Chapter Text
He made it.
He made it.
He made it.
He sank face first on the growing grass aboveground, his thoughts spiraling through a thousand different directions, his wounds and cuts still throbbing no less pain – though a little less burning now.
He did not dare to look back still. She must be behind him. They must be behind him. The wind roared a little less now, the thick tide through the tunnel reduced to a soft breeze now; now he could hear footsteps. A thousand slow, soft footsteps behind him.
She was among them. Her footsteps were among the soft gurgling of the river of Shades behind him. It softly mixed with the soft tremolo of grass blades in the breeze.
Or maybe she wasn’t. Those weren’t footsteps and Orpheus might be hearing things, delirious with the throbbing of a thousand bruises and wounds, his throat coarse and dry, his legs no abler to stand. The wind might be playing tricks on him, the swinging of tree branches and swaying of grass blades sounding like footsteps.
No, he chided himself, resisting the intense urge to look behind him, keeping his face down on the grass. She is behind him.
And if she isn’t? his mind asked back, frantic.
She wouldn’t leave that way again, would she?, he answered back. If she is behind me she wouldn’t just turn back and return to Hadestown, would she?
He shivered at the quite ridiculous idea, he could see it now as he breathed the fresher air from up above and the soft scent of greening grass. He saw how horrible Hadestown was. He saw how horrified his wife was there down below. His body shuddered as he thought about the soot, the crushing heat, the thick black smoke through his frail mortal throat, the unordered noise and sheer pollution underground. His soul cried as he thought about the thousand lifeless Shades having their spirits crushed out of them. Orpheus swore to himself he would never descend to that place again, the Gods forbid him, or let any of his loved ones fall in that hell hole again.
A thousand Shades were treading behind him, he remembered. If those footsteps were really footsteps, and not his mind delirious with exhaustion playing tricks on him.
The horrible sights he has seen down below. The glimpses and echoes of memories of past lives.
He was glad he could get all those poor souls out of down there. He could give them a better life, heal their spirits and provide them a better world. He would grow them new roots and sing a better home to live. He swore to do so down there, underground.
She left you because you could not provide for her, his mind chided back. You could not shelter her, harbor her when she needed the most. She left in search of food and safety against the storm you couldn’t expel away.
But that was why I went there down below, right? He screamed back at himself. Under the ground below, to that horrible place. To guide her back to safety. To expel the storm away.
The footsteps were closer now. He was surer these are really footsteps now. Tree branches against the wind don’t swing in beat pulses like this. Grass blades in the breeze don’t sway in solid pulses like this.
Or maybe this was just his own heartbeat, throbbing against his ears.
His bruises and cuts ached and pained through his body. The pain is a little less unbearable now, now the cold wind doesn’t pound his wounds like knives of ice anymore. Still the throbbing and hurt pierced a little more, as the footsteps? pounded nearer and closer to him.
He instinctively bended himself in fetal position. Shades like these smashed his body in so many bruises with heavy cinder boulders. Shades like these slashed his skin in so many cuts with sharp razor wires. When he caught himself he caught himself holding his breath.
It was not a conscious decision. They were under the control of him, he knew. When they crushed him under heavy boulders and clogged his throat in thick wet cement it was not a conscious decision of theirs.
How could I know they would act in conscious decision now?, he asked himself through his delirious mind. What if he is just playing tricks on me?? He let them follow me here aboveground so he could command them to crush me right here and now. He knows I won’t be able to withstand much anymore.
He could see effusive shadows widening in the corner of his eyes now. He closed his eyes tight, keyed up to his most probable fate. He could almost feel threads being snipped and rewoven through the wind right at this moment.
Then he felt a soft hand on his shoulder.
Not just any hand. Her hand. Her hand he knew as much as his very own.
“Orpheus…”
Her voice. Her voice as beautiful as rosy-fingered aurora flaming in crescendo through the sky, fulfilling his ears like clear liquid starlight. Tinged with emotion and worry, she was as relieved and thankful to have him there aboveground, as he was to have her.
