Thereafter Chapter 2: Felipe
Felipe, the second Hero of Legend, goes on a self-made boot camp to keep his archery skills fresh when a familiar wind spirits him away.
[Content Warning: Some discussion of paparazzi and stalking-like behavior. Dementia and Alzheimers briefly alluded to.]
Chapter 2: Felipe
Felipe’s day had started with a lengthy hike in the rolling hills of north Mexico. Getting the helicopter to drop him in the apparent middle of nowhere at the ass-crack of dawn was one of those parts of this little tradition that felt way more necessary back when the teen magazines were acutely interested in his comings and goings. Sport journos could be pretty dogged in their pursuits, but it didn’t hold a candle to teen magazine paparazzi. Felipe’s mother had once opined that if “those terrible photographers” had spent their days on some actually worthwhile journalism the world would be better off. Felipe had secretly assumed she held and expressed that opinion because a gaggle of said terrible photographers had caught a snapshot of her in her bathrobe in an attempt to sneak a shot at Felipe leaving home en route to a training camp of some sort, or was it a dalliance? It was long ago, and Felipe had been in the situation many a time, so differentiating them was challenging.
It had been a mercy when the heartthrob hype died down some time into Felipe’s twenties, and had faded entirely now that he was solidly in this 30s, although Felipe also noticed that the sponsors grew less enthusiastic about him at the same time. There was, apparently, less money in his name now as a mere devilishly handsome adult, but that didn’t mean there was any. He was a multiple time Olympic medalist after all, and unlike those losers who relied on the support of the treacherous knee, he wasn’t slowing down, he wasn’t slowing down at all. As long as his back was strong and his eyes were keen he could keep hitting bullseyes until the day they put him in the ground. What Felipe did miss, however, was the attention. Sure, anywhere around championships and the Olympics he lived like a king, feasting on only the ripest, most enthusiastic fruit of the athlete’s villages, but outside of that, it felt like nobody cared. Well, nobody but his mama of course, who was still embarrassingly proud of her only son.
Felipe dried sweat from his golden brow. While he wasn’t getting old by any measure, he had to admit, the hike from the drop-off to his destination had grown longer throughout the years, although the distance stayed stubbornly consistent. If he had been proper rich, he wouldn’t have to take these precautions, he could have had a team of lawyers with NDAs and secluded islands all to himself, hell, even having an estate with grounds could have done wonders. Instead, he was here, in the sweatiest, dustiest, most unforgiving scrubland hills know to man. Not that there was no charm to the proceedings of course, the pinch of suffering did add some heroic significance to it all.
Once he spotted the first visible signs of the camp at the bottom of a nearby valley, Felipe took a water break. He was almost at his location, but that meant the middle of his toil, if not the warm-up. Heroic significance or no, Felipe thought to himself, after a few more years of this he’d just let the heli drop him off at the camp.
Camp Fly High, as Felipe had come to call it, wasn’t much of a camp. It was more like an obstacle course designed by an inveterate overachiever, part self-punishment, part testing the absolute limits of human ability. He had come up with it and designed it himself of course, paid some local boys that didn’t talk to press to set it up. It wasn’t what he’d call a wonder of engineering or anything, but the crates and rough plank scaffolds braved the elements quite admirably, and although the targets had faded considerably from the sun, Felipe didn’t really need the scoring indicators. The holes in the ostensible center of the things would do as for what to aim for.
Tired as he was, Felipe couldn’t help but be excited to start running the course. He loved running this thing, he loved the way the challenge of it was so different from the training he did on the clock. There was also, of course, what it reminded him of that time in his life when he was happiest and in the most danger by far. Even so, there were some things that needed to be done, the tedious maintenance of the place. Checking that no rot had set in into the wood and that no screws had rusted, unrolling and laying down the landing mats, brushing the worst of the sand and dusty earth that was covering the footholds. Back when he could afford it, Felipe was out here a lot more, but seeing as saving for retirement was starting to become a necessity, he’d have to cut back, which in addition to making him rustier, also meant that the rigging time grew longer.
Felipe felt himself vibrate with excitement as he readied up for the first run. In his right hand he clutched the bow. It was a shorter one than his competition bow, trading power for portability. In his left, nothing. He’d snatch the arrows from the course, firing each at their designated target while in some semblance of fall or flight. The countdown clock in his head rang out for start, and Felipe rushed into action.
The first arrow he snatched at the middle of a set of alternating inclined footholds placed at such a distance apart that he had to leap from one to the other. He nocked the arrow on the penultimate step and leaped for the next obstacle. Mid-leap, he fired the arrow at the target on the ground before landing on a box.
