Holding Out For A Hero

### Copyright © 2023. This is a copyrighted work. Unauthorized use is prohibited. All rights reserved by the author.

My contribution to Literotica "Karaoke 2023" Author Challenge.

No knowledge of the Ancient World is needed to read this short narrative. Professional historians might find some tiny anachronisms, or misalignments in chronology, but it is nothing serious: even talking about Ancient Greece using the English language is an anachronism in itself (and even the word 'anachronism' is incomprehensible: it sounds Greek to me).

As you can see from the very first lines, neither Ancient Greek nor Modern English is my mother tongue, focus on ideas and forgive my mistakes. ###

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Chapter 1: "Where Have All The Good Men Gone?" signed, Penny.

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"Where have all the good men gone?" signed, Penny.

Written like that, it might sound like a tattoo on an ankle, a graffito on a building wall, or the lament of some single feminist (in perfect 80s style) who still hasn't found a husband by the time she's 30, when the ticking biological clock triggers doubt on all the certainties triumphally trumpeted about noncommittal sexual adventures and dozen of gentle men mercilessly friend zoned in "half a score, and seven years ago", to use the eloquent words of the Gettysburg Adress.

But the lament was much broader, and further afield in centuries, dear reader.

"Where have all the good men gone, and where are all the gods? Where's the streetwise Hercules, to fight the rising odds?"

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In Greece almost three thousand years ago, gods, demigods, and men might not have been enough to satisfy the desires of a young princess.

Penelope was the daughter of the king of Sparta, Icarius, and cousin of the beautiful Helena, daughter of the other king of Sparta, Tyndaros (yes, dear reader: in Sparta, two kings reigned at the same time, and law dictated that they never traveled on a single plane). Helena had a sister, Clytemnestra, but no one paid attention.

All her life, Penelope had been compared to Helena, always coming out the loser: she was the eternal second: "the clever one". Penny was also beautiful, but they all disappeared in front of Helena, who was truly a gift from the gods (a dangerous gift, that cost both Asians and Westerners many griefs, but that night nobody knew it yet).

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Penelope dreamed of a strong and vigorous man like Hercules - although she knew that he had been transformed into a constellation of stars together with Meg, many centuries before, but that is another story.

Her father, Icarius, ruled over the great and powerful city of Sparta, at least according to mythology (archaeologists have found no historical evidence of this).

Sparta had an exotic way of appointing kings: instead of a single monarch, the Spartans preferred to entrust power to two kings who ruled together. At that time, both Icarius (bespectacled and wise, but thin and ugly) and his brother, a tall, muscular Chad with a square jaw, broad shoulders, and classic "300" movie style, were kings.

The father had told Penelope that his wish, as a loving and concerned father, was to find the classic Nerd for her: a smarty-pants, smarty-pants, you know the ones with glasses and pimples? The father said "But why don't we look in the Academies, and in the Beacons of Knowledge, like the one in Alexandria? Philosophers and Politologists, Pornographers and Erotomaniacs, Critics and Hermeneuts... a lot of very Greek stuff!

In short, one man with a big brain, sweetheart! We are the smart branch of the family, dear, it is our duty to produce even smarter grandchildren.

Think about the headline on the banner for the Circus Amphitheatre!

With my tired old reader's eyes, I just can see it with my fabulist imagination: Spartans, today you are in the presence of the famous princess cousins!

Meet Helena and Penny, the Beauty and the Brain!"

"You forget her twin Clytemnestra: please, add Clyt the Brawn". Everybody in Sparta knew what meant heterozygous twins: the two daughters were born at the same time, but Clit was taller than Helena, and now she was more muscular than a boy.

The king mumbled: "Exactly: the Beauty, the Brawn, and the Brain. What a banner! Perfection. Not too fat, not too tight, juuust perfect."

"Amid all the parchment scrolls you read like a bookworm in libraries, you find nothing better than quoting... Goldilocks? Really? And you call yourself an intelligent wise man?"

"Well, my child, I may not be as smart as the famous Mighty Mind, Alcinous King of the Phaeacians, however, in my small way... I have read many storybooks!"

"Forget it, Dad... your fairy tales... in your words, you make it sound like a Greek Tragedy... by now I am 21 years old already... I retire to my room."

That was the only plan Penelope could imagine, overwhelmed by anger and frustration at her father's words. But the twins, Clytemnestra and Helena, arrived and persuaded her to go out for a walk: to get some air, and buy something in the market, when the sun is low close to setting.

