chakravanti.

acarya

We could say: it is as before, but that would have to be a lie. There was no before. Richard has no memory of how long it took him to die, how long it was before he found himself in the darkness that became a wood that became the land leading to a lifeless sea. He has no memory, now. He is only dying again, and he is alone. The only others here are dead spirits. His acarya is gone. The torch is gone. He feels darkness, he feels cold, and then he feels nothing.

There is a blessing in this, though: for him, upon waking, there is no memory, there is no panicked waiting. The darkness comes with the cold, and then there is light and warmth and he finds his heart -- oh! his heart! -- is pounding rapidly, frantically, like a child bouncing off the walls. Sensation comes back so forcefully after such abstinence that it's almost painful, and it's certainly overwhelming. Things have color again, things have light and movement and noise isn't flattened out. Oh, god, this is what it is. This is what life is.

At first it's all a blur, and he can't see anything clearly or recognize voices or understand where exactly on his body he's being touch. Smell clarifies first, even when his eyes are begging for the merciful dark and his body is flinching and everything is too noisy to be bearable. He can smell something smoky in the air, sweet and botanical but touched by fire. It's just a remnant, though, and in the fresh air cutting through it there is the sea with all its salt, teeming with so many forms of life that they have not been counted since the word science was coined, will not all be counted by the time Richard truly returns to the Wheel. Oh: he smells food. Enough food that he can't even tell what kind yet, it's just food and his stomach is reacting to this before he can, it's as gleeful and demanding as his heart.

Before he quite processes the pressure he feels, or knows which direction his head and feet are pointing, he can smell Eleanor. Funny how you don't know that you recognize someone's smell like that, til one day you miss it, one day you've gone without it and then it's there again in a piece of clothing or, more blessedly, the real person close again. That's Eleanor. Not perfume but the soap she uses, which is not the same as the soap he's brought and left in the 'guest' bathroom at her house, and whatever it is she puts in her hair, and a bit of the incense lingering on her hair and clothes and laundry detergent and softener that both their clothes smell like sometimes because she is totally cool with him doing laundry at her house, why wouldn't she be.

Touch next. Eleanor with her arms around him, and that must be her throat where his head is resting because he can feel her pulse against his temple, the two beats blending. Her palm on his crown, her other arm around his shoulders. She's holding him tight; he knows she's stronger than she looks, right now she seems stronger than she really is. His head is pointed up, his feet are pointed toward a wall, so he's... sitting up, on the living room rug. Something light and ticklish against his legs and arms and his clothing stuck to him with sweat, a spot of dried blood on his inner elbow where the second needle went in, the wake-up call, whatever it was, feeling clean despite the blood because it is also touched with Sunitha's magic.

Sight comes. He's in Sunitha's living room, Eleanor holding him with her chin atop his head because his body isn't quite... reacting yet, isn't responding, isn't listening to his instructions yet, he knows he'd fall over if she let him go. Sunitha is beside them, and she -- like Richard and Eleanor -- still wears a tilak, though marred by sweat on her brow. He's surrounded by flowers. Big yellow ones, red ones, deep green waxy leaves, a thousand petals in each blossom, orange ones like fire, laid around him like they were laid around Brahma and Shiva upstairs. He can smell them, too, realizes that's where some of the sweetness in the air has been coming from. The windows are all open, breezes flowing through, taking out the incense and bringing in the night air.

Oh god, the voices. Coming from outside the French doors between this half of the house and the other, voices with unseen owners, but many of them. Men and women, even children, a house packed to the gills with other human beings, even if it's just Sunitha and Eleanor and Richard here in the parlor. All of them have sweat on their brow, though Sunitha seems the calmest, the most at ease, the guide through this ordeal.

Eleanor is talking, though. Language is returning. She is just saying his name. Nothing else, really. Nothing explicable. Just

Richard. oh, Richard.

She sounds so proud of him. Or maybe -- maybe something other than pride. It feels so shared, something between the two of them unlike anything else, though not better or worse or closer or more intimate or harsher or more visceral, just... its own. And it feels like relief. And it feels like survival, and something else he's so rarely, if ever, heard in Eleanor's voice it's hard to name it at first.

It's joy.

