The Reverse Centaur Comments

There used to be a great tower alone on the sea, although this tower was originally the prison of Daedalus and Icarus. After their escape and Icarus’ fall, it became the cell of a centaur named Cheiron. It is from this tower that this myth bursts forth. How Cheiron, the centaur, became imprisoned there, well, I’ll explain as the story unfurls. In all the Greek Isles, there was perhaps no more singularly pitiful creature than Delphi Papadakis. Delphi should have been extremely unique, in that he was a species many thought to be fictional and mythological, and although he was in truth proud of being a species that was so rare on God’s green Earth that people were astonished at its sight, Delphi had a couple of severe problems.1) He was an orphan, which puts one at a disadvantage to begin with, but when you factor in 2) that he had been born with a slight disfigurement, well, things look even more abysmal. Delphi was a centaur, but he was not your typical centaur. Instead of having a head, arms and chest of a man but the legs and lower half of a horse, he was born the opposite. He had a horse’s head, arms and chest but a man’s lower half and legs. It was not a pretty sight; he could barely stand up, and when he walked he had to hobble. When Delphi went for a hobble, other centaurs would turn away and avert their eyes. A mother centaur would often cover the eyes of her child centaur so that he or she would not stare at Delphi’s disfigurement. Delphi felt a freak of nature, and what was worse, none of the female centaurs would date him or mate with him due to his disfigurement.

It seemed Delphi was destined to live a life of solitude and loneliness, for no female centaur would speak with him, let alone want to procreate. When he went out for hobbles, he was ridiculed and picked on. He got called chicken legs and ladies thighs as insults. Pholus, a giant centaur who was built like a Clydesdale, was the worst of his antagonists, for sometimes he even got physical. So Delphi, for the most part, kept to himself. I might as well be one of those lowly dog-centaurs, he thought.
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