Achilles, Best of the Greeks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
refusetofight) wrote2024-10-08 06:59 pm
refusetofight) wrote2024-10-08 06:59 pm
For @messageforyou
The palace at Skyros is only a loose sketch; Achilles dreaming memory can only paint it in sparing detail after so many years. The shapes and colors describe the place as much as Achilles’ emotions: The palace itself is washed out and bland, but the sunny rocks, the glittering sea, and the endless horizon just beyond are vibrant, tantalizing with the lure of fateful heroism.
It felt like a prison after the freedom of his bright, sunny youth on Phthia and his adventures on Mount Pelion. He was bored, impatient, but respected his mother’s wishes even as he resented them.
The dream palace is hollow and quiet. Lycomedes’ table is empty. His daughters’ looms are left abandoned. Achilles imagines the real Skyros must be in the same sorry state; he left Deidamia unwed and Lycomedes had no sons to defend his meager kingdom.
Achilles walks the halls and thumbs the shells encircling his wrist. He has no dream guide this time, but he came here on his own instincts: visit a memory both he and Pyrrhus share. Eventually, he finds an abandoned lyre and settles to play in a central courtyard where plucked notes echo hauntingly between colonnades—the only sound in the palace other than the sigh of the sea.
It felt like a prison after the freedom of his bright, sunny youth on Phthia and his adventures on Mount Pelion. He was bored, impatient, but respected his mother’s wishes even as he resented them.
The dream palace is hollow and quiet. Lycomedes’ table is empty. His daughters’ looms are left abandoned. Achilles imagines the real Skyros must be in the same sorry state; he left Deidamia unwed and Lycomedes had no sons to defend his meager kingdom.
Achilles walks the halls and thumbs the shells encircling his wrist. He has no dream guide this time, but he came here on his own instincts: visit a memory both he and Pyrrhus share. Eventually, he finds an abandoned lyre and settles to play in a central courtyard where plucked notes echo hauntingly between colonnades—the only sound in the palace other than the sigh of the sea.
no subject
The happy cloud’s tongue lapping at his fingers pulls Achilles away from his thoughts. He sighs and gives the dog a grudging smile.
“And you.” The dog’s ears perk and its head cocks when it’s addressed. It ceases its smiling panting to look comically serious for a moment. “You stay here and keep him company while he sleeps, won’t you?”
The dog blinks, considering, then sneezes and resumes excited panting before scampering up into the sketch of Lycomedes’ palace. It assumes a place on the stone steps, watchful and waiting.
“Good pup,” Achilles says with a grateful nod before stepping into the inky, black void that precedes his own wakefulness.