As the Moon Climbs

“I don’t know, this is pretty tenuous logic.” Euphorion raised an eyebrow at his father.

“To you, perhaps,” Aeschylus said. “What do you know of reproduction?”

“I know a cow never calved without a bull,” Euphorion replied. “But neither did a bull’s seed grow into anything without being inside a cow.”

“But think,” his father said. “Dough becomes bread in an oven, but we would not say the oven is any part of the bread?”

His son considered this. “That does not explain why some children favor their mother in appearance,” he replied. “Some part of her must be involved. Like the egg of a chicken, which only becomes another chicken if a rooster—”

“But will the audience believe it?” Aeschylus interrupted. “Will Apollo’s speech sway the crowd as it sways the jury in the play?”

Euphorion read the passage again. “I think the audience does not want Orestes to die,” he murmured. “Perhaps the only answer to unreasonable laws is an unreasonable technicality.”

Aeschylus laughed. “Spoken like a true playwright.”

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