Week 12 Storytelling: Athena and The Lost City of Atlantis

Atlantic cod

Deep in the Atlantic Ocean, there lived an Atlantic cod named Athena. Athena was in a group of other cod for a large portion of her life. She was quite the odd one out of the group since she had a tendency to wander around more than any of the other cod.

One day while the group of cod were swimming around near the center of the Atlantic Ocean, Athena decided to swim a little farther away from the group. As she swam farther and farther away from her group, she saw some interesting figures in the distance that got bigger as she got closer to them.

Worried that she would get lost, Athena looked back to see where the group was. When she looked back, all she could see was just the vast blue ocean.

“HEY, GUYS!” she shouted. “WHERE ARE YOU?”

No one replied to Athena. She tried swimming back to the group but she did not know how far she had swum or which way she came from. After swimming for a long time, Athena was still in the same spot she had been in when she saw the interesting figures.

“Why do I keep ending up in this same spot?” wondered Athena. “Hmmm. Maybe there might be some fish near those weird-looking things.”

Athena then began to swim closer to the distant figures. As she got closer, she started to see buildings, statues, and wagons. Athena was curious about all these new things that started to appear out of the deep blue ocean and she swam faster to see them up close.

“What are these weird things? Why are they here? Did fish create this?” asked Athena to herself.

City of Atlantis as portrayed by Plato

 Athena swam around this underwater city looking at every statue and every building. She spent a long time looking around and noticed a really big building that was right in the center of the whole area. Athena swam right up to the building and saw some words that were inscribed on the front of it.

“The City of Atlantis. Huh. I wonder what that could be,” pondered Athena as she entered the structure.

When Athena entered the building she saw more stone figures shaped like humans next the walls of the hallway. However, these were different from the ones she saw outside of the building because they were talking and moving around.

“Whoa. What are these things? How come they’re making noises?” asked Athena.

Athena watched the moving stone humans in amazement and listened to their conversations. She was so intrigued by them that she almost forgot to ask them how to get out of the city.

“Hey, you. How do I get out of here?” said Athena to one of the statues.

The statue just kept talking to the others as if it could not hear Athena or even acknowledge that she was even there. With no reply, Athena swam towards the statue and rammed her head into the chest of it.

“Hey! What just poked me?” asked the statue.

“What are you talking about? There’s nothing there,” said another statue.

After Athena’s attempt to get the statue’s attention, they resumed talking as if she wasn’t even there.

“Am I invisible to them?” wondered Athena as she ventured down the hallway towards the center of the building.

When Athena reached the end of the hallway, she saw a big circular room with many more statues talking and walking around. She swam above them near the ceiling to observe their actions.

Athena saw that there were two statues holding long sticks with a sharp triangular tip and a large rectangular board standing at the entrance of the hallway where she came from. Then from the hallway to about two-thirds of the circular room, there were statues with wagons that had stone human food shaped items that were being traded with the other statues that were walking around.

A Roman soldier that is closely similar to the guards in the story

“What are they doing? Why are they here? Are they fish? They don’t look like fish,” wondered Athena. “Hey, that guy looks a bit peculiar.”

She swam towards the back of the room where there was a statue that wore an interesting looking hat sitting on a large chair. Next to the statue with the hat were two more statues with sharp sticks and long boards.

“King Atlas, your people request a few words of wisdom from you,” said one of the statues to the one on the chair.

“Alright then,” said King Atlas as he stood up.

All of the other statues, as well as Athena, stopped and looked at King Atlas as he stepped forward from his throne.

A king sitting on his throne with a large sword

“People of Atlantis, beware the yellow snow. Do not consume it because you will get sick and die,” advised King Atlas in his booming voice and sat back down.

"What is this 'yellow snow' that he is talking about?" wondered Athena.

The whole room cheered with happiness. Then after the words of their king, they all went back to trading and chatting.

“That King Atlas guy seems to be the leader of these stone humans. I must go and see if I can talk to him,” said Athena.

She swam next to King Atlas and began to speak to him, but in that instant Athena remembered that no one could see or hear her. Athena then wondered if she was ever going to get out of the City of Atlantis and be with her group again.

Author’s Note. The adventure of Athena and the Lost City of Atlantis was inspired by the Looking-Glass House from the Looking-Glass unit. Both female characters venture to a world that is different from their own. In the original story, Alice goes through a mirror world while Athena somehow stumbles upon the Lost City of Atlantis. My story goes through the views of a fish instead of a human like the original story. The main characters both witness something that is not part of their own world. I switched the species and the settings to create a new environment where magical and mythical things can happen. In Alice’s mirror world, she encounters tiny chess pieces that are walking and talking about. Even though she can interact with them, they cannot see or hear her at all. I used this aspect of the story to when Athena meets the statues in the large building.

I added the image of an Atlantic cod just in case some readers do not know how they looked. The Atlantic cod is a shoaling fish which mean that they only group for social reasons and feeding. The picture of the portrayed City of Atlantis gives some visual thought of how it could look.

Bibliography. “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There” by Lewis Carroll (1871). Web Source: Internet Archive