Chapter Text
When it happens to her, Eurydice is home alone, her only companion a sliver of moonlight that filters through the singular dirty window. She’s inching closer for a better look at the dark, endless sky that sprawls out above her when her right arm suddenly sears , blinding her with an unimaginable pain that causes her to topple backwards into a drawer.
Her gaze swims unsteadily in front of her eyes and she sees nothing but coloured blobs for a moment, filling her with a sense of unease. When her vision finally clears, she nearly throws up her meagre dinner when she sees the curved lines imprinted on her skin.
Eurydice doesn’t scream. Instead, she glances down at the circular shape that is beginning to form just above her wrist, awestruck and terrified all at once. With bated breath, she reaches out to touch the tattoo, gently running her fingers over the now complete moon. Glancing out the window, she looks between the actual crescent in the sky and her arm, mentally noting how similar they look when juxtaposed like this.
She winces when another unexpected burst of pain blooms. There’s writing inside the moon now, loopy cursive that swoops and dives like the trajectory of a seagull soaring through the air. “Melos,” she murmurs to herself, when the final curve of the lettering has been drawn.
Eurydice directs her full attention to the moon in the sky, her eyes wide. “Who are you?” she asks, her breath fogging up the glass. To Eurydice’s dismay, all the moon does is twinkle briefly in response before it’s swallowed by an onslaught of clouds the colour of obsidian, leaving her alone in the dark with nothing but a tattoo and numerous unanswered questions.
“Happy birthday to me, huh?” she says quietly, her hands now planted firmly against the wooden floorboards. “Thought I’d get a better present than this, turning double digits and all.”
***
His tattoo is something that he flaunts to everyone that he meets, whether it be the shopkeeper who runs the grocery store down the road or his favourite goddess, Persephone. Orpheus is proud of his sun-shaped mark, always eager to display the beautifully arranged burst of sunlight on his wrist.
The one thing Orpheus doesn’t particularly like about his soulmate, however, is her name. It’s virtually impossible to say, which disappoints him to no end. Sure, he's good at phonics and sounding things out, but some words are just extremely difficult to pronounce correctly.
Take his mother’s name, for example. Calliope has an ‘uh’ sound in it, despite lacking both letters. He doesn’t understand the English language, frankly, and he thinks that he never will.
He spends most of his days pondering the correct pronunciation of ‘Eurydice,’ the name that’s been engraved in the centre of his intricate, beautiful sunburst. He writes it everywhere; on spare pages in his workbooks at school, in the sand when he’s at Ms Maia’s beach house, even on the wooden tables at the bar.
The people in town call people like him a Helian, someone who has been graced by the god of the sun. Orpheus thinks that it’s horrifyingly pretty. People like Eurydice-or however you say her name, anyway- are Selenans, touched by the goddess of the moon.
There are people like Mr Hermes, however, who haven’t been touched by either. Instead, they live with the knowledge that the universe has let them choose who to love and spend the rest of their days with. They’re getting rarer and rarer these days, but Orpheus has heard the whispers that spread through the bar when they catch a glimpse of Hermes’ unmarked wrist; they all call him an Odyssean, someone who has nobody to go home to.
Those same people often forget that Hermes is an immortal god who doesn’t exactly have the time to spend with a soulmate. He’s got errands to run and jobs to do; “mail don’t deliver itself,” Hermes always says, when Orpheus asks if he’s lonely. “Trains don’t run themselves.”
So Orpheus, who’s been gifted with his beautiful burst of sun, waits rather impatiently for his soulmate to arrive in his life. Every day he checks to see if the name on his arm has been completed, if his mark has begun glowing as bright as a golden afternoon in the summer.
But while he waits, Orpheus Melos has got a song to write.
***
She covers it up with either a scarf or a comically long sleeve.
Eurydice doesn’t want to meet Melos anymore; no, she’s done with soulmates and love and codependency. It’s her against the world now, armed with nothing but an old, ratty coat that she found in the back of a charity shop and a tattered bag containing all her worldly possessions.
Ever since her father had failed to pay the rent for their beat-up, one-room apartment a year ago, Eurydice’s been living on her own. She goes wherever the wind wants her to go, a migrating bird who never settles down in one place for too long.
