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fields of asphodel - Thetis - October 11, 2013
The underworld saw no progress: time was halted, psyche was halted, and all ageing and changing halted. This had been the most striking of observations. To be delivered from the breast of the greatest change that would ever rock the Nereides into changelessness had been such a shock that for what felt like the breadth of several days, she had reeled. But there were no days in the underworld, no passing sun to mark the diurnal hours, no rising moon and goddess to greet her with loving, encircling arms. She was alone, deposited into the belly of Hades without direction, for Hermes' guiding hand was reserved for human mortals, and not the poor, enfeebled beasts of Earth. It was just as well; she had served only the goddess of the moon (the triumvirate of Hecate, Artemis, and Selene, though she knew not their names) and the mother Sea.
Thetis knew only wandering in the underworld. She was unaware she found herself in the wolfish form of the Asphodel Meadows, her spirit neither raised to the glory of Elysium nor damned to the Fields of Punishment. She was in all things neutral; her aspirations in life were snuffed out as meaningless here. Her status as High Priestess afforded no attention or recognition here. She had met with others departed, to no great effect: Doris and Nereus, her parents, had been the only important ones, although she had snubbed her mortal father. He was but a consort for the goddess that had made Thetis' spirit, and the Sea that had formed her muscles and her flesh and lent itself to her blood. Despite Aktaie's reforms to the pack's structure, Thetis knew this wholly.
And so she spent her endless time wandering aimlessly across the boundless expanse of Asphodel without anything to occupy her, and her boredom was great. She wanted for nothing: no food passed her lips to give solace to her ever-heavy stomach, no water down her throat could quench the thirst of death. Exercise was unnecessary, though she sought it anyway, but even running for hours at a flat-out pace could not tire her bones. She was as unchanging as the landscape and every other soul she passed, and in this way her afterlife slowly rolled by. The Amazon was put in a place worse than hell, for there was nothing that could shake her so greatly as a lack of progress, of consequence, and the inability to direct her own course.
Imagine, then, the woman's glee when she walked no longer on ashen floors but on real ground, where paws could grip soil and feel the brush of grass, though it was nothing more than a faint imitation of life's own feeling. Imagine how she had gazed up at her mother moon, in the absence of the Sea, and whispered prayers of gratitude and devotion all through the night and into the glorious dawn of the next day. Thetis Nereides had been delivered from her suffering into Elysium, finally recognized for the passion she had pursued her beliefs with and recognized for her spiritual prowess. The goddess had made a mistake in placing her in Asphodel and had brought her now to where she deserved to be.
She was the picture of dark-furred Amazonian beauty, as she had been in life, unmarred by the jaws of the bear (Sos hissed her mind) that had stolen it all from her, and she was ready to be joined with her goddess and the Sea at last, to be chronicled as a great Nereides siren in the history of her blood, and to see at last her sisters who had gone before her. They would tell her she had been right, and that Aktaie had steered them all wrong. So she firmly believed, as she stepped across the frosty morning grass of the Park in all her translucent, phantasmal glory.