Chapter Text
Orpheus knew from the start that he was going to leave eventually. For as long as he remembered, he could see the ties that bound others together, in the way children held on to their parents’ hands, in the way strangers smiled at other strangers, and in the way people gathered around street musicians to hear them play. He wanted to be a part of that.
When he was little, his tubby fingers would lightly pluck the strings of a guitar that was too big for him, and he would close his eyes and imagine what it would be like to find the kind of story he saw surrounding him every time he went outside.
Son of a muse and a mortal king, Orpheus reached out to both. To his father, who was busy running a kingdom and had no time for a boy who ran out into fields of daisies and sang until the birds learned to stop and listen. To his mother, who quickly forgot about the child she’d borne and left, as muses tended to do. There were very few children around to play with, and Orpheus learned to amuse himself. He poured his thoughts into countless sheets of music, pretended his mother leaving didn’t sting nearly as much as it did.
Orpheus grew up alone, though he didn’t know at the time what loneliness was. His father grew more distant at the departure of his muse, and Orpheus was thrust into a world he knew little about. A world where people didn’t stay, sometimes, but a world where they fell in love anyway and lived as though heartbreak wasn’t an inevitability. And maybe it wasn’t. When Orpheus watched happy couples on the street passing by, when he saw lonely people praying in church, when he saw children running and laughing and playing together, he was certain that although heartbreak had struck him, it did not happen to everybody. Or, at the very least, everything that came before made the heartbreak worth it.
Seeing the love between people as they casually went about their lives was one thing, but writing it down, capturing it in a song… that was quite another. Orpheus’ first attempts were flimsy at best, and the notes he lightly played well into the night were like children’s paintings compared to the Mona Lisas that filled his dreams. The music wasn’t right, no matter how hard he worked at it. He saw the feelings he tried to weave into it, felt them beating against his own chest. There was nobody to share them with other than the birds and the flowers and the stars, and he wrote song after song, trying to get it right. Trying to capture the magic he saw that bound everyone so tightly together.
Dreams and music were all Orpheus had as he passed from childhood to adulthood. He still looked at everything around him with a sense of wonder that was curious for someone who was afraid to engage with anyone. Heartbreak didn’t happen to everyone, but it happened to him. His mother was a muse, and she had left. If Orpheus found a muse, if he loved someone with the depth his father had loved Calliope, what would keep them from leaving as well? As he grew up, that thought was pushed back and back, further and further into his head. Still, it remained, never fully forgotten.
So Orpheus counted the days. He wrote one song for every day he stayed, one song about the world he could find when he struck out on his own, like he had wanted to do for so long. His father’s kingdom was not his own. He wanted to find his own path.
And then one day, the opportunity came. He picked up his guitar – now just the right size – and bid his father farewell, though he doubted he was heard over the rustle of paper as his father poured through the poems Calliope had given him for the thousandth time. Those poems didn’t breathe the way people did, the way music did.
The train travelled faster than Orpheus had expected. He pressed his face to the window, watching city after city pass by, watching the forests turn into grassland and then into buildings and mountains, and he smiled. When he turned around he saw the way the man taking tickets smiled at the woman selling snacks. He saw the smile on the face of the woman with a phone pressed to her ear. She may not have been close enough to understand, but Orpheus could hear the joy in her tone. Yes, he had made the right choice to leave.
It seemed to last forever and not long enough, all at the same time. If Orpheus could have frozen those moments on the train, those people and those lives he had touched for scarcely a second, he would have.
The train finally reached its destination just before sunrise, and Orpheus held his breath as he stepped off. Buildings rose up like trees around him, smothering the sky and blotting out the stars. They created their own stars, in a way. Lights shone out of windows stretching hundreds of feet in the air, and each had its own story. The people pushing past Orpheus likely didn’t know each other, but Orpheus couldn’t help but wonder how many of them had passed by each other dozens if not hundreds of times before without even realizing it.
The train had been reloaded with passengers and was now speeding off in a new direction, taking countless strangers to places Orpheus knew he could only begin to imagine. For the first time, he felt very, very small.