It’s not like she can stick around, even if she wants to; not with how the weather’s been acting up lately. Storms and fires of catastrophic proportions have ravaged the land, destroying everything in their paths. Eurydice hasn’t been caught in one yet, but she will be if she doesn’t leave the second the wind picks up.
In the summer, Eurydice hangs around poorly guarded drugstores and sneaks in as quiet as a ghost, always leaving with a bottle of cheap concealer to apply to the crescent moon that’s been inked to her wrist. Not that it does much of an effect; the sun just melts away the makeup, as if it’s telling her to face the truth.
No , she thinks one morning, hiding in the bathroom of the restaurant she’s been waitressing at. She’s emptying the plastic bottle now, dumping all of its contents onto the patch of eerily pale skin that hasn’t seen more than half an hour of sun for seven whole years now. The truth hurts, and so long as I can keep running from it, I will.
The concept of soulmates, as she’s discovered, is complete, utter bullshit. Her parents- both marked, of course, just like every other match on this planet- hadn’t worked out at all.
Maybe, Eurydice thinks, the universe does make mistakes. Maybe some people just aren’t meant to be together; maybe wanderers like Eurydice are never meant to find their soulmate and have to live with half a name their entire lives, the tattoo an omnipresent reminder of their solitude.
She ties her yellow neckerchief around the moon on her wrist before she responds to her boss’ hollering outside.
***
Here’s how it happens; a girl has wandered in from the freezing chill of the night, wrapped tightly in a coat two sizes too big for her that trails on the floor. Orpheus sees her to a table and gets her settled in, of course; he’s good at his job most of the time.
She orders herself the daily special, which- to no one’s surprise- happens to be the same every day, given how hard it’s been lately to procure a variety of ingredients.
The weather’s been a huge pain in the ass lately, but it’s alright; his song is going to change everything. He’s almost got the second verse done now. However, it’s a matter of how quickly he finds the words; or, to be more accurate, how quickly the words find him.
Orpheus takes the bills from her outstretched palm, their fingers brushing for the shortest millisecond, and before he knows it, the fire that seems to burn him from the inside at all hours of the day cools . “Who-” he starts, startled and scared, but he doesn’t get to finish; the bills drop to the table when he cradles his now aching left arm to his chest.
It takes him a beat too long to realise that the tattoo on his wrist is now glowing brighter than a lantern in the night, a guiding light to show the way through the darkness. He turns to look at her, but quickly diverts his attention back to the tattoo when he sees something move. Just like how her first name had appeared all those years ago, her last name is now slowly revealing itself next to it, the letters in exactly the same font.
“I’m Orpheus,” he says, taking note of the gleaming piece of cloth tied around her wrist. “Are- are you-?”
“I’m Eurydice,” she replies, but she doesn’t sound as thrilled as Orpheus had expected his soulmate to be. She’s beautiful, he thinks, and her name- whose pronunciation he’s tragically butchered over the years- sounds every bit as melodic and lyrical as he’d hoped.
Her eyes are pools of black that resemble the dark, mysterious side of the moon, and Orpheus registers just how little he really knows about Eurydice, this enigma of a woman who is supposed to be his soulmate. They’ve got time, he tells himself, but regardless of how unfamiliar they are with each other, it still feels like he’s known her for all his life.
***
He’s far, far too spontaneous for her taste, but Eurydice’s not that surprised, in all honesty. They’re soulmates, after all, two sides of the same coin, half of a day. He is the vibrant sun to her mysterious moon; she’s supposed to compliment him. For every bit of her that’s cautious and careful, he’s equally as impulsive and reckless.
Aside from the fact that Orpheus asked her to marry him right after he introduced himself, they’re starting slow. He’s gentle with her and promises incredible things for their eventual ceremony; wedding rings from the river, a banquet table laid by the trees, an impossibly soft bed constructed of down feathers. She scoffs when she first hears this, of course, but all that changes once he offers to show her his song.
“A song?” Eurydice asks, incredulous. “What’s a song gonna do?”
“Change the world,” he replies simply, and Eurydice would’ve laughed in his face if not for the look of sheer determination carved into his features.
