quarrel ended without a victor, only understanding.

Later that evening, as the stars emerged one by one, Linos asked them, ‘How did you become the way you are?’

Phaidros looked at the night sky and answered softly, ‘By being what we were not meant to be, until we no longer knew ourselves, and then choosing to remember that we are truly soulless'.

‘To Ena?’ The boy asked.

‘Yes’, said Thalios, with a gentile smile. ‘To Ena is not something you find. It is something you uncover, piece by piece, in the stillness of who you already are'.

With that, they walked on together—the thieves, no longer thieves and the boy who dreamt of waking the sleeping world. Somewhere behind them, a spiral of olive wood swayed gently from a doorway, catching the wind. It was the presence of To Ena.

They travelled until the land changed again—rock giving way to wild meadows, where lavender and thyme scented the wind. One evening, they came upon a solitary fig tree near the ruins of an old boundary stone. They sat beneath it without speaking, and Linos, now more calm than boyish, took out a small tablet he had carved. Upon it, a spiral wound inwards, and beside it he had written:

‘The further within, the closer to To Ena.’

Thalios looked at the carving and smiled. ‘You’ve become a scribe of silence.’

Linos nodded. ‘You showed me that it speaks.’

As dusk came, and the stars began their ascent, the three of them sat together—no longer fugitives, no longer lost, no longer hungry in will. Their lives had not become grand, but they had become awakened.

Somewhere, in the silence between the breath and word, To Ena stirred, not as an answer, but as a presence—quiet, ungrasped and complete.

They did not rise for some time. When they finally did, they left the spiral tablet by the fig tree—for another traveller, another seeker, another soul returning home.

The road beyond the fig tree was narrow, winding gently towards the edge of a forgotten ridge. There, the land looked down upon a wide plain where small fires flickered in distant settlements. The three travellers watched them like stars fallen to earth.

Linos, his voice barely above a breath, asked, ‘Do you think anyone ever truly finds the end of the path?’

Phaidros smiled faintly. ‘There is no end. Only clearer steps.’

Thalios nodded. ‘And in time, you find yourself not walking away from something—but walking with it.’

The silence between them no longer weighed like guilt, but rested like calm water. Each man, although shaped by his own burden, now bore it not as punishment, but as a reminder of what must never again be forgotten.

When they came upon a fork in the path, they stood for a moment without moving. Then Phaidros turned to Linos and placed his hand gently on his shoulder.

‘Your path may begin here. Ours now bends elsewhere’.

There were no goodbyes. Only a parting of steps.

As the two older men walked on, the boy remained behind, beneath a sky silvered by dusk, with a spiral tablet and the first stirrings of a soul remembering itself.

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