( open )

[heelies]

CHARACTERS: Achilles and anyone who wishes to join
DATE: A few days after the demise of Nalanni and Ryba
WARNINGS: None, unless any will truly embrace ancient Greek wrestling tradition, which involves less clothing and more oil.
SUMMARY: Putting the FUN back in FUNERAL with sports and games..!


In the grand tradition of his people, Achilles had decided that funeral games must be organized to honor the passing of this land's goddesses. As a wound which yearns for salve that the pain might be alleviated, so too should the mourning of the cloven-footed Nalawi be allayed by this ceremony which is solemn and celebratory in equal measure. The son of Peleus knows well the healing process that proceeds from such a profound loss: all must eventually stand and walk forward once more, with the burden of those lost lives lain across straightened shoulders.

Upon the beach, in the brilliant shadow of two funeral pyres which serve symbolic rather than functional ends, Achilles hosts an afternoon of sport: available to any willing competitors are foot races, wrestling and boxing matches, and archery and spear-throwing contests. Before the pyres stands the small pile of prizes that are to be awarded to the victors.

All are welcome to participate, and to imbue the ceremonies with their own people's traditions.

Comments

[evantuality]

"Oh." Achilles hadn't meant it, couldn't have known it, but his words rang true in a way that struck Evan to the core.

He'd managed, by and large, to sidestep homesickness. Working for ALASTAIR was an adventure and a half, and even when it was less than fun it was a massively engaging endeavor. Evan had not once been bored, and had only rarely had enough free moments to think wistfully of familiar things. However he did miss his family, and he coped mainly by not thinking about how worried about him they would be.

His mother was no goddess, not by any definition that would exist in a kind and just universe, but over the course of his life Evan had teased out enough half-statements and implications from his mother to be certain that she was at least, if not immortal, then long enough lived that she expected to thoroughly outlive her family. He wasn't even sure they had been her first family, his father and his sister and him. Cassie, his sister, had come to the same conclusion and railed about it; Evan tried not to think about it. It was a discomfiting thought.

What he had never really considered was what Achilles sketched out in such exquisitely miserable detail. What would she do when they had all passed? Hell, what was she doing now, with him missing without a trace?

Evan brought a hand up and scrubbed at his good eye, which had begun to prickle terribly. He swallowed, did his best to rally, not wanting to simply clam up.

"Oh, that's... that's a grim kind of upside, isn't it." He looked down, at the sands, dancing as they were with flickering firelight. "Makes me wonder how Pomarr feels too. She's had to live through that, hasn't she? Losing everyone she ever cared about? And she's not even a, a god or anything."

sorry for the delay

[heelies]

There was tragedy in dying, but so too was there tragedy in living, in being left behind when the funeral pyre dimmed to embers and the smoke dissipated. Although Achilles could not quite empathize with his mother's glinting immortality, he had felt an echo of her pain when Patroclus' ruined body had been brought to his tent: he had been overwhelmed by the prospect of pushing forward when his cherished companion could no longer follow at his side, and so for a time he had drowned himself in his despair, let it sweep him away when it metastasized into bloodlust. Now the Nalawi were the inheritors of this pain, orphaned by their impotence and by Fate.

And there was Pomarr, at whose name Achilles' lips twisted into a steep frown. He was now watching Evan, and he spoke winged words.

"I do not wonder that such a miserable creature would be better off having joined her sisters and brethren who lie in the bosom of the sea, and whose unfortunate shades do clog the vestibule of the underworld. Why we must allow her to live after the crimes she has committed and the divine laws she purposed to flout, I know not. Moreover, it must be a wretched business to find yourself the last of your race. What gladness can there be in a life which alone you must walk?"