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The two of them laid on a blanket looking up at the stars. Away from Chase Space, out in the middle of nowhere, far away from the bustle that was Boston. The stars danced and winked at them. Well, some of them. The other half were airplanes, just pretending to be shooting stars. Besides the waxing moon and bonfire, it was practically pitch-black.
They hadn’t said anything in a while. There wasn’t much to talk about, really. Alex really just enjoyed the quiet away from the Chase Space, as well as the absolute chaos that was Valhalla.
Magnus was staring off at the stars. The soft, reflective glow of their campfire seemed to envelop him perfectly. Despite looking peaceful, Alex could see him grinding his teeth.
She leaned over and flicked his nose. “Whatcha thinking about, Maggie?”
Magnus bunched up his nose and swiped at Alex’s hand near his face. Alex let out a short bark of laughter. Despite not being able to see it, she knew his face was turning pink.
“Hey!” He exclaimed.
“No seriously. What’s on your mind? I hate seeing you ruin your pearly whites over something.”
“My... what?” Magnus shook his head. “Look, I’ll tell you, you just can’t make fun of me, okay?”
“When have I ever done that to you?”
Magnus glared at Alex.
“Okay, okay, I promise.”
“Only if you pinky promise.”
“Gods, fine.”
They shook pinkies. Normally, she’d make fun of him for this, but it made him so giddy that she just couldn’t. While she didn’t see the appeal in the pinkie swear, but she did see the appeal in Magnus’ smile.
“Okay. I’ll start off with the big question on my mind. What do you think is after the afterlife?”
Alex twisted her face in confusion. “We’re in the afterlife.”
“Yeah I know... But like... I don’t know. Feels like there's gotta be more than this. This doesn’t feel like the afterlife to me.”
“Maybe because we died young.”
“Mm. Yeah. Good point,” Magnus agreed, “Still, all I can think is, what’s after this?”
“After Ragnorok? Nothing for us,” Alex said bluntly, “The gods die. Our parents die. Odin gets eaten by a dog. The human race seems to live on, which I think when we look at the science of climate change that doesn’t add up, but that’s how the myth goes.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“I asked! What’s after the afterlife?”
“You mean for us einherjar?”
“Yeah!”
“We disappear. We die our last heroic death. The end.”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe that.”
“Why not?”
“Because sometimes this doesn’t feel real. Like... when I looked at my dead body at my own funeral... it didn’t feel real. To this day, none of this feels real. I’ve met gods, like the real gods, from the actual mythos. They stand in front of me, but I still don’t believe in them. I’m still as atheist as you can get. I know that Valhalla is real; I wake up everyday in a bedroom that isn’t mine. They try to make it feel like it’s yours, but y’know, it feels so.. temporary. Like Valhalla is truly just a hotel. A halfway point. Like a vacation, or a trip abroad, not that I’ve ever been abroad, hell I didn’t even get to go to college - okay, bad tangent. Anyway. I can’t say I have any emotional attachment to the place, only toward the people I’ve met there. If I didn’t have Floor 19... I probably would have vanished long ago.”
Alex felt herself hesitate. “Then what feels real?”
“Being with my cousin, for one. Blitz, Hearth. Probably because they are my biggest connection to Midgard. Samirah.”
“I feel that,” Alex interjected, “Without Samirah, I don't know how I’d be sane. I mean, I’m not, but still.”
Magnus chuckled softly.
“And then there’s the dying over and over part. That definitely feels real, it hurts like a bitch every time. Chase Space too, I guess.” Magnus waved his hand around, gesturing to the forest. “And then being out here, in the woods. Away from the stuffy and perfectly pristine, fake-ness of Valhalla. With you. This feels real.”
A long pause. An owl hooted somewhere to the left of them.
Alex broke the silence.
“Alright Chase, I’ve got a question for you. Let’s say, hypothetically, there is a post-afterlife afterlife, how about then?”
“Uhhhhhh,” Magnus hesitated, and inhaled. Uh oh, she thought, What did I just do?
“Like, okay. So the Greeks exist, and so do we, and apparently Egypt has their own stuff too - Like, apparently Anubis, the god of the dead, is real - and we all coexist at the same time. Annabeth's gone to Tartarus, so we know the Underworld has influence. My cousin saw it first hand! So we know there are other forms of afterlife. Ragnarok has to conflict with something. Why not be reincarnated? Does that exist too? What about ghosts and spirits? Like, yknow, people who don’t find any sort of afterlife and remain trapped on Earth? Heaven and hell and purgatory? Do they all just exist at the same time, or do they take turns? Like ‘Okay, this year the Christians get all the people who die, next year everyone who dies gets to go to another pagan afterlife’, like some divorced kid who has to spend different holidays with different parents? What justifies which religious afterlife we get to attend? And we know Ragnarok isn’t the end. So what’s gonna be the new religious order that takes place after Ragnarok-“
“Magnus, breathe!” Alex started laughing and shoved his arm playfully, her laugh a pure sound that rang through the forest. “What even started this train of thought of yours that just ended up crashing?”
