The brutal heat of high summer had already struck the city of Athens in the earliest hours of the morning. The sun hadn't been up more than two hours and the Athens North train station was a hot lick of burning concrete, heat waves curling skyward from the steel lines stretched through its heart.

A lone man meandered along the empty train platform searching for cigarette butts. Bleary bloodshot eyes roved listlessly from ashtray to ashtray as he shuffled by, taking no note of my existence. His blue polyester track suit bore the grunge of a hard life on the streets and the jacket gaped open to reveal a shirtless chest covered with graying curls. His hair was a tangled briar of dark and unkempt thorns shot with silver while his bare feet were blistered from the hot concrete and dried blood caked his left foot.

I looked away as he limped past, discomforted by the sight. I too was dirty, filthy by my standards really, but our states couldn't be compared. I had slept on the beach two nights before, crooning my goodbyes to the waves that lapped the shores of Naxos and imagining I was the spirit of Bacchus seeking Ariadne. The next night had been spent on the listing deck of a ferry, drinking and smoking with an old hippy strumming his tired guitar. We had sung and laughed until he dozed off and then I, unable to sleep, had stood on the uppermost deck and watched the dark rolling of the sea until the sun began to creep over the horizon.

From the harbor I had come straight to the station for the next leg of my journey that would lead me onwards. Clean clothes had run out days ago and I sat, still dusted with sand around my ankles, waiting for passage to yet another distant land. Despite the heat and my discomfort, the moment was almost serene. The faint sound of distant traffic provided an intermittent rhythm to the blue track suit's bare-footed shuffle and I could still smell the salt of the sea and the sun of the islands on my skin.

The scavenger caught my eye again. He had salvaged a cigarette butt and his ash-covered fingers were trying to light it with... nothing. I blinked. His eyes swept over me as I watched him, but there was no recognition of being observed, or of anything else. The unlit butt tumbled from his fingers and his eyes slowly crept towards the next ash tray. His shuffling limp resumed.

It was then that I realized he was truly one of the lost, fallen to a twilight world where hope had become a dream that could never be fulfilled. Something terrible, I had the feeling, had reached inside him, hollowed out his heart and broken his mind. And the imaginary lighter was just another muscle memory of something lost to time.

He and I were the only souls on the platform. A madman and a stranger in a strange land. I felt a swell of sympathy, what was it that had pushed him over the edge? With no reason whatsoever, I settled on love lost, I don't know why. But his numb eyes spoke of a heart broken more times than a man can bear. And I knew that stare, from another story, for another time.

He reversed direction and began investigating the ashtrays he had just checked, sifting his fingers through the ashes, searching for something he wouldn't find. The shuffle-scrape of his limping gait drew my eyes back to his feet, battered and baking on the hot concrete. It must have been excruciating, but he paid it no mind. But even if he could, I couldn't.

I pulled the zip cord on my bag and scrounged out my sandals for the beach. I held them up mutely, offering them to him as he passed back by. He didn't react, or even notice from what I could tell. The offer turned out to be an awkward thing. I made a noise in my throat, a questioning sound. He stopped his forward shuffle and slowly turned his head, his eyes came my direction, but they didn't focus.

I pointed at his feet, then the sandals and then held them out to him. I could see something turning, some process struggling for freedom from behind his eyes, but nothing came. Nor did he continue on. I leaned over and put the sandals down in front of him, a worn pair of sand-blasted and sea-stained flip flops, and gestured for him to put them on.

As if in slow motion, like a child pretending to be a giant, he slipped his feet into the sandals one by one. The left sandal he put on correctly, the gripping tong between his big and index toe. The right sandal he didn't manage, wedging the tong between his middle and fourth toe, causing it to range out at a 45 degree angle. Without any kind of acknowledgement, he turned and continued on. The right sandal kind of scraped along with him as he resumed his search. He didn't really acknowledge the event in any way I can describe, there was merely a sense of his acceptance.

Some small part of me felt that it had been a failed attempt to help. Too little, far too late. I consoled myself by thinking I had at least tried. I took a deep breath and looked away. Sweat trickled from my brow and made my shirt stick to my back as the sweltering heat increased. I glanced down the tracks to where they curved out sight, looking for a train that refused to arrive.

The tall double door to the station interior swung open and a woman emerged from within. Clad in a form-fitting anthracite power suit and carrying a smart black attaché, she sashayed onto the platform as if it was her own private domain. With long dark curly hair and olive skin, she was an image of solemn loveliness. The epitome of Greek beauty incarnate, a vision of unparalleled beauty, breathtakingly divine.

I closed my eyes in shame. All I could see behind my eyes was how I must certainly have appeared. Unbathed, unshaven, sun-burnt with clothes thrice worn, grungy white socks, old battered hiking boots, hair tousled. I sank my head. I told myself there would be another time for beauty, another chance for love.

The sound of her high heels clipped closer. Then stopped. I opened my eyes. To my surprise, she had sat down on the opposite end of the same bench I was on, not but a meter away. There were plenty of other empty benches nearby. It was a most unexpected turn of events. Why hadn't she chosen somewhere else to sit? Why would a woman of such pristine beauty sit next to me, especially now? I felt my heart begin to thrum in my chest, I tasted nervousness as I licked my suddenly dry lips.

