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In the early Spring, she plants rows of carnations along the humble dirt path that leads to their cabin. He spots her there on his way home from the tavern, and she smiles fleetingly as he kneels beside her.
"If you wanted more flowers," he says with a teasing smile, "I could just..."
She rolls her eyes and bumps him with her hip, the first notes of his song interrupted by a startled laugh. "Shush. I want to see them bloom on their own this time."
But she reaches out a dirt-stained hand for his, tracing her fingers over the spot on his palm where she could feel the warmth of the sun.
"How long does it take?" he asks, covering her dirty hand with his and squeezing gently.
It distracts her, this gentleness; she can never quite get used to it. "How long--?"
He gestures to the patches of dirt where she had planted the seeds.
"Oh. Few weeks, maybe? Persephone said it won't take long this year."
He smiles then, big and dimpled and proud. "'Cos of me, you mean."
She snorts, hiding her own smile as she bumps him again and wipes her muddy hands purposefully on his apron, prompting another laugh. "Yeah. 'Cos of you."
He brushes back her flyaway hair and cups her face in his hand. She lets herself lean into his palm, her eyes closing.
She does her best to drink in moments like this one -- to commit them to memory and store them deep in her mind, a collection of warmth and tenderness and love. She thinks maybe it's just old habit, this need to hoard away these moments the way she had once hoarded food and firewood -- after all, she has no reason to believe she'll starve for him the way she'd once simply starved.
She feels the touch of his lips on her brow. "Come inside?"
She opens her eyes and allows him to pull her out of her own head and back to her feet.
"Yeah. I'm comin'."
---
Summer comes in slow and steady, and they are sleepy and sated in its generous heat.
On days when she isn't working, Orpheus often finds her in the garden. She plants all manner of things, many of them edible.
He comes up behind her one morning to find her patting mulch around a tiny sapling.
"What's this one?" he asks, crouching behind her and bending closer to marvel at the tiny serrated edges of its leaves.
"Apple," she answers, and he revels in the warmth of her when she leans back into his chest.
"How long?"
It's become something of a bit, this back and forth between the two of them, but he never grows tired of it. This time, however, she surprises him:
"Long time. It's a tree, see," she tips her head back and studies him with a deadpan expression that doesn't quite hide the way the corners of her mouth twitch up.
"Yes, I see," he answers seriously, then brushes his fingers feather-light across the back of her neck where he knows she's ticklish.
Her smile breaks free as she lets out a tiny shriek and turns in to him, shoving him playfully beneath her. "Brat. I could take you in a fight, you know."
He grins up at her, unbothered, and lets her pin him to the dirt. "I know."
He watches her expression change from something mischievous to something soft. It distracts him, this softness; he can never quite get used to it. He reaches up to where she is straddled across his thighs, settles his hands around her waist.
She touches the warm place on his chest just over his heart, and he wonders if she can feel the quickening of its beat as she begins to trail her fingers lower down. Over his chest, across his ribs, down over the planes of his abdomen. His breath catches in his throat and heat rises in his blood--
She jabs her fingers into the soft spots on his hips that make him yelp and jolt as though he's received an electric shock, and he buckles in on himself with laughter.
"Serves you right," she smirks, but the softness hasn't left her eyes as she helps him to his feet and smooths her hands soothingly over the spots where she'd goosed him. He catches them in his own.
"I know what you're doing out here," he says, still a little breathless.
She raises an eyebrow at him. "Gardening?"
He shakes his head. "No, I mean -- the things you're planting. You want to make sure we have enough, right?"
Her face changes. For the first time, she looks a little hurt. "I don't-- that's not what this is, Orpheus."
But he shakes his head, reaching for her again, "No, I mean, I understand. You have every right-- but I promise you, Eurydice, I won't let you starve. You won't have to leave this time, you don't need to worry--"
She pulls away from him then and pretends to wipe sweat from her forehead. "It's hot. We should go in."
And she heads for the cabin.
He watches her go, hating the sinking feeling in his chest. He had only meant to reassure her.
With the sun still beating against his back, he follows her inside.
---
Fall comes in crisp and beautiful, bringing with it the changing of the leaves and the first hint of a chill in the wind.
Eurydice joins Orpheus at the tavern most days; Hermes is always willing to buy the extra crops she grows, and equally willing to give her work when there isn't much to sell. Some days, she takes over Orpheus's shifts and waits on the rowdy clientele, bussing plates and drinks, or wiping down tables.
On those days, her husband is usually in the woods near their cabin, chopping down tree after tree and storing them carefully in their little shed.
But not always.
She knows that sometimes when she leaves on days when he has nowhere else to be and no work to be done, she'll return home to find him plucking away at his lyre with fingertips that are raw and bloodied from overuse, having spent the day distracting himself with music both old and new.