Sunitha is rubbing his back, despite his shirt sticking to his skin from copious sweat. She has been waiting for his eyes to focus, for his mouth to stop being so slack, for his pulse under her fingers at his wrist to slow down a bit. She sees him reacting to sounds, words, and meets his eyes, seeing no panic in his.

"You must wash," she tells him, with true kindness, with real gentleness. Her eyes flick up to Eleanor. "You must both wash. Dress in new clothes. I will be close if you are weak."

And with that, she begins to rise from her knees to her bare feet, to help them up, to guide them up the stairs to get cleaned up, even though her home seems filled to overflowing with party guests at the moment.

Richard Levasseur

It all happens so fast.

Eleanor vanishing. His panic, his terror, all those warnings coming back to him: Oblivion is close, Oblivion haunts our every step, Entropy will draw Oblivion, Oblivion will destroy your soul forever. He doesn't know where she is, he doesn't know what happened to her, he doesn't know what will become of her or himself and --

-- and he finds her.

He didn't know he had it in himself to do that. He thought maybe he could, he hoped maybe he could, but the truth is he's never really had to work like this. Never really had to cast, to work magic, to work his will under such pressure, in such circumstances, utterly without the guiding hand of his acarya.

He can, though. He knows that about himself now.

And he knows, also:

what it feels like to die. Again. To die out of the world of shadows, this time without the luxury of knowing it is his turn, without the luxury of a day and a night and a week and a month of psychoemotional preparation. To die the way all humans really die in the, suddenly and unexpectedly, no room for discussion.

Something cold in his veins.

The lights go out.

--

And then:

sensation. That is the first thing to return. It returns so utterly, so forcefully. Comes back to him from the inside out. The thunder of his heart, the way it thrashes in his chest. His alveoli inflating, popping open with that first ragged gasp. His eyes open but there is no vision, it's all a blur, he can't focus yet. Everything is light and shapes and it's all too bright too much too close too loud.

There is so much noise. Nothing muffles his ears. Nothing could have prepared him for this. He wants to put his hands over his ears or shut his eyes or something but it's too much for him, he's too weak, he's upright --

he's upright?

-- well, he's semi-upright, and that's only because he is being held. Oh, someone is holding him, and it smells so familiar, it smells like Eleanor. That's Eleanor, his acarya. He knows; he found her. He found her with his mind and now he's really found her and he is relieved, relieved, he closes his eyes and those frantic irregular pulls of breath turn into actual breathing. There are flowers everywhere. There are voices everywhere. He doesn't know how much of that is real, but he does know it's all just too much for him right now and it's nice to just be held.

It's nice to just rest a while, exhausted by his passage.

--

Someone is rubbing his back. He opens his eyes again. His cheek is resting against Eleanor's upper chest, her shoulder. His hair is soaked in sweat and so is his back. He should be ashamed, except then he realizes no he shouldn't be. So he's not. He blinks once, slowly, as his eyes focus.

You must wash, says Sunitha, ferrywoman of the dead, deliverer of the reborn. Dress in new clothes. He supposes there's something ritualistic about that too. The incense is gone and it smells like food. The heavy, suffocating, sepulchral quality to the air has vanished. The house feels alive again.

He feels alive again. Weak, and trembling, and shaky in every joint: but alive.

Sunitha rises and so Richard tries to rise as well. He puts a hand on the floor and there are a few false starts. A few attempts that go nowhere, a few more that end in him tumbling bonelessly down again. Hands reach out to help him. Sunitha's perhaps. He has a handful of her sari in his hand, he pulls him up with her strength. She doesn't mind. She is patient, and kind. He sways a little, he almost goes down again, and then

he manages. He keeps his balance. He takes a step, and another. He reaches out. He takes, if it is there for him to take, Eleanor's hand.

acarya

Sunitha is stable, is strong. She helps him rise, and Eleanor too, though he can tell that Eleanor is a bit shaky as well, can tell that Sunitha is very tired, has drained much of her own power tonight. They are all worn out from their work this evening. But they all rise, and go to the stairs slowly, shufflingly. Sunitha walks behind them, picking up the hem of her sari, as they slowly ascend to the upper floor.

And Eleanor holds his hand as they go. Eleanor is smiling, wan and exhausted but smiling, still, with that same joy.

--

Upstairs, Sunitha makes sure they can both stand under their own power without tipping over before she leaves them. The hot water heater pumps gallons onto each of them in separate bathrooms, warm and soaking.

