Week 4 Story: The Great Flood

The Great Flood by Bonaventura Peeters (Wikimedia)

The Great Flood

Jupiter’s lashed out, unsatisfied. He had drawn the winds and aerial waters to his side. Storms encompassing nations spread across the sky, a never ending sea of tumultuous darkness, split only by the bright flashes of Jupiter’s strikes. Water came torrentially, but not even this satisfied his anger. He called out to Neptune who joined in his cause. Neptune struck his great trident into the sands of the beach and at once the oceans came to life consuming all before them. The rivers rushed unrelenting, overflowing, and grabbing anything they could grasp as they raced to the oceans. Buildings, orchards, flocks, people, and temples, no one was spared as every body of water became one.

The world is drowned

None escaped save for Deucalion and Pyrrah. Able to salvage themselves on a small skiff, they moored near the top of Mount Parnassus, whose peaks rest among the stars. Here in this strange limbo, with the monstrous ocean raging below them and the sky boiling above them, they clung to each other in fear and prayed to any God that would hear them. Jupiter saw that all land had been covered and all beings had been eliminated and his anger subsided. He cleared the skies and Neptune returned the waters to their home. The water and skies were so clear and calm that as Deucalion looked out from his mountain perch he saw two night skies filled with stars above him and below him. Deucalion and Pyrrha came down from the mountain and were overwhelmed by their solitude. Without another soul to walk the lands the silence was intense, encompassing, and suffocating. Pyrrha cried out to Deucalion and they decided to do something.

They ask Themis for help

They went to the temple of Themis, still wet, statues covered with moss. They prayed to Themis and she listened. She instructed them to leave the temple and throw the bones of their great mother behind them. They were distraught, unsure why Themis would ask for such desecration. But as if by divine intervention, Deucalion realized that the great mother was the earth, her bones the stones. They gathered what stones they could find from the fields and began to throw them over their backs. Hard, smooth, stone surfaces began to move and expand. Of the many stones surrounding them came an equal number of statues until they were surrounded in a field of granite bodies. Then at once marble became flesh, muscle, bone. The human race had returned, reborn of stone from which the toughness and endurance of humanity comes from.

Author’s note

This week I read the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha. I kept the plot nearly identical save for a few omissions. I liked this story because the events were awe inspiring concepts, however, the plot was delivered primarily through action verbs and dialogue. I wanted to try and re-tell the story through descriptive imagery, without dialogue and this above is the result. This challenge was more difficult than I expected, and I think some dialogue would have been helpful to create a smoother read.

Bibliography

"Deucalion and Pyrrha" from Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (Story Link) (Book Link)