“It’s you”, he managed to sob through a faint, hoarse, faltered voice.
He was still too afraid to directly look at her. He dreaded the idea of her disappearing as soon as he rested his eyes on her. He dreaded the possibility of her being a hallucination now, an illusion borne out of his drowsed, delirious mind.
But he couldn’t anymore. His eyes still closed tight, he rose up and fell to her direction, sinking his face deep upon her chest, his eyes furiously shedding tears as he sobbed furiously. Not the grass below them, her chest. Her warm chest. Not cold, not hard and cold as cinder stone, warm. Soft and warm. The steady pulse of her heart he could hear now. The pulse of her heart beating now.
His arms clutched to her, hugging her tight round her torso, pulling her tight to him and him to her, afraid she’d crumble to dust and disappear any minute. He felt her hand stroking his hair, her another hand hugging his back.
“It’s me”, her rich, soft voice kissed his ears again. She sounded she tried to hold shedding tears. “Orpheus…”
A part of his mind heard other footsteps, other Shades up there with them, gathering in a circle round them as if forming an audience to one of his songs. Still for the most part his mind alighted as his eyes shed clear tears, as springs shed rivers through the ground.
“Eurydice.” Though his voice was now faint and faltered, dim and muffled against her warm chest, her name was still a melody he sang on his lips. He wishes he would never, ever stop singing her name in the clear air and bright light of aboveground, feeling her name in his chest and on his lips, through his throat, teeth and tongue.
For long moments Orpheus and Eurydice stayed here as this, clutched against each other tightly, him furiously shedding tears upon her overalls, an entire river through her graveclothes.
She’s here. She’s here with him. And she’s alive. She’s warm. Not cold, warm. Her heart is beating. Her heart is beating now. She’s alive. She’s here.
She’s here.
She’s here.
SHE’S HERE.
He made it.
He made it.
HE MADE IT!
The storm is gone for now.
“Are we already there yet?”, his lover teased through a blindfolded face.
Orpheus smiled softly, barely containing his eagerness within himself, doing his best to resist the urge to reveal right there and then what awaited at the end of their little trek.
Months have passed since the return from underground. A year have passed since they sat and had each other in that clearing among the greening woods, beside the gurgling river beneath a glittering night sky.
Orpheus’ many wounds through his body have faded long since then, reduced now to a thousand dim scars, streaks and smudges of whitened skin under his long robes, a thousand dim little moons. His throat was no longer coarse, his vocal folds finely tuned now, glistened with months of honey and healing herbed tea – though he still tried to be moderate with his singing, cultivating silence whenever he could. Considering what he’d been working on during the last past months, admittedly not so much.
He has not been proud of anything he made from his hands – or his voice – since a long, long time ago. He could barely wait to show everything to her. What he managed to do these last past months anyway.
If anything, he hoped at least she would at least like it, even if just not the way it is now.
He could tell she was also eager for his surprise, for the way she couldn’t contain herself steady either, while trailing behind him. She made a game of teasing him the entire trek, asking Are we already there yet? each two or three steps.
“No we are not, love” Orpheus answered melodiously, not helping but grinning softly each turn. “But we’re almost there.”
They arrived at the place they both knew, the greening bed midst the wild woods they both kept returning to months ago, the wild place beside the river Orpheus might call his truest home, for how well his body and soul knew the way windflowers blooming around swayed in the breeze, the way the flowing crystal water outlined the banks of the soft gurgling river, the way dark seeds scattered on the ground, the way wild birds flew around.
Many times before they both sat there on the ground, enjoying the company of each other as Orpheus sang the songs of stars glittering above. They leaned on each other feeling Nature flowing and blooming around them, a paradise of greenery and dim moist midst the crushing heat of summer sun.