In the shower near her own room, Eleanor sits on the floor of the tub for a while. She finds herself crying into her palms out of nowhere, but they aren't the wracking, despairing tears that seem to be killing her. She just weeps, cathartic and strange and grateful and yes, sad too. When she leaves the water she dries herself, combs and braids her hair, walks to the bedroom and dresses in new, clean, fresh clothes. She inhales their scent when she picks them up, holding the cloth to her face, feeling the softness and smelling the detergent and softener all together. She smells her own skin for no reason. She runs her hands over her arms and her breasts and belly and her knees and she adores her toes, wraps them in her palms for a while and holds on, warming them with her palms, because she's warm now.

--

The truth is, Sunitha is washed and clean and downstairs again even before Eleanor is. And Eleanor, even with the tears, is out before Richard is. And when he leaves his shower, when he is dressed again, the upstairs is quiet,

and someone is laughing downstairs.

Richard Levasseur

Water never felt so good in his life -- nevermind that he spent a great deal of that life in varying forms of water. It's never felt this pure, this utter, this hot, this drenching.

He stands there in the shower for a very, very long time. He soaps and scrubs with strengthless hands, slowly and limply, and when he is done he simply ... stands there. Lets the water pour over him, over his head and through his hair, over his shoulders and down his back. Sometimes he turns and gives another angle of his body to the water. Sometimes he places his hands against the tile and leans there, head hanging.

Eventually his skin flushes pink. Eventually his fingertips shrivel. Eventually his skin attains a new, transcendant numbness, beaten past sensitivity by the unending spray. Eventually -- finally -- he turns the water off in two deliberate cranks.

His body feels heavy and new. He is aware of it in ways he doesn't remember being aware of it before, its dimensions and capabilities, its motion and cohesiveness. He dries himself on the softest towels he has ever touched and dresses himself in the cleanest clothes he has ever worn, and everything is the most, is the maximum, is the best, because everything is real, and he is alive.

The upstairs is quiet. Someone laughs downstairs. He listens, head tilted, trying to place the voice. It sounds like there's a party down there. For him? For life. He puts his hand on the banister -- weak still, but it's a better sort of weakness; that sort of bone-deep, satisfied weakness that comes after a thorough exertion. Step by step he descends the stairs, feet bare, hair wet.

acarya

The water eventually cools. Enough to feel lukewarm, enough to make him aware that if he stays much longer it will get cold indeed. But he shrivels up and he pinks and then he turns the water off. By now his senses have cleared, have learned how to modulate the information coming at him a bit better. The weakness and wooziness have left, the nausea and headache from dying and returning have abated. Sunitha's magic is powerful indeed, and she brought him back from the very brink of death; he can still feel the touch of it inside of him, shadowy but very clean, reverent and... sort of homey. He can feel himself entirely, feel everything entirely,

and this is a gift. This is the gift of the sojourn, the diksha, the agama te.

When he comes down the stairs, the doors have all been thrown open, including the ones to the front and back porch. Air moves freely through. The living room has been cleaned, the flowers gathered and tossed into the world, littering the porches, petals dancing in the breeze. The room where he died has taken on the overflow of people. There's so many of them, young and old, but all Awake or 'consors', as Eleanor calls them. Then there are children, young enough to not know the difference or old enough to be consors of a kind themselves. It's very late but they are allowed to stay up, they are playing and sneaking around.

One of them, a little girl with dark hair and large, dark eyes, stops in front of the stairs. She is wearing a patterned dress and gold necklace, gold earrings, gold charm in her hair, tiny bindi mark between her brows. She sees him and gives an excited shriek, running into the kitchen, and that is when adults and others start coming into the main hallway. That is when Sunitha and Eleanor come to the foot of the stairs, Sunitha in red and gold wearing a much simpler tilak only on her brow now, Eleanor dressed in a knee-length, short-sleeved A-line dress, dark blue with tiny flowers on it, like you might see someone wearing with saddle shoes, dancing in the fifties. But Eleanor is barefoot. Most people are, shoes crowded by the door.

People start clapping. Even the ones clad all in black who never smile, who bring a darkness with them and around them reminiscent of the shadowlands. They begin clapping, grinning up at him, as he comes down. And when he reaches the floor, Eleanor hugs him.