Finally, Orpheus took his first several steps forward. There were so many people walking by, staring at the ground as though they didn’t realize how alive everything was here. As though they didn’t care about the stories that were occurring alongside their own. Still, Orpheus found them beautiful.
Finding an apartment was not as simple a task as Orpheus had hoped it would be. There were very few places with “for rent” signs up, and those that were wouldn’t accept his meager down payment – the handful of coins he’d stashed in his guitar case as soon as he’d saved enough to buy a train ticket and make his way out. He knew he’d need to find a job soon, but for now the issue was the apartment.
He had time, fortunately, to find a place to crash. The sun was just barely making its way over the horizon, and in the summer heat it promised to be a hot one. The early morning rush was beginning, more lights turning on in windows and more people flooding the streets and going about their daily business.
It didn’t take very long for Orpheus to find a bench on the edge of a park to settle down on, open up his guitar case, and start playing. Given the early hour, most of the pedestrians were businessfolk, all heading to work with their eyes fixed on the sidewalk below their feet. Although Orpheus knew he wouldn’t get much of a crowd, he figured some of these people could use a little bit more music in their life. Perhaps it would make them look at something other than the path directly in front of them. That idea urged a smile onto the corners of Orpheus’ face, and he slowly began playing. It was a song he’d finished the day he’d saved up enough to leave. There was something special, something victorious about it that Orpheus felt even now as his fingers pressed into the frets of the guitar and he strummed the familiar chords. He didn’t sing, not yet. The city – though never exactly silent – was too quiet for that now.
Orpheus attracted a few wandering eyes, but nobody stopped to watch him play until the sun climbed higher and schoolchildren began making their way out of their homes and rushing to school in clusters of three or four or seven. He heard the gentle ‘ooh’s and ‘ah’s of the children as they walked past him, some of them deciding they would rather watch for a few minutes and then worry about how to make up the extra couple of minutes they had lost later.
Aware that more than a few of the children had stopped by, Orpheus lifted his gaze and gave them a shy smile.
“Any requests?” His voice was crackly from disuse after the train journey, and it seemed some of the children were startled by the adult (well, basically adult. Nineteen didn’t feel that adult to Orpheus) acknowledging them. It took a few soft smiles and a few more long moments before one particularly brave child stepped forward to request a song, and once Orpheus played that one, the requests began pouring in.
Little by little, the children began to disperse as school bells tolled warnings that being late was probably not a particularly good idea. Orpheus found himself more or less alone when he heard a voice sound behind him.
“A’ight.”
Orpheus turned, the wind carrying away the final notes of the melody he’d been playing. Behind him stood a rather tall man, his kind face crinkled by age and laughter.
“Don’t stop playing on my account,” the man said, moving to take a seat on the other side of the bench Orpheus had chosen. “I haven’t heard music like that in many years.”
Orpheus gave a soft smile and turned his gaze back to the guitar, modifying his volume so he was playing only for the man’s ears.
“Just off the train?” the man asked after a few minutes, and Orpheus looked up, startled.
“That obvious?”
“I know the type. I see several every day.”
“Oh.” Orpheus’ voice was quiet, and he looked away from the man’s warm brown gaze.
“I conduct the trains, you see. From here to nowhere to anywhere at all. Where are you from, boy?”
“Nowhere,” Orpheus replied, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips.
“Well,” the man began, bracing his hands against his knees as he pushed himself to his feet. “I best be going, but you’ll be needing a place to stay, boy. I can pull a few favors if you play for me once in a while. Here.” He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and quickly wrote down an address, which he handed to Orpheus. “Ask for Hermes.” He winked, dusting himself off before taking a step away. Orpheus stood as well, letting his guitar swing towards his back.
“Orpheus,” Orpheus called, stopping Hermes in his tracks. “My name is Orpheus. Thank you, Mr. Hermes.”
Hermes gave a knowing smile and continued forward, leaving Orpheus alone to play until the sun burned too hot to withstand.
By the time the midday sun grew unbearable, Orpheus found himself on the outside of a worn brick building complete with window boxes full of flowering planters and the soft chatter of friendly neighbors as they passed each other in the lobby. Orpheus took in a deep breath, squeezed his hand tighter around the address, and stepped in.