He'll hear the swinging open of the door as she comes in, and she'll catch the pause in his strumming, the sudden stillness in his body as though he's afraid to turn around. He doesn't ever say it out loud: It's you?
But she hears it anyway.
"It's me," she murmurs this time, tucking herself in behind him and easing his fingers away from the strings. She takes his hands in hers and leads him to the sink, holding them beneath the sputtering stream of water from their creaky pipes until the blood has washed away. She brings them to her lips and kisses his fingertips. He smiles like the sunrise, like he'd never for a moment doubted that she would come home, and she smiles back like she'd never doubted he'd be there waiting for her when she did.
And sometimes, when the sun sets and she is restless and anxious and struggling to fall over the precipice of sleep, having kicked away their threadworn quilt and turned her back on him to hide her face, she'll whisper, "I'm cold."
On those nights, the wrong words come more easily to her than the right ones, but he seems to hear them all the same: Hold me?
This time, he wraps himself around her and slides his hands up and down the bare skin of her arms; up and down, back and forth until the goosebumps have settled and the ice has fled from her veins, and sleep finds her at last.
But sometimes -- sometimes --
Sometimes when she rises to leave, he'll hesitate for a moment before clambering to his feet and calling breathlessly after her, "Wait, I'm coming with you--"
Sometimes when her restlessness overtakes her at night, she'll turn into him and wrap her arms around him first, anchoring herself to him and whispering, almost too quietly to hear. "Hold me. Hold me."
Doubt lives with them like a shadow on the wall, like a trapdoor in the floor that will open up to swallow them so long as they go on pretending it isn't there.
"I'm afraid I'll let her down," he tells Hermes one day as he drags an old rag across the scuffed surface of the bar.
"You could," is all his mentor will say.
"I'm afraid I'll be alone again," she tells Persephone as she closes the clasps of her suitcase and turns toward the approaching whistle of the train.
"You might," is her only reply.
He doesn't. She isn't. But they might. They could.
---
Winter enters as Persephone exits.
Outside, the earth sparkles with crisp white snow and the shimmering of icicles on barren branches.
Inside, their home is suffused with shadows, and the floor quakes beneath them with every step, threatening to give way.
Orpheus lays alongside her in their tiny bed. Neither of them had bothered to undress from work; a sudden storm had taken them all by surprise, and Hermes had sent them on their way before it could arrive in full force. There is an unsettling quiet between them that Orpheus doesn't like. He longs to reach for her, but the fear that she might pull away makes him hesitate.
Inside, the fire roars. Outside, the wind howls.
The chill in the air is too real now for her to kick away the blankets, but she can't seem to stay still. He waits for her to speak; the wrong words or the right ones would be all the same to him right now.
Instead, the bed vibrates as she shivers violently.
He is on his feet in a flash. His heart is pounding.
"You're cold? I'll add more wood to the fire, I'll-- let me just--"
"Orpheus, please--" her voice is strained.
"It's not burning well, I should've dried it out better-- Mr. Hermes will have some, I'll go--"
"Stay a minute, I just need--"
But his coat is on and he is out the door before she can finish.
The wind whips at him and the snow is high enough that it tumbles in through the holes in his boots, but the station tavern isn't far, and Hermes always leaves it unlocked in the wintertime, open to anyone seeking refuge from the cold.
He can make it. The gods know he's walked farther before.
Freezing snow collects on the collar of his shirt and sends a chill down his spine. He thinks of her at home in their bed. Thinks of her growing colder by the minute, the beautiful red of her lips turning pale and blue, the familiar rhythm of her heartbeat slowing...
He should have known they'd be back here again -- back to the bitter cold that he couldn't sing away. He'd had three whole seasons to prepare, but it hadn't been enough. He hadn't been enough. Behind him, the wind calls out to him; it is blowing from behind as though to sweep him along faster, and he imagines that he can hear her calling his name as it whips past him. But he knows better than to look back.
Inside the tavern, Hermes is alone at the bar. He looks up as Orpheus enters, and his brow lifts ever-so-slightly, as though the frostbitten poet shaking the snow from his boots was not the visitor he'd been expecting.
"Orpheus?"
"Mr. Hermes, I'm sorry - I just need some firewood. Ours isn't-- I don't know what I did wrong, it won't burn hot enough, and she--"
"Where is she?" Hermes inquires, and Orpheus stops his stammering.
"What?"
"Where is she?" his mentor asks again.
"She's-- she's at home. Why are you-- why do you wanna know?" Orpheus pauses on his way to the woodpile. Something tugs at his memory. Wherever she is, is where I'll--
"You should go," Hermes says softly.
"But I-- the fire--"
His mind races. He can still hear her. Orpheus, you're shivering. Is it cold, or fear?