Now not just this place, but the entire world around them they know is cooled and moist, the summer heat a little less crushing, the winter cold a little less bitter. Not so much long ago flowers struggled to bloom and trees struggled to grow, birds struggled to fly through the squalling cold wind. Now around them, in this very clearing amidst the blooming woods so much life grew around, from the colorful flowers and vivacious herbs and trees growing and blossoming so many sizes and shapes to the many, many birds and bugs flying around in so many shapes and colors – and Orpheus knew all of them personally, as he himself tended and grew and cared for so many of them.
A long while since Orpheus guided his Eurydice to this place, the greening bed beside the soft gurgling river, his green nest he always brought her in. He felt ashamed and sheepish for not telling her what he was working on all this time, for how she got increasingly worried for how he always had “somewhere to go” (though there were other reasons besides this project, reasons he knew Eurydice knew as well – he still didn’t know how to feel about certain… guests at the Station’s inn) but he didn’t want to disappoint her by telling her what he had in his mind, only for perhaps to never finish it or never work on it at all for some reason or another. This project is intended as a surprise, Orpheus’ One Year Anniversary gift to his Eurydice, and the way it is a surprise motivated him to keep working, vowing to himself he would finish it, it’d be finished already their Anniversary.
It isn’t.
Still, he had a gift to give.
“We arriiived”, he sang softly as he took out the saffron bandanna from covering his lover’s eyes. Eager, but also nervous, he stepped aside as he let his Eurydice take sight of the house he grew.
He’s dissatisfied with the way he sang some of it. The windows could be a little wider. His branched oak dome, looming center top like the upper half of an egg to the sky, is not perfectly symmetric and well-distributed. He may have placed his rooms wrong. He may have grown wrong flowers and plants at wrong places. Perhaps he should have sung more fruit-bearing vines and bushes by the kitchen and dining room. Perhaps the vivid red rosevines curtaining the windows and door of their bedroom didn’t have to have this amount of thorns. He may have sung branched bookshelves in inappropriate places.
It’s not even finished. So many rooms are still unfurnished, as he should sing each furniture with living, blossoming plants. He’s not even sure what to grow in many of these rooms. Perhaps he didn’t need this amount of rooms. (Though a lot of these were supposed to be guest rooms. Part of the promise he did when he was in the world down below. Perhaps he’d need more rooms.)
Still he couldn’t help but be proud. How he placed his windows, framing the best views around the house and letting wide gleams of sunlight nourish the many plants inside. The way the water flowed, following the flow of his voice, from the river beside through his house’s walls in pipes of branches, nourishing, refreshing and cleansing everything within. The way the strong, stout oak trees grew to his steady words and curved graciously to make the walls, ceilings and floors of his house. The way lively vines of diverse blossoms curtained, like trilling melodies, his various doors and wide windows trellised diagonally with lively glissandos of flowering branches. The softness of his moss carpets, the comfort of his cushion bushes and vining sheets, the flourishing beauty of his many floral decorations and greening furnishes. The various natural cascading pools of fresh water through living sets of oak platforms (oh he had spent so much time on those), shimmering with bioluminescent fungi and colored by many colorful fishes, at night reflecting the light of the Moon shimmering through the branched dome above.
Although his big dome of oak branches could look a little more like a big dome of oak branches, branching like rivers through a mountain shimmering softly against moonlight, than a messy blob of wood macaroni. Also, the riverside section ought to have extra rooms looming through the top, with wide balconies and views…
“Orpheus”, Eurydice’s voice filled with moist emotion, Orpheus hoped to be of astonishment rather than of disappointment. “This is…” she sounded to be at loss of words.
He braced himself for criticism.
If there is a quality he loves about Eurydice, it’s how direct and honest she is. She never lies, she never sugarcoats, her opinion is her truthful opinion and she never wastes her spirit flattering anyone, not even Orpheus. She isn’t afraid to disappoint people like Orpheus is. And Orpheus trusted Eurydice more than he trusted any living being alive on this world, and he tries to trust all living beings alive on this world.