As usual, the bossy Clyt had been very convincing: 'The faint light does not scorch the skin of aristocratic girls, the lesser heat does not fill the armpits with sweat, but the sight of all those sweaty males unloading goods from ships fills my pussy with steaming juices, dear girls! Follow me, both of you shy princesses! Maybe I'll find you a boyfriend, who knows! Follow me and keep up!" Clyt was taller and stronger and was used to wooden high heels, while Helena wobbled and was in danger of breaking a thin ankle. "Shut up and follow me!"

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Chapter 2: three cousins with bare tits, and the men on the merchant dock.

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No one understood Penelope. Or even worse: no one SAW Penelope.

After an argument with her father, she had agreed to take a walk that afternoon on the docks of Sparta's river port. Being the wisest of the cousins, she wanted to check what the twins, Clytemnestra and Helena, were doing and, above all, make sure they were not getting into trouble.

In ancient Sparta, women have always enjoyed the same freedom as men: such as Queen Gorgo, whom some readers will remember beautifully played by the talented Lena Headey (This is Sparta). For this reason, the three princesses could walk alone, almost naked, their wooden heels clicking on the rough marble slabs of the harbor quays, and no one would dare comment on their dresses or scold them for their indecent exposure.

Princess Clytemnestra was the tallest and walked in front, hurrying her pace. She was more accustomed than the other two to walking on leather sandals with high wooden heels and was used to the eager but respectful stares of the Spartan boatmen.

Every time the girls went for walks together, she always wanted to be in front: "Clyt protruded forward, as always", was her motto. Her proud nipples also pointed forward: the people of Sparta had forged a proverb, "First come the nipples, then comes Clyt, then come the others" (in the dialect of Laconia, it rhymes).

That afternoon Clyt wore a tunic that was sincerely too short, barely covering the stretch between her navel and clitoris; and on her feet, two golden leather sandals with high wooden heels. The thin straps of the sandals exposed the naked toes to the sight of all men who tried to avert their eyes from the proud nipples of the tall princess.

No one had ever seen such high heels: Clyt had a very long foot and took advantage of this to soar higher than the other girls. Helena had perfect but very short feet, which prevented her from wearing Clyt's very high shoes.

Penelope's heels were a half size: or, as they said back then, "MEDIOCRE" (Latin, but loved by Aristotle: the golden middle, avoiding any excess).

Perfect for being neither noticed nor seen, behind a tall cousin and another perfect cousin. "No too Tall, no too Perfect: just... Invisible", murmured Penny.

Penelope also walked down the street with bare breasts, as was the fashion in the Paris of the time, Mycenae capital of the Cretans: the slogan of the time was a revolutionary "Free the Nipples", unlikely to be used in other centuries. But differently from the aggressive Clyt, the wise Penny wore a slightly more decent tunic, covering her tummy from above the navel to mid-thigh: like an honest female soccer player, so to speak.

Clyt's sister Helena staggered behind, swaying hesitantly. Cousin Penelope followed the twins from behind: not because she wasn't used to heels, but to check that no one was making comments or extending their hands to Helena.

Penny's cousins were twins, but they looked nothing alike. Clyt was identical to her father: broad shoulders, square chin, strong eyes, tanned skin, big tits, raven-black hair. Helena was the opposite: skin always too pale, hair strawberry blonde (the poetess Sappho would have called her «xanthé»: reddish more than blonde tame. Moreover, Helena was the only girl in the whole of Sparta with eyes as blue as two turquoise stones: hence the nickname «kyanòopis» (the cyan of the CMYK color system acronym, or, the cyan you found among the eight colors of old personal computers like the ZX Spectrum by Sinclair, dear reader: it sounds greek? Derived from Helena's eyes).

The Helena's perky boobs were small, but... how should I write it? Perfect. Everything was perfect, in Helena's body, from the tallest curl to the last nail of pink toe: as if she had been born of a goddess devoid of imperfections. She didn't have a pimple or a crooked nail. And to the girls around, all that perfection annoyed everyone.

And for the males (whether aristocrats in fancy dresses, or poor, sweaty, naked dockworkers), Helena looked too beautiful, and was a huge temptation, difficult to resist: Penelope was perfectly aware of this and wanted to protect her, so she made her wear a silk scarf that covered her hair and eyes, on the pretext that her pale skin risked sunburn even at sunset. Instead, Penelope and Clytemnestra wore a straw hat with wide brims in front of the forehead. Clytemnestra looked even taller in that traveler's hat.

