Chapter Text
This.. hurts. Or, to rephrase, his heart hurts. It beats out of his chest, blood thrumming in veins soon to cool.. any moment now. Any moment now, he knows, his heart will stop. And then what? Does he cease to exist? Where will his soul go? Can your soul find the underworld, if you are killed by a god? Surely dying at sea may complicate the journey.. the journey. Even in death, there is still a journey to make, a destination yet to be reached. This is exhausting.
…Why does death smell so weird?
He lifts his head, noting that the ground is oddly smooth. He isn’t on the ship. This might be a problem. The soldier and sailor groans, shifting against the hard surface beneath him. His ribs burn. The sensation is dull, distant, as if his body is remembering pain rather than feeling it. He has known pain before. Battle wounds, the salt-sting of cracked skin, the slow gnaw of starvation. But this is different. This is not the ache of labor or war. This is the kind of pain that comes after a great fall.
There’s this odd thrumming sound, like there are bees buzzing in the distant air, but deeper. A distant clicking, metallic. His arms are bleeding. That feels like an obvious observation, but an important one to make nonetheless. The clicking is moving. Approaching, to his left.
You have got to be kidding.
Surely, there is rest in death. Isn’t there?
His last memory is of fire, of lightning splitting the sky in two. The crash of waves swallowing the ship. The smell of burnt flesh—his own? Another man’s? Does it matter?
Yes, he decides then and there, it matters. They had all mattered, no less than Odysseus had. Odysseus. That man better return to Ithaca. After all this? If Eurylochus sees that man wander into the underworld at any age less than fifty, he will have his head, spirit or not.
A young woman steps into Eurylochus’s field of vision, wearing the strangest attire he has ever seen. Apparently, rest there is not. Especially not when his eyes are assaulted by the brightest yellow fabric he has ever had the displeasure of seeing.
The clicking is less ominous, when there is a colorfully dressed woman standing over him with an odd metallic cane in hand. This cannot be said about any of the other sounds.
The woman looks.. odd. It isn’t anything inherent, nor is this an insult. In fact, if it weren’t for her clothing, she would be rather plain. Brown hair, brown eyes, relatively short, features that may have rendered her relatively unnoticeable in Ithaca’s agora. The oddly colored cane is a standout. He didn’t think canes came in pink. Apparently they do.
It clicks against the floor with every shift of her weight. It is metal. That alone is strange—metal is heavy, unyielding. And yet she moves with it as though it were light as a reed. Worse, it is pink. A color reserved for fresh fish flesh and delicate flower petals, yet here it exists, garishly bright.
She holds up a green rectangle and says something truly incomprehensible to him, though he’s sure those are supposed to be words. The rectangle glows, and he reacts. He shoots up, his heart hammering out of his chest. He’d become quicker to react to magic after the incident with Circe. Women aren’t to be underestimated, he can’t afford to do that anymore.
The young lady dropped the device, instead choosing to hold her hand up in what was surely meant to be a placating gesture. The thrumming remains.
He doubts she would understand him any more than he does her, but he speaks “Announce yourself. Give me your name, and I will exchange it for my own.”
She stands at least ten paces away from him, but even from that distance it is easy to see that her face holds no comprehension of his words. The woman exhales through her nose, shifting her weight slightly against her cane. She considers him for a moment longer, then responds again, this time slower, as if careful articulation would change the fact that her words remain nothing but noise to him.
Eurylochus does not know what she says, but he recognizes the tone. The same frustration Odysseus would use when dealing with fools. He is not a fool, yet the reminder stings like salt in the unhealed wound of his heart.
Great. This is great. He shall spend his afterlife with a strange woman who does not speak his tongue.
The woman points to herself in an exaggerated motion, and verbalizes, “Madison.” She.. Madison, apparently, then points to him.. It feels like a request for an introduction.
“Eurylochus.”