“Why do you keep your real nature secret in the City?” I asked.

He kept on gazing out over the island as he answered. “Because I want to live an incarnate life that’s as normal as possible. It makes people uncomfortable if they know who I am, normal people. Your mother—Simmea was different. And I didn’t tell her. She worked it out for herself.” He wiped away tears, unselfconsciously as ever. “If I tell people, they’ll treat me differently. As it is, they think I’m a credit to Plato, and to them. They treat me as one of them. If they knew, they would expect me to be able to do things, and to know things. I don’t have my powers, so there’s not much I can do. And I do know some things, but I’m here hoping to learn, not to teach. And there are a lot of things I don’t know, and they’d find it hard to believe that I don’t. Some of the things I do know it’s better for people not to know, to guess and work out for themselves.”

“But you tell me?”

“That’s different. I couldn’t have kept it from you Young Ones. You have a right to know. I’m your father. And being a parent, up close and every day, is one of the things that has taught me the most.”

“But you’re also a god.”

“You were asking about becoming a god.” The sun was up now, blazing a gold path on the azure sea. He gestured to it. “That’s mine. And Delos is mine. And inspiration and healing and poetry and all those things. Those are responsibilities. But they’re not what’s important. Being a god means being myself forever, and that means knowing myself as well as I can. Seeing the sun rise over Delos makes me feel all kinds of things, and they are different now because of what I have experienced since the last time I saw it. So I feel at home, and yet not at home, and the contradiction there is fascinating, and I can explore that feeling and make it into something.”

“But not all the gods do that. And humans can,” I said. “Humans can make art.”