Richard Levasseur

It is only when they all turn to watch him coming down the stairs, when they all smile at him, when they all start clapping and grinning and cheering that Richard realizes -- this is for him. This is all for him.

Silly Richard.

He breaks into a grin himself. He comes down the steps a little faster, still careful with those new feet of his. He gains the ground and there's a little girl there, one that shrieks with sheer joy and delight and maybe just a little bit of overtiredness because good god what hour is it before running into the kitchen. Richard laughs, then: bursts with it, a cloudburst of open happiness. He is still laughing when Eleanor comes to him

and hugs him

which is something she almost never never never does. Which isn't to say she's cold or distant. Just reserved. Between the two of them, he's so much more likely to hug, to jump, to dance, to use his body to express his mind.

She hugs him now, though. And he, laughing, throws his long arms around her and hugs her back very, very tightly. It is too noisy and there are too many people for him to say what is in him, but perhaps that hug alone conveys some of the gratitude, and relief, and joy, and love that fills that happy kind heart of his.

acarya

She hugs him so unreservedly, despite the crowd of people, many of whom know her... professionally. Only not as lawyers or judges, of course. She hugs him like she can't help it, like she doesn't think of it, and that is something Eleanor never does. Not even at her worst, on her worst day, in her bleakest hour. She embraces him wholeheartedly, squeezing him even though her head is roughly eye-level with his solar plexus, and he squeezes her right back. Both of them have wet hair. Both of them are new and clean and scrubbed and... alive again. An hour ago, they weren't.

Many people come around him even after Eleanor steps back, even after she is just a hand-hold away. They are clapping him on the back and shaking his hand and some say simply welcome and some issue blessings in various languages, but he is touched and the room actually smells a little because there's so many people crammed in here but it's all a lively, welcome smell after the lifelessness and horror of the shadowlands.

The kitchen is where he is half-guided. There's flowers laid out even here, on the table and counters and windowsills. Music is playing, and someone turns it up. It's a potluck: the dishes don't match, there's everything from soda to wine to fine scotch, there's pitchers of clear water in every corner, there's dal and there's an eggplant casserole and a huge fruit salad and platters of cupcakes and chips-and-dip and there's even meat and steak, because... well. Potluck. And Sunitha may have her beliefs, but this party is not for her. There's those soft iced sugar cookies from Lofthouse and baklava and deviled eggs and sushi and veggie platters and hummus and god, it's hard to see just how much food is here because everyone brought something.

Someone -- Eleanor -- presses a cup of water into Richard's hands, and then a small bowl of rice. "Eat this," she says quietly, in between greetings with other people. "Make sure you can keep that down before you have anything else, okay?"

She looks at him, eyebrows up a bit, to make sure he's listening.

Richard Levasseur

Which just makes him laugh again. And hug her again, unreservedly as she did moments ago only -- this is not rare for him. This is Richard, and he is her happy, bright, excessively tall, golden apprentice, and his long arm is around her and he hugs her against his side and there's a faint dampness up at the top of his shirt where his hair is still dripping onto his collar.

"I promise I won't throw up," he says, his tone gently teasing. He takes the small bowl of rice. It is so small in his big hand, and he wolfs it down, and all the while people around them are recognizing him and welcoming him and touching him and blessing him. It is a birthday party, and it is a welcome-home party, and the very fact that they threw it for him,

that his acarya and her friend had enough faith in his resurrection that they invited so many people for him,

touches him more deeply than he can process right now. He finishes the rice; he lifts the bowl all triumphantly, seizes it and thrusts it up into the air like a medal or a trophy or something and there is laughter, there are a few scattered pockets of joking applause.

He is not an arrogant man, though, not even in jest, and he is not really a showman either. He raises his hands in that universal okay, okay gesture, still smiling, still chewing, and he sets the emptied bowl down

to begin filling it with food. Just fruit right now, though he's ravenous. He doesn't want to throw up, after all. "Where did all these people come from?" he asks Eleanor as he fills his bowl.

acarya

They hug this time with a bit of water sloshing and a bowl of rice held between, then to the side. Eleanor huffs a breath out through her nostrils. She pats his back, and lets him have the rice, and she knows how hungry he is because, frankly, she's been there. And because she's starving, too.