“Change the world,” Eurydice repeats. She drums her ring-laden fingers on the tabletop before saying, “That’s a lot of responsibility for a pair of shoulders as scrawny as yours, given how messed up our world is right now.”
Eurydice watches as his shoulder tense ever-so-slightly as if he’s heard this insult multiple times. It’s the truth, though; he is scrawny. “Maybe you can sing it to me?” she suggests, propping her chin upon her hand.
“It’s not finished yet,” Orpheus protests, but Eurydice fixes him with a look.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she says. “Show me what you got, poet boy.”
Hesitating for another bit more, Orpheus finally gives in and sings. The melody worms its way into Eurydice’s ears and settles like cocoa powder at the bottom of a glass; looks like she’ll be remembering that for a while.
His song is beautiful. She doesn’t know if it’s at a world-changing level yet, but it’s getting there. Eurydice closes her eyes and sees water the colour of lustrous gold that flows in between banks darker than a starless sky. She sees fields and fields of multicoloured flowers blooming as the saccharine notes grace the soil; Eurydice sees spring , something so foreign to her that she doesn’t even know how to react.
The music stops so abruptly that Eurydice’s eyes fly open in surprise; he’s left her at the apex of the crescendo, and Eurydice is dying to hear the resolution. “Why’d you stop?” she demands, but Orpheus is too distracted to hear her; in his palm is a carnation that looks as if it’s been plucked from the fields he’d conjured with a few bars of notes. Stuttering a little, she adds, “How-how’d you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Orpheus admits, turning the flower in his hands this way and that. “It just… bloomed to the song.”
“With a bit of elbow grease,” Eurydice says, looking at Orpheus with a newfound admiration in her eyes, “I think that your little melody is going to change the world.”
Beaming, Orpheus tucks the carnation behind her ear, the only splash of colour on her otherwise monotonous wardrobe. “There,” he says, breathless. “A pretty flower for the loveliest woman in the world.”
***
To Orpheus’ complete and utter delight, Mr Hermes offers Eurydice a job at the bar. However, to his complete and utter disappointment, Eurydice insists on ‘thinking on it for a few days.’
“You came off too strong,” Hermes says, as they both watch Eurydice walk up the stairs to the rooms they keep neat and tidy for the occasional traveller who stumbles upon their humble institution. “She’ll come around eventually, alright?”
“Sure!” Orpheus replies. “We’ve already planned to meet outside tomorrow for a picnic, so-”
“See?” Hermes says, tossing Orpheus a polishing cloth. “It’s only a matter of time, son.”
Orpheus wakes up at the first sign of daylight the following day to prepare a few sandwiches and some of the remaining fruit supply left over from last summer. He’s always been an early bird, anyway; he wakes with the sun and sleeps when it sets.
“Miss Eurydice!” he exclaims, just as she walks into the kitchen around nine in the morning looking for breakfast. Holding up the basket, he says, “We can go now if you’d like. To the picnic.”
“Are you always this polite?” she asks, fishing through the basket and taking out an apple. Eyes lighting up, she eagerly bites into the fruit; she looks so composed even with little drops of juice running down her chin.
“I try,” Orpheus says truthfully. “Mr Hermes always tells me to treat everyone how I want to be treated. I guess that I like bein’ treated with respect.”
“Fair,” Eurydice says, and she takes another loud, crunchy bite out of the apple.
He takes her to his favourite spot by the river, where the water is just shallow enough for the soles of their feet to touch the bottom but deep enough for most of their legs to be submerged. They eat their sandwiches in comfortable silence, one that isn’t stifling or suffocating.
They play twenty questions to get to know each other better, starting with funny things like the other’s favourite soup or fruit before diving into things that reveal a bit more about themselves; they are soulmates, after all. Learning things about the other is crucial.
He discovers that Eurydice has a deep fear of butterflies; he doesn’t ask why, but he makes a mental note to never give her anything with them patterned on it.
“What’s your biggest fear?” she asks in return, voice thoughtful. A few breadcrumbs have gathered at the corners of her mouth, making her look like a hamster who’s had too much to eat. “That’s my last question.”