Little did the girls know that their mother, Queen Leda, had a secret. King Tyndoros' royal sperm had already made his wife Leda pregnant eight months ago when Zeus fell in love with her (many males like to fuck pregnant women, especially when their bellies and labia are well swollen and cozy and welcoming).

So as not to arouse suspicion, Zeus transformed himself into a beautiful swan and, flapping his wings, glided over the water of the pool in which Leda was bathing, naked.

Hypnotized by the swan's movements, Leda approached, helped by the water supporting her belly as she walked near.

In her hallucination, she seemed to be stroking the long neck of a swan... instead, she was stroking Zeus' mighty cock. Selfish as ever, he waited until the cock was tough, then penetrated her repeatedly while she was mesmerized. Ropes and ropes of Olympian sperm filled Leda's womb, fertilizing an ovum magically extracted from the ovarian tubes (Zeus is a deity with very effective powers; when he says, in Greek: "spermatozoon, to conquer her uterus, I elect you!", it becomes super effective!).

The gestation, magically, lasted a few weeks: a month later two newborn girls were born, and everyone thought they were both daughters of the king. Instead, only Clyt was the true daughter of the king, while Helena was the daughter of Zeus, and because of this, she had an almost divine beauty, incomparable to that of other women.

Just that morning, an incognito traveler, who had declared his name to be Sean Beaneater ("Kikusfagos"), had brought gifts to the Court. He looked at the hair of the twins' parents and immediately deduced in his mind "The Seed Is Strong", but then decided to keep the secret in silence. At least in this tale, Sean Beaneater did not want to die immediately. This shows that he was a very clever man.

Rumors claimed that Clyt was also a cunning plotter, but she never managed to fool her cousin Penelope: their challenges were challenging and entertaining but never deadly. Penelope was the only one who could stand up to her... sometimes.

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When they were still children, Clytemnestra had composed a lullaby. Perhaps she had done so to exclude the third, her cousin: for the first notes of the lullaby contained only the syllables of the two sisters' names.

Each time Penelope had to struggle to claim her place with them.

Clytemnestra was not a mean girl or a bully: she simply suffered from the perpetual comparison with her twin sister's unsurpassed beauty and tried to compensate with behavior that might have seemed... a little aggressive, just a little tad. On the other hand, it is an understandable trauma in psychology (greek) when, having two heterozygous twins (greek), one of them has an unsurpassed beauty, and the other is simply very beautiful, but everyone, always, compares her to her twin.

"Clytemnestra... Helaini..." The sisters sing the lullaby together. In the Spartan pronunciation, Helena is read as "Helaini" and rhymes with "he finds me" (unlike the French Hélène, which rhymes with "le pain").

"And Penny!" added Penelope, as if to reiterate "I'm there too, even if you don't notice me!"

One of the Naiads, the nymphs of the river Evrootas, listened attentively to the melody. She said to one of her sister nymphs: "Listen to this lullaby, it is very catchy: what does it remind you of?" "To me, it sounds like «Anjelica, Eliza, and Penny: the Spartan Sisters»... it is a lullaby sung to me by a Driad nymph of the forest, who heard it from a Nereid from the Ocean Sea..." "Uh! It must be catchy if it went through this long fourth-level word of mouth" "Yes, the composer is a genius." "Or maybe all the girls sing similar songs, but then they are harassed by stalkers of the same kind: in every century, at every hour, and in every harbor."

Clytemnestra, proudly displaying her high, firm tits, challenged Helena to say aloud why they had come to the harbor: the three cousins were like three perfumed jewels amidst the smelly goods and sweaty porters.

"Hey, Helena, remind me what we're looking for!"

Without any shyness, Miss Perfect One exclaimed joyfully "We are looking for a Huge Cock!"

Penny was scandalized, "WHAT?!"

"Yes, Penny dear, the priestess of the Temple needs a long feather from the tail of a fat cock, for a complicated ritual... we suggested using a hen's feather but she says it doesn't work the same way..."

Very uncomfortable, Penny was trying to get the twin cousins back to the palace. "Clyt, your daddy said to be home by sundown..."

"Daddy doesn't need to know..."

"Daddy said not to go downtown!"

"Like I said, you're free to go home, you shy cousin Penny! But... But look around, look around! The re-vo-lu-tion is happening in this harbor!"