But there is rice. And eggplant parmesan and tofu and dal and all kinds of things for everyone to eat. Eleanor just smiles. "All over. The ones who could get here. I know many. Sunitha knows more. At least four people here were her apprentices at once point in their lives. The little girl who saw you coming downstairs is her godchild, in a manner of speaking. Some of them are not Euthanatoi but are followers of a Craft, or they are sorcerers and pychics, not fully awakened." She gives a single-shouldered shrug. "They are just people we know. Many of whom have been where you were."

Eleanor's smile is surprisingly warm. "We're all just here to celebrate."

Richard Levasseur

He has a palm full of fruit on the night of his death and rebirth. There is something about that that seems like it should be symbolic. An idol of the divine, here in this moment. There is something about that that is symbolic, and divine, and beautiful, but then everything about this moment is beautiful. Everything about this kitchen, this house, its mistress, the party, its people, his acarya, her smile

is beautiful.

And he smiles back at her. He is so happy; his heart is so full. "We are," he says, and that smile breaks into a grin, and he holds his free hand out to her. She's held her hand to him over and over again. Quite literally led him through the valley of the shadow, where he feared no evil; only the prospect of being alone.

"Come on," he says, laughing. "I want to meet all your friends. All of them."

acarya

He's so happy. And maybe later, on the way home or when they're back in her house some night, they'll talk about other things -- her own initiation rites, perhaps. Or the tears she found herself overwhelmed by when she came back, though she's not sure she could explain those, share them somehow. These things are personal. She is glad she can share even this much with him, with anyone.

Richard holds out his hand this time. Eleanor takes it, this time. He says what he says, and she just smiles, squeezes. "You go. I'm going to get a scotch. Introduce yourself. You're one of us now." Still her apprentice. But a full member of the Tradition, just like all the other Euthanatoi here.

Like the one in the corner doing nothing but drinking 20-ounce Red Bulls and eating Ruffles. Weird, since he's about as thin as a stick. Like the people eat sitting on cushions or leaning against counters or in the living room or hanging out on the steps. Like the father in slacks and button-down shirt whose little girl is standing on his feet, holding his hands, trying to climb up his legs to flip over, which she does again and again, flush-faced and breathless, while he carries on a conversation to the side. Eleanor isn't kidding. She squeezes his hand but goes to get her drink, and it's up to Richard to ---

well, not really.

Most people know each other already, but most of them go out of their way to talk to Richard as soon as Eleanor leaves his side, to ask him about... everything, really. From school to swimming to his other studies. Some ask what he saw on the other side, others want to know his favorite food. Mostly, they converse about life on this side. They introduce children with glassy, exhausted eyes. They insist he try this plum wine. He won't stop talking about the cooking classes he takes and how it's like, sometimes the only thing that like, you know, makes him feel like the universe is in order, if that makes sense? Here, I brought this sushi you have to be totally honest about it or else I won't learn anything. She is unnerved by kids, she says, watching one playing, she can't believe they let kids come to this, it's weird -- Jesus, I'm sorry, this is your party. I don't mean to be downer. How'd you meet Ms. Yates?

Red Bull Guy is a conspiracy theorist who is twitchy about so many of them being in one place at one time making so much noise.

Doctor Gupta has a million questions about Richard's health and physiology pre-, during, and post-Olympic career.

Wilhemina-call-me-Mina knows a lot more than Eleanor does about the spirit world. She explains a few things, if Richard asks: what a ghost's 'Shadow' is, how Oblivion and the Great Unmaking are sort of but not entirely the same thing, but maybe it's more like Oblivion itself is a yin-yang: it has its active destructive force, the dark one, and the passive destructive force, the white, which merely waits, and it is the passive Oblivion that the Euthanatoi call the Great Unmaking, counter to the active Oblivion that -- according to Mina -- some creatures in the world call the 'Great Serpent', or the 'Wyrm', or any number of names, like any devil.

Some are Eleanor's friends, or Sunitha's, or are mere acquaintances, or are new themselves, or are here with a friend. Some are consors. One explains that she's a psychic, a firestarter, that Red Bull Guy saved her life and her sanity when he found her. She knows he's kind of nuts, but if you knew what he'd been through...

But even those who are not Euthanatoi understand what happened here tonight. A death. A resurrection. A rebirth. These things have meaning. These things must be marked. And the new Chakravanti must be welcomed, for he is one of them now.