For this reason he’s always eager to sing songs he wrote and show his works to her, as he could always trust her to get true criticism, the constructive, nourishing feedback. For this same reason he was sometimes nervous to do so, as he hated, hated the idea of disappointing her. He hated the idea of disappointing anyone, but especially her. He hated to see her disappointed. Especially with such a milestone gift like this – the nest they’d rest on for perhaps the rest of their lives.
“This is…” she continued, and Orpheus dreads the idea of having disappointed her one way or another. “Orpheus. This… this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Now Orpheus is at loss of words. He felt as if his body was about to melt under his robes. He is so, so deeply glad she liked it, unfinished and imperfect as it is now. But most beautiful thing? This is pushing a little way too far.
“It’s… not finished”, was all he could say, his voice faltering.
Eurydice chuckled.
“Not finished?” she questioned. “Oh, Orpheus. Pardon me, I don’t think my puny mortal eyes are ready for when this amazing place is finished!”
Orpheus is sure his face was melting now. He swears two slumbering geysers are being awakened within his cheeks.
He stared down to his interbranching hands, trying to think of words. Words other than the messy blob of word macaroni in his brain.
“A lot of places are unfurnished”, he said rapidly. “And I may have placed some things wrong…”
“Orpheus.”
“You like red roses, right? Our bedroom has windows and doors curtained by red rosevines. I hope they’re not too thorny…”
“Orpheus.”
“Night gnats are still a problem, though. I am still working on the perfumed candle incenses…”
“Orpheus.” Her starry dark eyes met his, and he felt pulled to a thousand feelings and worlds. “Orpheus, please stop apologizing. This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. It’s much, much more than what I could’ve asked you for. I love this place. I love these thick and strong oak walls. I love the cascades of crystal water pools. I love the sheer greenery, so many flowers blooming and plants growing around. You didn’t need to grow so many things, but I am so, so glad you did it so because this is so, so beautiful. And even then, an entire house, a big house, made entirely of living plants and trees? How did you even get an idea like this? This is amazing!”
He glanced at her back, sheepish.
“Is it true?”, he asked. “I mean… is it really so wonderful? You… you don’t need to flatter me, Eurydice. You know it. You don’t need to lie to make me feel good.”
“Orpheus, you know damn well I never lie, love. If I get caught lying some way or another, then you must know that’d be not me as you know!” She grasped his shoulders and held him firm. “Orpheus, my sweet, amazing, wonderful Orpheus. You did a wonderful, amazing thing. Please know it, you are wonderful. Your songs are wonderful. This house, this place… it’s wonderful. I love this house so much, Orpheus, I love you, so much. Thank you, Orpheus, thank you, so much. I want to live with you here forever. For real. Literally forever.”
Under the soft, shimmering light of the moon shining through the branches of growing oaks, they softly stared at each other, their cheeks blushing softly red in the dark of night. Their noses were close, touching almost, as they breathed the breaths of one another.
“But why didn’t you tell me anything about this before?” She shook him lightly with her hands on his shoulders. “Couldn’t you tell I was so worried about you? The way you kept rushing away from the Station, away from us anytime you could, anytime they…” she cut her own speech. “Orpheus. I am so glad for this surprise, and it’s the best surprise I could ask for, for real. But why couldn’t you tell me anything about it before?”
Orpheus’ body felt like wanting to shed its skin away and disappear. The twin geysers within his cheeks were seemingly contesting on which would melt his face the fastest.
“I… didn’t want to disappoint you” he managed to say, rapidly. “I was nervous with telling you any of what I had in my mind, then disappointing you with not finishing it. Or…”
“Didn’t you just say right now it isn’t finished?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Or giving up with it”, he continued. “Or not even starting it, for any reason or another. I… I don’t want to break any more promises. Don’t want to be unable to keep whatever promises I make.”