Hermes, usually inscrutable, looks almost sad. "You've got enough wood in that house to last three winters, son. Go on home."
So he does.
---
The wind blows against him on the journey home, and his eyes sting as he struggles to make out the light shining from their little cabin's windows. His lungs rebel against the cold air, and his breath comes in shallow gasps.
All around him, the world is a wash of white. Even the trees are lost to him, now.
His feet catch on something hidden beneath the snow and he stumbles, falling hard to his knees.
The 'something' shudders, and his insides fill with ice.
"Oh, god."
She is almost completely covered in snow; only the corner of her gold scarf catching his eye. He paws away at the layer covering her face. Her lips are blue.
"Oh, god. 'Rydice-- you followed me? You--"
The wind whips at them again, but he thinks he can hear her moan.
He gathers her to him. The snow falls thick on her skin as quickly as he brushes it away, and he is forced to give up the attempt. Instead, he unbuttons his coat with half-frozen fingers and wraps it around her. "Hold on, just hold on-- I've got you, we're going--"
He struggles to his feet with her tucked against his chest. Despite a year with three seasons of bountiful crops, she feels too light in his arms. Even so, he fights hard with each step against the snow and the wind.
Which way?
What had begun as a winter storm has turned into a blizzard; his vision seems to have gone white, and he can feel tiny icicles accumulating on his lashes. Eurydice shivers against his chest, and his own body trembles so violently that it rattles his teeth. He takes another step, and then another...
But which way?
Should he go back the way he came? Try to make it back to the tavern? Which way was that? He turns round, tries in vain to find any trace of their footsteps in the snow, but the expanse ahead of him is smooth and unbroken, an endless sea of white. He feels dizzy at the sight of it. Surely he hadn't been gone that long? How long has she been out here?
The storm is picking up steam; a sudden gust of wind forces him to bend almost in half as he tries desperately to shield her from it.
She's so cold. He's so cold. He can't breathe.
Oh, gods, they're going to die out here.
"Where are we? Where are we?" He keeps moving. Any direction, so long as he's moving.
He doesn't expect her to answer him, and she doesn't -- not exactly. But her lips move against his chest and her breath is warm against his heart. She doesn't say it out loud. But he hears it anyway:
Flowers.
His lungs feel frozen, but he tries all the same. He buries his face in her frozen hair and sings, forcing the notes out one by one in a way he's never had to before. It's not his best effort; the warmth that the melody usually fills him with feels absent now, and his fingers continue to tremble as he holds her.
He carries on, his voice rising and falling over the rush of the wind, but it refuses to let up even a little. He turns his back to it, steadies himself, and sings louder still.
The storm rages on.
The weight of his failure is crushing him, and the final note catches in his throat around a rough sob.
What had he expected? His song had not been enough to chase away the storm before. Nothing had changed.
As he grows quiet, Eurydice's lips brush once more against his heart, this time unmistakably a kiss. He knows she is offering him a forgiveness he does not deserve.
He lifts his head from her hair, means to brush away the snow long enough kiss her properly one last time--
And then he sees them.
Two long lines of carnations, the ones she had planted in the Spring, sticking up through the snow, marking the path home.
The tears freeze on his cheeks, and he starts to walk again.
---
When Spring comes back around, she has recovered well enough to join him in the garden without the rattle of a cough in her lungs.
She finds him out in the dirt in the early morning before the sunrise, dutifully weeding and pruning, his fingertips no longer bloodied or frostbitten, but dirt-stained as hers had once been.
She kneels beside him and lets her head tip onto his shoulder. "Hey."
He wraps an arm around her to steady her and kisses the crown of her head, breathing the greeting into her hair. "Mornin'"
They stay that way for some time; quiet and still but for the first calls of birdsong around them and the soft rustle of her blouse as he traces what feel like music notes across her back, slow and gentle.
"I figured it out," he says, breaking the silence.
"Hmm?" She keeps her eyes closed, content to breathe in the familiar scent of his skin -- of Spring.
"What you've been doing out here," he continues, and she feels him gesture around them.
She opens her eyes.
"They're perennials," he says.
She smiles. "Yeah."
He nods, and she feels him swallow hard. She tips her head back to press a kiss against his jawline.
"I'm sorry. I thought you were-- I thought you didn't trust me to--" he trails off, his voice distant.
"I did," she says, and then, "I do. I wanted you to know you could trust me, too. I thought if I planted them, you'd know--"
"--that you were gonna stay," he finishes for her.
She nods.
He sits back then, mindless of the dirt, and reaches for her. She nestles into him, feeling him fold in around her. He feels like home.
"Another year," she whispers, waiting for the first breeze to carry with it the scent of last Spring's flowers.
"Another year," he promises.
They watch the sun rise.