#persophone

(The dance he “once” did)

Devastated 😭

"To Be Loved, Is To Be Changed" "8x8", Gouache on Cold Press.

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Poseidon: Hey... You're hiding something, that smile is giving it away.

Ares: Okay well... First you can't really move a lot right?

Poseidon: I can, but it hurts a lot.

Ares: Awesome a challenge.

Poseidon (confused): What?

Ares: Nothing, nothing... So remember how Odysseus used your weapon to stab you and stab you and stab you?

Poseidon: Yeah.

Ares: And his eyes were red?

Poseidon sighed.

Poseidon: Yes, I don't need a reminder, Hades already rubbed it in my face that he, Hermes and Athena helped that shitty human!

Ares: Funny story, there was a fourth God with them, a powerful God, one who can go into battle and take down every many attacking him, a man— It was me. I was the one who gave him the strength to pick up the trident and stab you.

Poseidon: You... WHAT?!

Ares: Try to fight me, bitch!

Ares ran off cackling like a hyena. Poseidon weakly stood up and tried to run but fell to the ground at first. He staggered to his feet, clutching his healing stomach.

Poseidon: Get back here you waste of my brothers seed!

Poseidon weakly chased after the man, but Ares kept a good distance enjoying this melee.

The afterlife is a beautiful place, watched over by the gods of the underworld. Within it there are shining cities bathed in eternal night, massive deserts of white sand below a black sky, palaces so large towns can fit inside them. But there are a few people who reject this world, those who were so devoted to one religion in their life, most often Christianity, that they reject this world, and refuse to believe they're in an afterlife that contradicts their faith.

For anyone whose devoutly religious it's hard for them to deal with learning their idea of religion isn't true once they die. When they're woken up, and instead of seeing the God they worshiped in life, they see Charon, or Anibus, or Xolotl, a lot of people are very automatically shocked. For most religious people it takes them a few decades to give up certain rituals or beliefs even when by nature of being in the afterlife, they know those rituals aren't true. And in a more neutral way, religious communities can live on even in an afterlife that contradicts them, as their rituals and philosophy can still bring value to some souls.

However. There is a darker path this tends to go down. A few extremely devout people, mostly Christians, entirely reject their afterlives due to them not matching with their expectations. These people, despite having the freedom to do what they want to do, retreat into the most extreme versions of the faith they took on in life. These aren't people who are punished in the afterlife, they didn't do enough bad to end up somewhere like that, but their beliefs leaf them to punish themselves.

At the edges of the afterlife, far from the grand cities and shining rivers, there are places that look almost like the mortal world's convents and monasteries. Those who've sequestered themselves there refuse interaction with anyone else in the afterlife, and don't take part in the festivals, or the food, or the entertainment that's available to the dead, most of them exploiting the fact that their bodies need no food and sleep and can feel pain without the possibility of death to torment themselves in a way they never could in life.

The beliefs of these cults vary. But at least amoung those of them who are Christian they tend to belive that they're in their religion's limbo or purgatory, but that there's some way out if they torment themselves and choose suffering for themselves enough. Most of them reject the gods of the afterlife, calling them devils as they would during their time on earth. And since they're already dead their leadership has remained mostly steady throughout the years. Of course, the belief are different for cults that come from other religions, but the practice of rejecting the afterlife is the same.

There's something sad about it, they have a world of rest and of pleasure before them, but because of what they carry from their life, they reject it. They're a small minority of souls in the afterlife but it's still disturbing for anyone whose there, and especially for those who have loved ones in them. There are people in the afterlife who are trying to contact their freinds, their parents, their children, to try to get them to leave. Former monks and preists and nuns will go to their brothers and sisters trying to beg them into understanding it's over. The gods of the underworld can only intervene so much, as these souls harm few other then themselves. The few times the gods have intervened, such as when persephone attempted to come to one of the convents to sway the people stuck there into choosing freedom, they just became more afraid, thinking they were being seduced by the devil.

It's especially sad as people who could contribute to the afterlife's society, great men and women who should be honored after their death, are often still trapped there. Joan of Arc spent three centuries in a convent on the edge of the river Styx before xe finally agreed to join Valhalla as xyr soul was offered when xe had originally died. C.S. Lewis is still trapped in a compound, anonymous and unable to write, still believing he's in purgatory, his friend Tolkien (whose currently a bard in Hel's court) being the only person who still writes to him.

obrigada!!

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