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I am alone.
I haven’t been alone since my father officially decided that I was useless and tossed me to Phthia. I was eight then. I am twenty-eight now.
I will always be twenty-eight, for now, and forever. Because I am dead. That’s right, I’m gone. I am merely a spirit now.
I’m sitting on the beach. I cannot feel the sand in between my toes, nor it curling through my fingers, but I imagine it there. As it once was when I sat with my mother on the beach all those years ago.
I can hear the clamour behind me. The shouts of soldiers and Pyrrhus and Odysseus fill my ears. It takes me back. Back to the days of the war, when I would bring the warriors back to health and he would rage through the battle in his lazy manner. When the two of us were alive. Achilles, Aristos Achaion, best of all Greeks. He is destined to kill Hector. No, he was destined. He’s dead as well. Unlike me, he reached the Underworld, while I am to wander the surface until my name is written on the stele. That will not happen.
Not while Pyrrhus, his son, refuses to acknowledge me as anyone of importance. Nor my death, the death that led to Achilles seeking vengeance on my killer, Hector of Troy, whose death led to his. He told me, that night in our tent, that when he dreamt of that moment, he didn’t feel fear like the thought he would, rather relieved. I understand it now.
A sob escapes my throat. Another one, one more and before I can stop, tears are pouring down my cheeks and I am screaming into the wind. I’m screaming words that I don’t understand, words I can’t hear. This and this and this. I know, where ever they are, the gods can hear me. Thetis can hear me. I don’t know what she is feeling. She must be mad, angry, full of rage. Her son, her only son, is dead. She must be bitter, heartbroken, full of sorrow, her only son is dead. I don’t care for her feelings. She never cared for mine. Or his. She wanted what she wanted. For him to not go to war. For him to marry a princess. For him to stay away from me. He listened to none but one.
No one bothered me. No one could see me. Maybe Thetis could, but I doubt she could care. I stay on the beach the whole evening and watch the sunset. My mind wanders back to Mount Pelion, with Chiron, where we would train together, him in battle and I in medicine. It was a carefree time. She couldn’t see us and Chiron couldn’t care less.
We were happy, we were safe.
Hopefully, we will be soon.