Chapter Text
Hermes rubbed the back of his neck and kicked at the dirt under his heel. “Ain’t something a little fishy here?”
The Fates hummed, forever hovering just out of sight. “Don’t look so suspicious, Hermes. Everything’s all right. Nothing changes, Hermes. You should know this sight.”
“See now, I’m wise to you. What have you done?” Hermes stabbed a thick finger in the direction of the dusty road, where a broad-shouldered man in dirty work clothes was walking slump-shouldered with exhaustion. “Why is Hades out of his grave? He’s not even wearing a suit, for Chrissake.”
The Fates laughed under their breaths. “Come on now, take a step back. There ain’t no proud brow, no stiff back. What does that mean, brother? This ain’t the Hades you know; he’s working at another show.”
“Did you do this?”
They grinned. He could feel it in the air, hear it in their words. “We see. We don’t predict, we don’t pick.”
He whirled around, but the Fates had already danced away, quick as a fox. “The story’s supposed to stay the same,” he snapped. “This isn’t some sorta game.”
“This story stays the same.”
Hermes cast a skeptical eye over the scene, how Hades rubbed his eyes and yawned and picked the dirt out from under his nails. He had never seen him so open, so human, even when Orpheus was plying him with his sweet music. He lingered on the sight, waiting for the King of the Underworld to drop the strange act, and then he sighed. “All right,” he said. “Have it your way. Let’s tell this one.”
When Hades glanced over his shoulder, he saw nothing but dust getting kicked up the temperamental wind.
--~~+~~--
Hades liked the railroad station. It was small, a couple dozen benches laid on gray concrete and a wide loading platform, with a train track that marred the bright green land like an interminable line of stitches. Hades didn’t have a ticket, but he sat among the waiting passengers, bones aching, heart aching, his hat pulled down over his eyes so all he could see were scuffling shoes and the frayed cuffs of hand-sewn pants. Every day, the train broke the quiet with its shrill whistle, its heavy and powerful body screeching to a halt, chugging its thick gray smoke into the sky. Hades liked the blunt usefulness of it, lovely in its inelegance.
It was too bright in springtime. Everything glowed like a neon sign. It was nice – Hades wasn’t about to turn down fresh food or warm wind on his cheeks – but the lively colors split his head. Hades wanted to stare at dull concrete. The monotony was calming.
People were already singing; he could hear them over the hill whooping and strumming their guitars loud. He tuned them out, focused on the concrete. Here people were quiet, murmuring about the generosity of the Queen, asking about the pay down below, saying goodbye.
Hades tipped his hat up and glanced around.
Nope. Nothing.
He went home to his empty little cottage in the woods, stoked the fire until every room was hot like summer, and then he fell asleep.
--~~+~~--
Sometimes, Orpheus forgot what sunlight looked like. Whenever it happened, he froze in panic, his breath shallow and fast as his mind raced – sunlight! What had that been? Warm, but how? Like warm water, but not wet. Like the glow of a fire, except…except it never flickered. It was steady, the bravest presence in the sky. Finally, a memory surfaced of lying in a field on a hot, sunny day and Orpheus moved again.
Eurydice laughed, a little warily. “You’re gonna fall down a mineshaft drifting off like that.”
“I would have to get past the security checkpoint for that,” Orpheus said. His voice was flat, his eyes on his fingers. No calluses.
He had no sense of time. He napped during the day, stayed awake all night. Dinner was breakfast, lunch was dinner. No matter how many clocks Eurydice plastered around their big house, around the city, Orpheus could never figure out whether it was noon or midnight.
“No one works at midnight!” Eurydice told him, exasperated.
He never thought to check. Down here, he felt blind. He felt deaf. He shivered. It felt hard to think. The darkness whispered to him, asking, Are you dead, music man? Was this your wife’s grand plan?
He laid in bed, Eurydice next to him, and he looked up at the ceiling and imagined stars. When he couldn’t, he took Eurydice’s hand and held on against the flinch of the cold. Once his hand was as good as a block of ice, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
--~~+~~--
Persephone breathed in a long breath like sipping nectar straight from the air. Spring! Thrill was in spring. Open air, birds singing, everything growing. Nothing in the world could compare to the feeling of fresh grass under her feet or the cool rush of meltwater in a creek or the sudden burst of energy from every living thing. The non-stop excitement wriggled into her limbs, spurning her on to chase it northward.
She grinned at the passing landscape, waving to the passerby and allowing herself the distraction of each thing that caught her eye. She paused to examine a flower. She tutted over the scored bark of a tree. She took a swim in a lake. She had dinner in a kind, ramshackle village. She took a nap in a cornfield. This was what a good life was. When she was hungry, she ate berries and plucked fruit. When she was tired, the stars were always good company. She sat around a campfire and passed a bottle of whiskey among the others. She winked at the younger man who had looked at her shyly all night. She left without saying goodbye. It was the only kind of life worth living, chasing pleasure, always on the move.
She wandered through a field, picking the darker blooms and weaving them together as she walked. It was a good day. She laughed. Hell, it was always a good day! Nothing in the world could stop a good thing like this.
--~~+~~--
“Good morning, Queen!”
“How are you doing, mistress?”
“Have a lovely day, my Lady!”
Eurydice nodded to each worker as she passed, tearing her eyes from her paperwork to acknowledge each person who called out to her. She knew all their faces, all their names – she had to. The fourth time a work stopped her on the street to greet her, she gave up and stowed her papers, trying not to think of the hundred pages she needed to read before the morning was over.
She took a deep breath of the still air and calmed herself. With patience and care, everything ran smoothly. Time, dedication, and attentiveness was all that was needed. Her office was only a block away and then—and then she tripped over a crack in the sidewalk, and the rage nearly blinded her.
The supervisor of road maintenance did not have a good morning; Eurydice, however, finished reading her hundred page report and sent in her goals for this quarter’s growth. No riots either. That’s as good of a morning as anyone could ask for.