There I sat in an Athens train station with perhaps the most attractive woman I had ever seen sitting next to me. I was only vaguely aware of the blue track suit reversing his course, beginning another run of the ash trays. Then inside of me, some part just let go of being nervous. Of being concerned about how I looked, how I smelled. Of being rejected or ignored. I went for the sure-fire, all-time classic of conversation starters, the one way to guarantee an answer.

"Excuse me, do you have the time?" I said, tapping my wrist. You never know when travelling who speaks English and who doesn't.

"Hi, yes," her slim wrist extended from her blazer to reveal a golden watch with an owl motif, "It's 8:15." Her voice was a dulcet tone, her Greek accent an alluring play on sounds I had never known English possessed. Enchanting in its crystalline clarity.

"Thank you," I said, convinced that would be the end of it while hoping that it wouldn't.

"So," she said, and my heart stopped. Father Time turned his hourglass on its side. In the split second before she continued, endless possibilities played themselves out in my mind's eye. A hundred lifetimes spent exploring the world with her by my side. Ten thousand mornings awaking to her smile... "Where are you from?"

Somehow looking back on it now, I can't remember my own words. I am sure I told her where I was from, what had brought me there and where I was going. But the words themselves were trivial, said because they were appropriate, because they had to be said, because she had asked. Something in them resonated forth in a way I still can't explain.

Our conversation continued, she asked a few questions about my life, my path, my hopes, my dreams. And I answered as best I could. Although most of what was said has since faded from memory, I recall most vividly, as if were earlier today, a portion of the conversation that would later let me dream of impossible things.

"I'm sorry, we have talked so much about me, but we still haven't introduced ourselves," I said, giving her my name and holding out my hand.

"Nice to meet you," she said, taking my hand. "My name is Athena." I found myself drowning in her eyes at that moment, no, taking root. They were the brown eyes of legend, brown shot with gold, deep as the roots of world tree and luminous like the sun. Our hands separated as I registered her words.

"Athena? Like the goddess?"

"Yes, that's right." She seemed delighted that I had drawn the connection.

"And where do you come from?"

"Oh," she smiled with gracious charm, as if her answer was of no consequence, "I come from here."

"Athens, then?"

"Yes, I'm from the city."

At that point the blue track suit wandered past again. The conversation paused. Athena and I looked at each other silently and I gave a sad look acknowledging his state of being. A look I saw reflected in her gaze. "At least he has some shoes now," I whispered in sympathy.

"I'm sorry?" she asked.

"Shoes, when I got here he was barefoot. The concrete is so hot and he obviously cut his foot, so I gave him an extra pair of sandals I had with me."

She smiled a sunrise, "That was very kind of you."

"Yeah, well, it doesn't feel like enough really. But..." I shrugged silently as if to say "what can you do?"

"Still," she said, "a kindness to the least of us is a kindness to us all." There was something about the way she said that has stuck with me all these years.

"So anyway," I said, changing the conversation back to her, "And what do you do?"

"I work for the city." From her power suit and impeccable manner, I suspected this was a statement born of modesty more than anything else. Municipal employees, in my experience, rarely demonstrate the poise she had or could afford her outfit. My curiosity was piqued.

"Ah, and as what?"

"I work in... city administration," she replied somewhat evasively. I could see she didn't really want to pursue the topic of her job. The sidestepping made it even more intriguing.

I chuckled, it was delightful, "So let me get this straight. Your name is Athena and you work as a city administrator of some kind in Athens, the city named after the goddess Athena. And you won't say exactly what it is you do. Am I getting this right?" It was like something out of a dream. An impossible beauty with an impossible story. Of all the millions in the metropolis, she and I should meet? Right there, right then?

"Yes," she laughed, "That's right." The look in her eyes and the enchantment of her presence silenced me at that point. Her eyes held mine for many moments and I suddenly felt the sand starting to flow again. Even though mere minutes had passed, it was as if we had spent untold hours together in a pocket of frozen time.

At that very moment, as if they had waited for some silent signal, the double doors to the station hall burst open and a mass of people rushed out, quickly filling the platform with a bustling crowd. I watched in surprise at such a flood of humanity in browns and blacks and grays. Moments later, a train came squealing into the station, but it wasn't mine. Athena stood up and I followed suit.

We shook hands. She wished me well on my journey and disappeared into the crowd boarding the train. It slowly pulled out of the station. Silence descended like a veil. I was alone again on the platform. Except for the blue track suit. He was going over the newly deposited remnants and had finally found an almost entire cigarette, albeit badly bent.

He shuffled back past me again as he lit the cigarette with a small blue lighter. A curl of smoke trailed behind him as he drew deeply and exhaled in relief. The sandals I had given him were still on his feet, and somehow he had finally got both of them on right. I watched as he walked to the far end of the platform and disappeared around the corner.

I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked down the track in the other direction to where the train had left the station. It was then that a most entertaining idea entered my mind. An impossibility of course. Or was it?