Orpheus ponders this for a moment. “Losing you, he says. “I can’t lose you.”
“You’re very bold,” Eurydice says, but she’s grinning. Tone teasing, she adds, “I’ve met a lot of men like you, y’know. Always so quick with their promises, but they never take the time to fulfil any of them. What makes you any different?”
“I don’t know,” Orpheus admits, awkwardly scratching the side of his head, “but I can swear on my life that I’ll at least try to account for the things I’ve committed to.”
Eurydice studies his face so intently that Orpheus wonders if he’s said or done something wrong. “I think,” Eurydice starts, tentatively inching her hand closer and closer to Orpheus’, “that I’ll take the job.”
***
It’s a hot, lazy, and impossibly sticky summer afternoon. Having given up on working their shifts hours ago, they’ve both taken to sitting by the river, their legs plunged into the refreshingly cool depths, pants rolled up to their knees.
Eurydice has her head tilted up to the sky when her vision is suddenly obscured by the scratchy fabric of a shirt. Orpheus’ sweaty, pungent shirt, to be exact.
“ Ew ,” Eurydice spits, frowning as she peels it off her face. She’s got half a mind to spontaneously push Orpheus into the river when she startles at the sight that she’s met with.
He’s practically glowing, damn it, and Eurydice can easily see why Orpheus is a Helian. His very, very bare torso reflects like a mirror in the sun, and when accompanied by the iridescent water that shimmers at his waist, Eurydice has to physically restrain herself from causing both of them to tumble into the water with the force of her kiss.
***
Persephone keeps her distance from the two young lovers. Whenever she sees them together, laughing and kissing and always up in the other’s business, the sun on her own wrist throbs with a dull pain that won’t seem to go away no matter what she does. She remembers when she was like that with Hades, when they and the world were both slightly younger.
(She tries not to think about those days too much now. It’s too much for her to dwell on, so she just takes a long swig out of her hip flask when her brain starts to flit to memories of a past that she endlessly yearns for.)
She warns them both, of course, of the trials and tribulations that come with living and loving in a world as egregious as this, but she doesn’t miss the slight hint of accusation in both of their gazes. Persephone’s trying the damn best she can to hold this shitshow together, to look like she’s got complete control of the situation, so it ain’t really her fault.
If you’re looking for a scapegoat, point at him, she thinks. Point at the man who skulks in the bottomlands and comes riding in that thunderous train of his only to pick her up earlier and earlier every year.
And so she tries to make the best out of the little time she gets up top, getting drunk and dancing with people who are actually alive instead of shades who only know how to work and blindly follow orders. She dances and drinks until she hears the telltale, shrill cry of the train as it rumbles up from down below, because what else can she do? He’s a good two months early this time.
She used to look forward to feeling the intense, never-ceasing burn of the sun inside her cool once she was in Hades’ embrace, but she can’t help but feel like their yearly arrangement- which used to be a reprieve from her overbearing mother, mind you- has become a condemning punishment over the years.
Hermes’ boy stares at her with eyes wider than saucers as she steps forward with her valise hanging off the crook of her elbow, green and white fur coat haphazardly thrown over her shoulders. “You’re early,” she hisses at him, lovingly enveloped by a billow of steam that puffs from the train’s engine. He’s got the broadest shoulders, her old man.
“I missed ya,” he replies simply, holding out his hand for her to take.
She can say no, of course. Persephone can reject his hand and turn away; maybe she’ll show him who’s boss for once, huh? She could stay up here all year long in the light of the sun, never once thinking of Hades and his dark, dank underworld, but she slips her calloused hand into his anyway. This is how the world is, she tells herself. The seasons come and they go. Can’t run away forever.
The second their fingers touch, Persephone feels the fire in her belly cool, balanced out by her other half.
Orpheus’ girl- what’s her name again? Oh right, Eurydice - looks at Hades like he hangs the stars in the sky, her eyes wide with intrigue and interest. She tries to make eye contact with her and upon succeeding, shakes her head once. Don’t .
But as the train doors shut and she feels the wheels begin to turn beneath her feet, Persephone doesn’t miss the way Eurydice’s eyes follow the oversized locomotive.
Girl’s hungry, like she was once.