“Bruh, I don’t even know. I think I’ve had too much time to think about it all.”
“Yeah, you have a point. I’ve over thought about many, many things. We’ll probably end up cracking the code to the universe with the amount of free time we have.”
“Don’t make me start thinking about that.”
They both giggled.
“But y’know,” Alex said, “Considering all the forms of afterlife there might be, this is definitely one of the weirder ones. I could be burning in superhell, or haunting my dad, or being reborn into a bird, but instead I basically kill myself everyday, until one day I die for the last time.”
“I know right?!” Magnus exclaimed, “Of all of the afterlife variations, we get stuck in this one.” He furrowed his eyebrows. “Wait, what’s superhell?”
That made Alex snort. “It’s an internet meme. Y’know, a joke from that thing you don’t use because you’re so behind on the times. I’ll tell you about it another time.”
He seemed satisfied with that answer. Magnus sat up a little and propped himself on his elbow. “Penny for your thoughts?”
“Shoot.”
“So, if you had to pick any afterlife scenario, even a made up one, would you want to go when you died?”
“I... don’t know.”
“Okay... let me try again. How about... what afterlife you envisioned you would end up in when you were still alive?”
“Just kind of... well. Hel,” Alex chuckled, “I didn’t want to go there, especially when I knew my half-sister rules the place. I read about her as a kid and she just seemed like not a nice person. What about you, Magnus?”
“Well...” Magnus signed and sat up. “When my mom died, I thought she went to heaven, or at least was someplace nicer. I even thought she might be following me, like a guardian angel. Wherever she went when she died… that’s where I wanted to go. That’s probably as close to an ‘afterlife’ as I’d ever thought of it before... here.
But she went to Hel. Good ‘ole, regular Hel. Not the worst place to end up, I guess.”
Magnus stared back up at the stars.
“And y’know, she offered me a place in Hel once. To be with my mom again. Your sister’s pretty convincing when she wants to be.”
A wave of concern washed over Alex. “Geez. You met her too? Sorry ‘bout my messed up family for the billionth time.”
“Can’t be sorry for something you can’t control. You tell me that all the time. Take your own advice.”
“Fine. I can’t argue with myself. You signed up for the Loki family package.”
Magnus smiled.
“But yea, that’s the kind of afterlife I saw for me, I guess. I didn’t think so much about dying until... I actually died. Funny how that is.”
“Yeah.”
Magnus leaned back, crossing his hands behind his head.
“I wonder where we will go after Ragnarok.”
“We won’t be going anywhere after that,” Alex stated.
“Who knows? Who really knows? What if there aren't humans under the world tree, stashed there for safety? Legends also say that Ragnarok isn’t the end, only the end of a cycle. So what's truly after Ragnarok? What’s the next cycle? Where will we go? What’s the new afterlife going to look like?
Or what if the Norns were like, nah, actually this was just a fantasy created from someone’s coma.”
Alex rolled her dual-colored eyes. “Not the coma thing! That trope sucks.”
“It does, but it’s a possibility. You never know!”
“The universe has such lazy writing then,” She said, “Whatever it is, I don’t want to find out anytime soon.”
“Me neither,” Magnus agreed.
They both settled back into a comfortable silence.
Magnus piped up again. “What if we didn’t go to Valhalla?”
Alex winced, like she was physically wounded.
“I... don’t know. That’s not something I want to even consider. I don’t want to think about it.” Please don’t make me think about an afterlife without you.
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“'Tis all good.”
Magnus scratched the back of his head.
“I’m sorry for rambling so much.”
“Don’t apologize. I asked for it.”
“True, you did. You should know by now not to ask what I’m thinking about.”
“I do, but it bothered me seeing your brain work too hard. I could see the smoke coming out of your ears.” She twirled her finger by her temple. Cuckoo.
“Pfft.”
They both went quiet for a while. Magnus flopped back down on the blanket. The only thing that could be heard was the crackling of the dwindling fire and the screams of the cicadas.
“Hey, Alex?” Magnus croaked, pulling Alex out of her trance.
Alex’s eyes opened. “Yeah?”
“I just want to say, um... I’m glad I got to meet you in this afterlife,” He said softly, like someone would overhear them, “And I hope we can meet in the next one too.”
It was Alex’s turn to blush. Sap. Alex felt around for Magnus’ hand. It still amazed her how warm he was.
A grin broke out on his face, like he just won the lottery by getting to hold her hand. Magus pulled their interlocked hands up to his lips, kissing the back of Alex’s knuckles gently.
Alex never wanted to be without that smile. Any afterlife seemed bleak without it.
“I’d like to find you there too.”