Sepia

Thus in vase pictures, when Poseidon upheaves the island of Cos to overwhelm the Giant Polybotes, the island is represented as an immense mass of rock; the parts which have been under water are indicated by a dolphin, a shrimp, and a sepia, the parts above the water by a goat and a serpent.

Another sunny day, this 1st of August of 2025, here on Lulu Island. At Tim Hortons café, whilst I was drinking oat-milk iced coffee, I was talking with Hans the Dutchman, sitting in his motorized wheelchair. He was enjoying a Boston cream donut and a peach sparkling quencher. We talked about my great-great-grandfather Dimitri, from Kimi on Evia Island, Greece. My Filipino family has an ancient sepia picture of him sitting as if he were Count Dracula. Hans told me that he has a woman cousin from Netherlands, who escaped the cold climate to live indefinitely in sunnier Greece. She's been overstaying there for 20-plus years! At home, my Greek-Cypriot neighbour George came by to give my family a big bag of cute green figs. He's married to a Japanese, Chika, and they have two hybrid daughters, Chloe and Anna. I toured the Greek mainland and islands in 2002, but never reached Kimi. I've read the travelogue, The Olive Grove: Travels in Greece, by Katherine Kizilos, a Greek-Australian, and it seems that Greece is also nice in the off-season.

Sepia had some use in ancient times as a writing ink, and in modern times has has occasionally been used as a pigment, but it never attained any popularity, as it is extremely fugitive.

Sepia Delft tiles surrounded the fireplace, their crudely drawn Biblical scenes in faded cyclamen blending with the pinkish pine, while above them, instead of a mantelshelf, there was an archway high enough to form a balcony with slender balusters and a tapestry-hung wall behind.

Only now did he realise how few colours there had been at the end of the universe. The world had been sepia, drained of colour and light.