Title: A Father Remembered
Plane: Theros (pre-Godsend)
Prompt: It was odd to be in a room full of people who all seemed to look up to my dad like he was some kind of hero. A part of me wanted to see him through their eyes just for a moment. I tried to picture him as…
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Characters (in order of appearance): OCs
Word Count: 500
It was odd to be in a room full of people who all seemed to look up to my dad like he was some kind of hero. A part of me wanted to see him through their eyes just for a moment. I tried to picture him as that warrior who had led the charge against a horde of cyclopes besieging Akros. My father was a man of action who saved thousands with his cool head and the help of his phalanx. He was everyone's friend and known as the kindest soul. All I remembered was the man who was never there and only spoke a gruff hello when he was.
I felt unsure what to say or do as I stood there, watching the embers of my father's funeral pyre burn out. Ikaia, my father's best friend put a comforting hand on my shoulder. "Come," he said.
"And as it swept down, your father stabbed the bastard in the eye." I could hear Orrin say as we approached the group of men gathered.
I had ended up roped into a few drinks with my father's old phalanx, and felt so out of place doing it. I hardly knew these men. I remembered them as the friendly fellows who would call upon my father and give me a nice pat on the head, but that was it. Still I found that I was learning more about my father than I ever had when he was alive. He sounded so amazing. Why couldn't he have been that with me?
"I'll tell ya, kid," Orrin said, slugging back more of his drink," I don't know what I'll do without old Calix around."
"Probably drink himself to death," Ikaia muttered in my ear. "Fella once killed his whole family in a fit of madness brought on by Phenax. Your father's the only reason e never killed himself. And Barak over there? Lost his arm to a minotaur raid when he was a boy. No army would ever take him 'cept your father. Now, I fear he'll just be another poor homeless bastard like everyone told him he'd be. Old Rastus will probably turn back to whores again. He owes his son's life to your father. Kept him straight so his wife wouldn't leave him. And me, I guess this is the last you'll see of me. I figure with your father gone, my old crimes will catch up with me."
I said nothing, trying to determine if this was all true or just the drink, but Ikaia was never more serious. "We all saw our fair share of horrors, but your father was the one who always kept us going through it. He made us remember the people we had to come home to. You he never worried about. He knew you would be a fine man. It was the rest of us who needed a father like him."
In a strange way, my father's funeral gave me a better understanding of him.