( 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

this top level is lamer than hephaestus' leg, i'm so sorry

[heelies]

( I. getcha head in the games )

[While it is a departure from tradition for the host of the games himself to participate in competition, already have the traditions of many peoples mingled together as do dark wine and blood upon the altar, and so one may pry Achilles from his duties should they issue a challenge. His pride flares easily, and so he shall gladly seize the opportunity to flex and flaunt his skill.]

Very well - but I shall warn you that in challenging me, you have marked yourself for the loser in this match. For it is not for my good looks that the heroes who let rage their spears upon Dardanus' great plains laud me as the best of the Achaeans.

[In other words: bring it, trashlord.]

( II. what team? WILDCARD! )

[Achilles will be easy to find although he flutters from place to place across the shore, whether overseeing a match, showing off the prizes, or welcoming newcomers to the celebration - or in quieter moments when the festivities have concluded, the pyres have dwindled from their jubilant roar, and the sun lies supine upon the couch of the horizon, and he stands with his eyes cast over the glimmering waves.]

[evantuality]

Evan was in no way an athlete, by any stretch of the imagination. In a pinch he could swim, and when full of adrenaline he wasn't slow, but there was nothing athletically remarkable about his frame and he'd never so much as joined a soccer team as a child. He'd even scoffed at the idea of funeral games, a knee-jerk reaction from the days when the chic thing to do had been to disdain gym class.

But he was no longer in high school, and it didn't take much to make Evan take a step back and consider the proposition from a rather more adult perspective. Maybe it was like a wake, he reasoned; celebrate life rather than mourn death? In any case, it paired interestingly with the sombre memorial the Nalawi had put on. Intending to spectate rather than compete, Evan had shown up at the very least to show some solidarity. After all, Achilles seemed to be nothing if not earnest, and he had done Evan a good turn on the day with the imps.

He wandered, joined the crowd spectating the wrestling for a time, checked out the spears for throwing. Without entirely realizing that's where he was going, Evan ended up in front of the two funeral pyres, symbolic though they were.

If this had been home -- if he'd had his fireproof skivvies -- Evan might have gotten close enough to singe. Magma-wading and imp-tossing aside, it had been too long since he'd been near enough to a fire to touch, and even if these were pyres meant for others he would have liked to pay his own respects in his own ways. Even if it seemed odd to offer Ryba in particular a pyre.

As it was he got close enough to the pyres to feel the full force of their heat, thankful that the ALASTAIR uniform was not easily prone to melting or singing. This was as close to meditation as Evan got, and he lowered himself to sit on the sands and stare at each fire in turn.

"There's probably going to be glass under these pits when the fires die down," he said, to no one in particular, to the deities being memorialized. "I suppose that's fitting, after all the other marks you've left, to leave that one last." His tone is resigned, not bitter, nor entirely mournful. A little sad, maybe. "Who knows, Nalanni, maybe your children will use this to sort out how to make glass without magic. From everything Laedo's said, you'd like that, wouldn't you?"

He sighed, propping his palms on his knees and leaning back a little to take in the full leap and height of the two fires. "I wonder if you would have come offworld with us."

[heelies]

Achilles had caught sight of Evan, whose visage rung familiar even absent the bloody smears for which he could remember him, but his duties in running the games and awarding prizes had occupied him such that he had not the opportunity to address the young man who seemed to hover at the edges of the ceremonies. Now that the afternoon had sunk into evening, and with the retreat of the sun came the cool night air and a sense of closure, he found Evan sitting before the shrinking flames of the dual pyres. Still they shone as beacons for the goddesses lost.

"Evan, most blessed by Hephaestus, god of the forge - why sit you here, away from the pleasures of these games and the company they bring together? Still do you find your heart too heavy with cares to partake in celebrations?"

[evantuality]

Achilles was odd company. Evan hadn't spent a lot of time around the man one-on-one, but the team was a fishbowl and it was impossible not to get some sort of set impression of anyone who stuck around for more than a handful of weeks. Still, after the imp incident, Achilles was staunchly in Evan's good books, odd or not. There was a part of him that was a little embarrassed that the man's first impression of him had been such a complete mess, but the bearded hero did not seem to hold it against Evan, at least.

He looked up in surprise when Achilles approached, considering the question with raised eyebrows. "Honestly? Yeah, a little." Casting his gaze back to the firepits, he felt the pull of them, the familiar soothe of crackling flames.