With this they could only stare at each other for a long moment, neither of them knowing what to say. Orpheus felt a long gust of air he didn’t know to be holding leave his lungs.
“Oh, Orpheus.” Eurydice finally said. “I am… you don’t need to worry about disappointing me. I was worried about me disappointing you in some way, for the way you just kept leaving the Station and basically leaving me alone!”
The twin geysers within Orpheus’ face were both winning.
“Eurydice. I am… I am so sorry…”
“Orpheus don’t apologize! I know you also have your own problems with… them”, she said finally. “I can’t blame you for wanting to leave anytime you could. I just…” her words seemed to trail away.
Then she kissed him.
If there were any part of him still left solid, it’s gone for now, he’s now a mire of melt under his robes. His entire body shivered as he breathed her, as they both clang to and breathed each other furiously, intensely, two souls in reciprocating tune, two beings meshing and merging into one. He felt it again, the entire world was again resting on his arms, and he felt powerless beneath its utmost beauty.
“I missed you, Orpheus.”, she said finally, her lips still touching his almost, her voice tinged with emotion. “I want to be with you. I want to hold you. Hold you close and tight, forever. Please don’t escape out of my arms ever again.”
Don’t escape from my arms ever again, he silently wished in return, words escaped exhilarating springs of feelings bursting inside him.
Under the soft, shimmering light of the moon shining through the branches of growing oaks, they softly swayed with each other. Orpheus uttered random melodies as they danced like newlyweds, over soft carpets of greening moss and soft cushions of flowering bushes, shimmering white moonflowers blooming through the ground where Orpheus’ feet have stepped.
“I did something for us!”, Orpheus says, excited, as they waltzed beside the crystalline cascading pools. “Dinner for us! Cake of honey and almonds! Your favorite cake! Two layers, wedding-style! Well, sort of.”
It’s no secret Orpheus could bake and cook. Even during hard times no less than almost a year ago, he stayed at home (the Station, the closest to anything like a home they both had back then, besides this clearing among the woods where their greening house now grew) to cook and work on his song while his Eurydice searched for food and firewood. Orpheus is careful and precise with anything he does by hand, and he tries to make the best of what he got, the best of what he has in his mind, with herbs, fruits and bulbs he could find around in the wild, ingredients he now hoped to grow himself in this little paradise amidst the forest. Cooking, baking and mixing drinks are forms of Art. Why wouldn’t they be? Hermes often said Orpheus was The Best Mixer in the Gods’ Almighty World, for how careful and creative he is with each type of drink (why wouldn’t he be so? Though Best Mixer in the Gods’ Almighty World is reaching a little way too far. But Orpheus knew Hermes would take the most of every possible business advert, as Hermes himself often said to him, no matter how untrue it actually was.)
And of course, if Orpheus wished to steer himself clear from the risk of eating eggs or meat through the meals of another – he’d rather die than eat the flesh of any living being – he felt he was obligated to make his meals himself. And if he has to make his meals himself, he better make his meals good and worthwhile.
This cake he spent the better part of yesterday baking and decorating – a way to commemorate their Anniversary besides Orpheus’ grand gift – wasn’t exactly what he had in his mind, though. The two layers he spent a good part of his time sculpting were a little withered. His cream of honey and milk wasn’t the exact shade of saffron he was looking for. He might have powdered a little more sugar than it was needed. He was proud, however, of the vivid primroses and honeysuckle blossoms ornamenting his cake, and the sprinkles of sunflower seeds and colorful carnation petals dotting his cream.
“Orpheus”, Eurydice uttered, audibly and visibly flabbergasted. “So this is why you looked like you got a sugar bath yesterday night!” She immediately clutched a chunk out of the cake between her hands, sinking her teeth into it in intense bites. “Ormphfeus, thms ms. Thms ms amajing. I’m gming tm fmrgive ymm mn nmt telling mm mmniffyng bmcauje thms is wmm tmm dmlisheemms.” (Orpheus, this is. This is amazing. I’m going to forgive you for not telling me anything because this is way too delicious.)