"What? A revolution? What are you rambling about? The only revolution I know of is the one that the Chariot of the Sun makes around the Earth every day because the god Apollo leads the Titan Helios across the Great Ocean Sea. Then comes to us Nyx, the goddess of Night, and covers the whole sky with her black cloak, until Artemis shows her thin silver bow in the sky to illuminate us, and we call her Selene, that is, Moon."

Clyt flipped the cards, lying: "I said Evolution: look how Mycenaean fashion is evolving this year! This must be the End of the World, there will never be a more elegant fashion than this! I've already adopted the bare chest and the locks on the sides of the forehead, but these sparkling bracelets covering the whole forearm are super trendy too! Look around, and understand, how lucky we are to be alive right now! History is happening in Sparta, and we just happen to be three princesses in the greatest city in the World!"

Clyt and Penny argued loudly as they walked one behind the other on the marble pavement next to a large tent, a warehouse of goods unloaded from a ship.

The men heard women's voices and the loud clicking of wooden heels, and some could even smell the scent: but they had not seen them yet.

On the wooden floor of the warehouse, amidst the Cretan wares, was a young nobleman wearing a very elegant toga with costly decorations colored in genuine Phoenician Murice shell dye: he must be rich. He had a full beard and black eyes. He looked very determined. At his side was another young man, in his early twenties, dressed equally smart, lazy, and inert with his arms crossed. Motionless, this younger brother continuously shouted orders loudly to the porters of the barge containing their goods.

The elder one, very determined, heard the three Spartan girls shouting and stomping on the pavement in their heavy wooden heels and muttered under his breath to his brother (who wasn't listening): "Yeah, sure, Sparta may seem the greatest city in the world to some babies or snowflakes, if the speaker forgets our Mycenae in Crete, and the port cities of the Phoenicians and Egyptians, and that damned Troy in Asian Anatolia that steals all our trade (why do Asians always steal all our trade? I don't get it). Ah! Women rambling aloud about geopolitics, instead of being in the kitchen cooking and embroidering.... we are in the last twilight of all civilization!

You see, bro (Are you listening to me, Menelaus?)...

There's nothing rich girls love more than going downtown and slummin' it with the poor. They pull up in their carriages and gawk at the students in the commons just to watch them talk! Take one of the two actual Spartan Kings: the powerful Tyndaros. The man is loaded, uh-oh! But little does he know that his daughters, Clytemnestra and Helena, may sneak into the city just to watch all the guys at work."

He heard their voices and smelled their perfume, but he had not yet seen them, for they were hidden by a cloth that overshadowed the Cretan wares.

Clyt, as ever, was in front of the others and appeared first to Agamemnon.

Eros shot an arrow. In an instant, Agamemnon was already madly in love with her, mad and blind.

Agamemnon had seen hundreds of bare-breasted women in the cobbled streets of Mycenae, or the rural markets of Crete, but none with tits as proud and firm as Clyt.

Clyt had seen thousands of merchants who would sell their right arm to marry the ugliest daughter of King Tindareus. And even though she was in love, she knew how to respond badly to suitors, how to reject advances, and how to make herself desired.

Agamemnon had not yet seen Helena. That is why he fell in love with Clyt. By then, the magic of Eros was already accomplished. Agamemnon would have been able to admit that his future sister-in-law was also "pretty" but he would never have fallen in love with her, because his heart was already completely captured by Clyt.

The Cretan prince tried the wealth card to seduce the tall princess with whom he was sincerely in love 'Whoo! There's nothin' like summer in the city, someone in a rush next to someone lookin' pretty! Excuse me, miss... I know it's not funny (it's a joke older than Hercules' Hydra heads) but... your perfume smells like your daddy's got money: why are you slummin' in the city in your fancy heels? You searchin' for an urchin who can give you his huge... ideals?" And he smiled mockingly as if to imply that if they were looking for a "cock", as he had heard with his ears, he could help them find a suitable cock.

Clyt had already rejected several suitors. Streetwise, she had been convinced ever since childhood that the entire city belonged to her: and legally it was almost true. She bent her generous lips into a grimace of contempt that she usually used with beggars and harassers, and hissed: "Mariner, you disgust me".

But the Mycenaean was very determined: and he knew well that a sharp and mordacious reply was better than a silent indifference. "Ah, so you've discussed me! I'm a Trust Fund, baby, you can trust me!"