But he had been sitting here for some time, and he was a little ashamed at having been called out. Maybe he shouldn't have come; the last thing he wanted to do was to cast a pall over the festivities. That in mind, he smiled up at Achilles, and then rose, brushing sand from his legs as he did.

"But don't mind me. I've never been , um, much for sports culture. This is lovely, though," he gestured at the two memorial flames.

[heelies]

He was not surprised to hear that Evan boasted no skill in sport, for his frame could be likened far more readily to a haphazard bundle of twigs than to the broad trunk of the tree: such a physique spoke not to strength such that was lauded by the war-loving Argives, but men possessed strength of other strains too.

"It is for some men to excel in matters of war, for others to excel in speech, and others yet in wisdom or myriad other virtues: none can claim to be a paragon of all. Therefore worry not, for where you lack strength in one, surely you must possess strength in another."

So Achilles spoke, and he appraised the man before him. By his judgment Evan was farther into manhood than must be his own son, yet still were his features dewed with youth.

"I cannot find fault in your grief which lingers as does a fog hanging over the sea when the sun will not shine to disperse its grey pall - for the passing of the goddesses through death's gate, both Nalanni who delights in volcanoes and wave-ruling Ryba, indeed weighs heavily upon my heart. If even the immortality of the gods can wither and fall away, then upon what can man depend with any certainty?"

[evantuality]

When a person got used to the rhythm of Achilles's speech, Evan reflected, it actually was not at all difficult to follow. It was like reading Shakespeare; a brief adjustment to the style of dialogue and then it was like anything else. It was rather a treat, to the young man who'd been deprived of books for the entirety of the Nalawi mission.

But he still felt that heaviness in the pit of his stomach, and the content of the man's words were more important than the style. He smiled a little at the positive sculpture of a man, at his waving golden hair and his bodybuilder of a physique, and did not wonder that this man took gods for granted.

"The world I come from, we don't really... have gods," Evan said, wanting to describe his own turmoil but not sure if he could outside the context of twenty-first century Earth. "I mean, there are people who believe in gods, but it's by no mean uncontentious, and they don't... they don't really do things. Not like these two did."

He shrugged, looking back at the pyres, pensive. "So it's not... it's not that, exactly. I didn't grow up with the idea of gods, not as anything but abstract concepts. So I look at this and I see... like, two people were killed because we couldn't come up with a better way to deal with them. Terrifyingly powerful people, sure, but what I've heard of Nalanni at least, she... she had thoughts and feelings and she cared about the creatures she'd taken under her protection. That means something."

Frowning fit to wrinkle his forehead, he stared at the heart of the embers still burning away. "I just feel like we could have done better by this world. I really do."

[heelies]

To him, Evan presented the image of a distant, dilapidated era of mankind in which fewer and fewer men were willing to dare the bold feats braved by their forefathers, in which men no longer were measured by the strength of his spear nor by the worth of his treasures nor by the generosity to which he treated his guests - and so the gods' love waned to darkness in which men were further lost. Of the future carved out by men Achilles had heard little which comforted him. Thus did he wish for Evan to look upon an era where the footing was sure.

"The gods, although glorious for all their might, are not so far removed from man as you seem to think. As they gaze across the land over which they watch, their hearts too are heavy with cares as are the hearts of men. Did Zeus who bears the aegis not mourn the death of his son Heracles, defeated by the treacherous poisoned tunic? And again the death of his son Sarpedon, felled by the spear of my own dear companion Patroclus? Did Phoebus Apollo not pour his rage upon the heads of the Achaeans when Agamemnon, son of Atreus, stole away the fair daughter of one of his temples? The gods do not cast their love upon all men, but those who have won their favor - those men do they love fiercely. Perhaps all the more so for man's mortality, which is but a brief candle compared to the undying sunlight of the immortals."

His eyes lingered not on the pyres where fell Evan's gaze, but now cast over the wine-dark sea beyond.

"My mother is a goddess, a daughter of Nereus, he whose verity is as endless as the sea itself. Often has she lamented that she was made to lie in the marriage bed of a mortal man, and thereby produce a mortal son - a son who shall die while she must live forever more. I who am fated to meet death before I've reached old age cannot fully grasp her sorrow in this, but its shape have I felt when she weeps and holds me to her breast. This would I tell Nalanni who delights in volcanoes, had I the chance: by her brave sacrifice might she find peace in knowing that no longer must she outlive the Nalawi she so dearly favors, and no longer must she watch them suffer, for her death is the final blessing she can give."

[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?"