Orpheus could only glint softly as he watched his lover enjoy herself, for a moment letting himself be proud, proud of the cake he baked, proud of this house and the home he had built and grown those last past months.
Through the end of Night they relaxed on their soft, greening bed of vivid red rosevines (he did remember to grow his bedsheet rosevines without any thorns, at least). Again they both leaned on each other, feeling Nature flowing and blooming around them, watching the glittering stars in the sky above through the branched wide bird’s eye window view expanding front of them.
As he felt every greening and growing thing around him – every tree, every vine and herb, every colorful blossom, every bird and bug, the flowing of water within the walls and through the cascading pools in the living rooms, the soft blow of the breeze through their entire house and around them, blowing their growing-longer hair and loose nightclothes softly in the wind, all living things connected and he himself connected to everything living around him – Orpheus thought of the many rooms still awaiting furnishing in his house. Rooms for many, many more blooming, blossoming plants of diverse shapes and colors, for wild animals of diverse types taking shelter and harbor within strong, stout walling oaks. Guest rooms for the newly-revived Shades he had freed to aboveground.
Orpheus grew up listening to and reading fairytales, folktales of heroes and gods and legacies, fantastic tales of impossible labors and deeds. When little he always dove himself deep into legends and songs, dreaming about worlds improbable, but perhaps not impossible.
A place like this – a house of living plants and trees, with flowers of so many colors and scenic natural pools, colorful birds and bugs flying around within the living oak walls, a house connected to the greening and growing woods around, not separate, not distinguished, but a part of the forest it’s amidst – this is the place Orpheus always dreamt of. A place like this Poseidon fashioned and crafted for Kleito, the heavenly world they built together long before fallen descendants sank it into soot. To a palace like this Eros brought Psykhé in, and they danced together beside crystalline cascading pools – although outlined not by shimmering bioluminescent fungi but by glistening precious stones – his face covered, hers blindfolded as he initiated her into the Mysteries of love.
Perhaps it was in a place like this Hades had met girl Persephone a long, long time ago – when the world was still young, every flower still a bud.
This house, his home, this nest of greening woods he grew over the blossoming bed of windflowers, beside the river he always felt the most at home – this house was always Orpheus’ dreamplace deep of his mind, the place his soul always flew to when the real world around him crushed him deep in dreary sleep and daydream. Now he stepped his bare foot on the soft greening moss amidst this dreamplace he has just sung into being, a paradise blooming and growing midst the real world he knew, a paradise sung out by him, by him himself, by him.
He made it.
He made it.
HE made it.
He didn’t tell anything to Eurydice as he was afraid to disappoint her with another broken promise. If he told anything to her before his time to do so, he’d perhaps build her expectations a little more than he would like to, then perhaps disappoint her with underwhelming work. And disappoint himself as well.
This living house was, of course, his utmost dream he has sung into being. But – and he wasn’t ready to tell the full story to Eurydice yet – this house was also a promise, an oath, or at least the start of it all. A deeper promise he has made down there, in the dreary, crushing world down below, and perhaps the utmost reason he managed to pull through his dreary trial back to aboveground.
All those poor souls out of down there. He could give them a better life, heal their spirits and provide them a better world. He would grow them new roots and sing a better home to live.
This paradise of greenery Orpheus has sung into being he shall call Euthales – ancient-tongue for “True-Blossom”. A paradise he sang in utmost dedication to his wife and lover, though it’s a gift not only to her, but also to the entire world around them they both know – the world he might just have saved, if he could dare to believe it so.
The horrible sights he has seen down below. The glimpses and echoes of memories of past lives.
It’s some kind of deep strange feeling Orpheus feels deep in the inmost shrines of his heart. Perhaps an intuition, but he has this inkling, this impression this dearly house he sang out into being might just be the start of something much, much bigger.