Back in his glory days he wouldn’t even sling the bow over his back before jumping at the wall with the heavy climbing rope, but now he took the extra second. Pulling the three arrows in the wall out was hard enough while ascending, no need to do it one-handed to boot. Felipe liked to tell himself that the three arrow trick-shot that came next wasn’t mandatory, but he was very much lying when he said so. Missing any of the three targets in the following leap was grounds for a DNF, and he knew it. Nocking up three arrows, Felipe prepared himself to leap.
The landing roll on the mat at the end went off without a hitch, although Felipe could not shake the feeling at least one of the arrows had gone wide. It was hard to be sure in mid-air, especially as he prepared to land without causing himself lasting damage. The climb up to the balance beam was starting to remind him that he’d been doing some pretty strenuous work up to this point, but Felipe did love the way he could just grit his teeth through it. Similarly, staying on the rounded beam was challenging, but it was nothing to the finale, the coup the grace.
As he neared the end of the beam, Felipe prepared for the wildest stunt of the bunch, and with the nagging feeling of being almost prepared for it that always arose, he launched himself off the beam to snatch the final arrow. Grabbing the arrow was only the first step, and as he twisted in the air to fly through the ring suspended over the dusty soil, he was already doing the mental math of how to nock the arrow fast enough to let the arrow fly at the mid-air target. This bit was difficult on the best of days, but Felipe was not going to let that stop him.
One glorious moment after letting the arrow fly, Felipe felt free. Totally free. Somewhere in his head he was aware that he was cowed by gravity, by the laws of men, of his dad getting forgetful enough that a doctor visit could conceivably bring some very scary news, by the whims of his sponsors, by a society built around profit, by the wrong ex talking to the wrong newspaper, by being so far removed from his best self. None of it mattered when he flew through the air, in that moment alone, he was entirely free.
The crash mat at the end of the course rose to meet him a little bit faster than he’d preferred, but at least the thick mat cushioned the worst of the impact. It still did remind him that he wasn’t his own youthful self any longer, though, no amount of padding would hide that reality.
Felipe was about to start preparing for his favorite part of the expedition to Camp Fly High. Granted, the intense high-flying arrow trick obstacle course was fun, he wouldn’t be trekking to the driest, most chafed armpit of all of Mexico if it wasn’t. What came after, however, was magical. Camping out under the stars this far from the light pollution was an incredible sight. Felipe loved to gaze up on ancient light from stars and galaxies so incredibly, incredibly distant. Some called it a humbling sight, but Felipe knew better. The universe expands too fast to observe, meaning that finding a center from which it all expands is functionally impossible. It only stood to reason, Felipe figured, that one could count the center of observation as the center of the whole thing because, as far as he could observe, it was. This was Felipe’s long-form way of explaining that he did, in fact, consider himself the center of all creation, and that he refused to feel bad about it. If anything, he wanted to propagate the idea, spread the good word of himself. Being the center of your own universe was one thing, but being the center of the universe of others was a special thing indeed.
As Felipe started unrolling his sleeping bag, a strange sound caught his ear. It sounded a bit like the flapping of wings, no, more than that, this was a whole flock of birds. No, Felipe thought, these were too big to be any regular bird. Either there were a bunch of condors or albatrosses about or it was something Felipe had waited just about his entire life to hear. The sound that reminded him of his adventure, of his impossible, incredible adventure, of Soars-In-Theremals and his stupid cocky wonderful beaked grin. He had prepared for decades for this, for his triumphant return to true glory, to true heroism, perhaps even to true love?
Felipe found himself rising to his feet as the sound of massive wing-beats grew louder and more intense. It was all around him now, the phantom wings disturbing the air, shepherding it into a funnel cloud around Felipe. As the wind that wasn’t a wind started blowing, grasping Felipe with invisible claws, vise-like but strangely gentle, Felipe couldn’t help but laugh.
“¡Por Fin!” Felipe yelled into the deafeningly loud storm that took him away. It was high fucking time indeed.
Author’s note: And here we meet Felipe. I’m starting to wonder if I should’ve included these chapters later in the story, since how these people work together with other people is a very central part of their characters that just doesn’t get covered in these solo chapters. Seeing as I have already committed to this path, though, I will follow the plan and go with a “depth first” kind of approach. We’ll have plenty of time to see how these people function, or malfunction, in social scenarios later on.
To talk briefly about Felipe, he is a fun character to me. He’s kind of the Arrogant Rival or The Naysayer-type character in a 90’s adventure cartoon, but given some more depth and room to actually be correct about some stuff. Make no mistake though, this man is a Grade-A fuckboy, and I’m excited to see how the scarcity and tense situation in Thereafter is going to influence his perspectives.
I’m also excited to see how he and Lex are going to bounce off each other. Alicia and Michael, who we will meet in the next two chapters, will have a relatively predictable reaction to the man I think, but the Lex-Felipe relationship will probably be highly context-dependent, so that will be fun to explore. Hope you join me in piecing it together!
-V.S.D