A Private Funeral

[pirateangelbaby]

Blue-gray waves lap at the gravelly shore of the sea, glinting with the last glimpse of red sunset as the skies darken with twilight, strange stars tracing out unfamiliar constellations in the blackness above.

It's not the same as home, the skies too dark without the glow of Asgard's nebula to illuminate the night, but perhaps that's for the best. In this darkness, Thor can almost pretend that the Great Waterfall lies just beyond the range of his sight, carrying endless waves over the edge of the world into the void.

A small wooden ship rests on the beach, only large enough for one warrior rather than the three it represents, but he has little in the way of resources and the Warriors Three have long traveled as one company. Perhaps it's fitting that they should be carried to the golden hall of Valhalla the same way. Their grave goods lie together, a small offering of blades and armor, the closest to his friends' favored arms as he could find, swathed in silks of black, red, and blue.

It doesn't feel like enough. But their bodies burned with Asgard itself, and Thor has nothing else of theirs to send to the sea and stars. It will have to do.

A small stone-circled fire burns a little further up the beach, accompanied by a pair of camp chairs and a small cooler of ale, for after the burning. Across the arms of one chair rests a bow, and an arrow properly prepared to carry flame.

The Warriors Three deserve far more than this, but Thor is not certain he could bear to hold such a massive burning for all those who were lost, not if he is to be the strong king that Asgard needs in these uncertain days. Just the sumbel aboard the Statesman in the week after Ragnarok had been difficult enough, as those who remained had moved from shock to grief, grasping at what little tradition they could uphold to ease the pain.

No, Thor cannot grieve in front of them, not when he must be the king. But he is not entirely without friends, and for those... for her... he can still be Thor, instead. No matter how little she remembers what she's lost, just yet. She will. And he would not deprive her of this chance to say goodbye, too.

Comments

[lady_sif]

Sif stands ankle-deep in the water of the little bay where she first arrived in the Nexus, silhouetted against the fading sun as the stars slowly wheel overhead. It is appropriate, then, that their friends be laid to rest here, as she's been told there was no ocean before she came, and even she knows that it isn't proper to lay the dead to rest without sending them out to sea for their final rites.

Her throat is tight with an unspeakable sadness, unable to reconcile her feelings with her memories. The grief she feels over the loss of Asgard is one that is both easy to understand and difficult to account for. She is untethered from that world, adrift in a universe without a place to truly belong, and what she remembers of Asgard is conceptual rather than concrete. The memories must be there, though, or it wouldn't hurt like this. Would it?

More than anything, she wishes she could recall the faces of the men whose tokens lie in the belly of their little canoe. They had been her friends for centuries, she is told, and she knows that it will hurt all the more when she does remember them and all the adventures they shared. Her fingers brush over the cloth and the weapons, and she wonders which one of them she was closest to? Which of them she would have gone to for advice, or who came to her when they needed an ear or a shoulder? Did they know her secrets, and she theirs? Would tokens representing her be arranged in this boat if she'd been on Asgard instead of some unknown realm forgetting herself?

She isn't sure if she's ready to say goodbye while she still doesn't completely grasp what she's lost, but she looks to Thor where he stands across from her and nods. "I suppose it's time," she says somewhat haltingly, grasping the gunwale. Together they'll push the little ship off when he gives the signal.