His Name Was Alexander

HEPHAESTION

This is how it ends for me, with my weary body resting on a majestic wooden pyre, surrounded by golden flames and their crimson outlines, the glow enveloping me as the fire devours what is left, but I can't feel it, not anymore. I am but a ghost, I no longer have a voice. I can't scream anymore, I can't talk anymore, I can't touch his sunshine-blond locks, now cut short in his grief, anymore. I can't feel them slide through my fingers. Spirits have no voice, I said it myself, otherwise I would draw him close as I have already done thousands of times, my face next to his, and I would say to him: Don't cry for me, don't feel guilty, I am at peace. 

But I would also say: You are a king, you must behave like one.

It's true that I am at peace, my corpse is being consumed by the fire's ravenous hunger, feeding on it more and more until there is nothing left but ashes that soar over the skies of Babylon. Just like the snow coming in the cold months, delivered by the wind's incessant blowing. My spirit is getting weaker, I can sense it. I can't be by his side anymore, I cannot comfort him with my presence, now an invisible one, but one he can still feel, I just know it. I can see it in his warm brown eyes, the pain that my death caused him, and the tears he cried over my still body, silent like that of a newborn that hasn't yet issued its first wail. I could feel them fall from his eyes, warm, salty tears, tears of pain and anger at not being able to bid me goodbye.

I know very well how he is, his restless and ever unyielding soul. The kind of passion he always dedicated to everything he did, the same one that rubbed off on all of us, and even though many of us didn't believe at first, Alexander never stopped doing it. He always believed in his dream, that dream of saving and unifying all the populations of the world, of being a hero like Heracles, Achilles and Jason before him.

He loved Homer's works and, like Achilles, he loved glory but was condemned because of his own greatness, a man born to be the best, the future king of Macedon. Now, however, he is nothing more than a man consumed by his own pain, unable to react to his loss. Of me. I loved him like one would love a friend, a brother, a lover. Hephaestion and Alexander, just like Patroclus and Achilles, and just like Patroclus I would have done anything to stay beside him, but the gods will not allow me to live further.

Yet why should we blame them, in the end? The fault resides in myself, and myself only. My outbursts, my restlessness and my greed brought me here. Burning on a pyre, observing in silence while Alexander shuts down and the flames burn brighter, and there's nothing left of me. Useless, voiceless ashes. I have so much to tell him, I can now only wait for him to join me, and I know it's going to happen soon, I can smell it in the air. The stench of Death hanging off him, from which I want to protect, but I can't.

I am but a ghost. 

This book is also available on Amazon, but I intend to publish a few chapters here. If you like it, it is also available on Kindle Unlimited.