Odysseus was in a terrible mood.
Because of what happened yesterday, his herald got executed by Agamemnon, and on top of that, Agamemnon privately called him in and punished him.
For failing to report the situation clearly and not mentioning the divine deer, Agamemnon decided to make Odysseus personally cover half the compensation given to Night in gold and soldiers.
Odysseus naturally refused and argued his case with every bit of eloquence he had, but Agamemnon ordered him to pay half anyway.
He tried to set a trap for Agamemnon and ended up falling into one himself.
And whenever the image of Night riding the divine deer crossed his mind, thinking about Night's unclear relationship with that goddess, Odysseus's face went green.
Pure jealousy.
Among all the heroes, he might not have been the most handsome one (the myths described his appearance as quite ordinary), but he was certainly among the most favored by the gods.
Odysseus, who had always been a darling of the gods, discovered that the goddess he admired most wasn't looking at him.
Now he finally understood what it felt like to be on the other side of that.
And in the middle of this foul mood, with piles of administrative work still to sort through, just when his head was pounding, a flowing melody came in from outside and smoothed over everything.
Under its influence, all the negative emotions inside him quietly disappeared without him noticing, and a calm, clear-headed Odysseus settled back into himself.
He looked up in surprise. "That sound, what is it?"
The entire Greek alliance was made up of roughnecks. Barely anyone played music.
He already had a guess who was playing.
Even at the outermost edges of the camp, the music reached.
Achilles, waking from his grief, heard it, and the cloud that had sat over him for days lifted without warning, his mood improving considerably.
He closed his eyes slightly and listened carefully, letting himself sink into the melody.
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At the same time,
In a dark room with no natural light, locked and bolted, a girl who looked remarkably like Chryseis gazed up at a small skylight with sorrow in her eyes.
Just then the flowing melody came drifting in, a bright, lilting tune, like a cool wind cutting through the despair sitting in her chest.
That free-spirited song made longing and yearning flicker to life in her eyes.
'If only I could be like that music. Turn into a breeze, turn into a bird, and fly free across the sky.'
She wanted to become a bird and escape this cage.
She wanted to breathe clean air freely and stop being a plaything for any hero who wanted her.
She wanted to grow wings strong enough to carry her back to her sister and her parents.
And then the thought of her actual situation came back, and the girl who had just started to feel a little better from the music began to cry again.
She was Briseis.
And she was Night's target for this rescue.
Then, just as Briseis grieved over her own fate, the music shifted again, becoming more ethereal and expansive.
As though she had actually grown a pair of wings, and their name was "hope."
At this time, she suddenly calmed down emotionally, looked out the window sadly, and then couldn't help but stretch out her delicate jade hands like pink lotus roots.
She stayed like that, quietly listening, until the music ended completely.
Then,
Something in that melody seemed to speak to her.
She stopped feeling quite so lost, and determination came back into her eyes.
The will to survive returned.
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And on the other side,
Many heroes heard the music as well.
For most ordinary people, the melody simply motivated them and sent them into the new day with more energy and a more positive spirit.
For many heroes, it was pleasant and uplifting, nothing more.
But for those who had fallen into despair, the real effect of the music became something else entirely.
That magical power that seemed to heal people's hearts.
The deeper someone had fallen into hopelessness, the more completely they felt its pull, and the more clearly they could sense the emotion and message behind it.
The two who felt it most deeply were Achilles and Briseis.
When the piece ended, Night put down the lyre.
"I hope it got through," he murmured.
The music he had just played now wasn't only because of the good mood of the morning, but also because he wanted to reach Briseis through it, wherever she was being held.
To achieve this, Night even pushed the power inside him to its maximum, enough that even far-off Troy could faintly hear the echoes of his song.
The powerful musical blessing let him carry hope across that distance.
Through music, he could draw out the positive emotions in someone's heart and keep them from abandoning the will to survive.
For someone locked in a cage, the most terrifying thing wasn't the process of pain or abuse.
It was the slow process of growing numb, of becoming institutionalized, of losing even the desire to escape.
Like the line from The Shawshank Redemption.
These walls are funny. First you hate them, then you get used to them. Enough time passes, and you get so you depend on them.
That's institutionalized.
When you get used to despair and start developing an adaptive dependence on your current life,
The sudden return of freedom could be just as devastating.
That sense of being lost, of not knowing where to go or where to live in a world that felt too big, could easily collapse someone's inner defenses.
PTSD worked the same way.
In the end it could even make victims develop feelings of sympathy and protectiveness toward the person who hurt them most and turn them into defenders of the very ones who had caused their suffering.
Night hadn't found Briseis yet, but he already began trying to help that girl in his own way.
Keeping a positive and hopeful state of mind until rescue came was enormously important.
If he waited until the moment of rescue only to find she had already broken down inside, or worse, that she had given up on wanting to live, it would be far too late.
He made a promise to Hector and Chryseis that he would bring her back home, alive and well.
He didn't want to bring back an empty shell.
And as it turned out, the music worked even better than he expected.
Without intending it, he not only reached Briseis but also stirred something in Achilles, who had been sinking deeper and deeper into a place he could not pull himself out of.
It was just one piece. A simple melody on a lyre.
But for two people trapped inside their own despair, if forced to put a name to what it felt like,
It was something specific, something important, exactly the right medicine for where both of them stood right now.
If it had to be put into a few lines:
"There are things in this world that stones cannot carve, and there is a place inside us that cannot be locked away. That place is called hope."
"Some birds were never meant to be kept in cages. Because their feathers are too bright. And when they fly away, you find yourself truly glad for them."
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(End of the Chapter)