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The triplets were unusually quiet, and such filled Hades with foreboding. Hades frowned as he entered his office. It was not unheard of, surely, for three small goddesses to be quiet—sooner or later, his genes would have to come out, surely? Perhaps that had finally happened? He frowned as he grasped the paperwork he'd come in to get, and tried to think that perhaps they had simply finally started taking after him.
But it was unusual for these three particular goddesses to be quiet, and especially so on a travel day.
On a mama-coming-home day.
Ever since they had been able to walk, they had insisted on tumbling into his bed in the morning on mama pick up day, excitedly babbling to them. He'd taught them to read the calendar early, the girls were no less slaves to it than he was.
"Mama day," Tisiphone had gently slapped him awake with an insistence on it the first year he’d had them alone. By last year, Tisiphone had progressed to a more gentle nudge and a more complete sentence - "It's mama's day!" said as sternly as it was possible for a toddler goddess.
But today --- for the first time—he had woken up alone. They'd even dressed themselves and had all been sitting carefully nonchalantly at the breakfast table as he'd found him in the morning—extra suspicious, to say the least. They'd been beating him to breakfast most of the summer, which in itself was odd, but given that there was no sun in the underworld, he'd chalked that up to the girls circadian rhythms being simply a bit more youthful than his own.
Still. He had a feeling he couldn't quite shake. He'd only gone to the office a few times through the morning—working in the library while the girls played there—and the girls had been...fine. Quiet. Nice. Unbothered. Just...reading books or coloring.
Which were both rather fine activities, if ones they rarely did on the first day of autumn. Usually this day had been an explosions of excited chattering, begging to go up early for extra mama time, or to buy mama a present, or generally just being insistent on going somewhere on the surface, for a surface treat.
He glanced at his paperwork; it was still a rather large pile. He'd been distracted this last week, making preparations for Persephone's arrival. He'd come in here with the intention of just picking up a few more files to take into the library – and hastily grabbed them, and walked back, as fast as his legs could carry him.
He walked all that way without making a single damn noise, and quickly opened the door.
And found all three girls, sitting at a little table, gently coloring. The same activity as when he had left.
"You alright?" He asked all three, trying to be equally nonchalant. He slowly flipped open a file but kept his attention on the girls, carefully examining each in turn.
Tisiphone was drawing some sort of picture—it looked like her mother, but that was at best a guess given Tisiphone’s choice of crayons to represent her. The woman figure was tiny, sitting in what he guessed was his train station near Demeter's house. Tisiphone had drawn her hastily. She was more careful and studious and was attempting—he thought—to focus more on the background. She'd only sketched the woman very roughly in shades of brown with green overalls, but the solid metal car behind her was lovingly laid out in black and silver crayon—or at least he thought that was what it was. It had a surprisingly large amount of boxes on it, at any rate.
His eye skimmed over to Megaera—her picture was, as usual, less ...disciplined. Splashes of colors in a wide variety of directions, with five central pillars. One was mostly black and silver. He was pretty sure it was him, but he wouldn't offer the suggestion. Last time he had offered such a suggestion, she had huffed it was Unkie Herm and that daddy shouldn't think so highly of himself.
That left Alecto, who was doodling plants. Well, that was a little unusual. Alecto's talent for capturing nature was true,though, and the flowers she was drawing—roses, carnations, passion flowers, birds of paradise, the odd violet—some of mama's favorites. Probably a gift, he thought.
"That for mama?" He asked, tapping on the flowers in the picture.
Alecto gave him an audible sigh, as if he couldn't have possibly guessed more wrong. "It's for Unkie Herm," she said, gently scribbling a delicate vase around the flowers. "Mama's got plenty of flowers."
"Yeah, she does," he agreed, and Alecto nodded. "But she always likes more." He gently tapped her head, and she wrinkled her nose.
"Daddy I'm busy!" Alecto protested and waved his hand away.
"Megaera, is yours for mama?" He asked. The possibility occurred to him that the girls, perhaps, had become less enchanted with the calendar than he had been.
"No, daddy," Megaera said, huffing. "it's for me."
"Well, that's alright. It's a nice picture. Carries your style." He smiled at her and patted at her head, only to be waved off again.
Tisiphone looked up at him, already intuiting the question. "It's for you," she muttered, her cheeks pinkening. "Can't you tell? It's the new Arbus engine."
Tisiphone, bless her little soul, was trying to please him. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see it—the distinctive smokestack, and the small creature in overalls that he'd mistaken as Persephone was likely Tisiphone, albeit one with much longer hair than she had at the moment.
"You know," he said carefully—Tisiphone was the most sensitive and the most likely of his children to find any non-exemplary feedback discouraging. He didn't know where she got that trait. Probably from somewhere on her mother's side. "I think that is our new engine, isn't it? Silly papa was looking for the old one." It still felt quite odd to think of himself as anything near silly.
"I couldn't fit in the cow-catcher," she said, morosely. "It's not—I'll make you one better."
"No, maybe—maybe next time you draw something for mama, next to your engine? So she can admire it when she comes into my office."
"Mommy doesn't like going in your office," Megaera interjected, and he sighed. Truth was, both of them being in the office meant the three triplets were unescorted, and neither of them were willing to commit to that for more than a minute or two.
"It's not a lot of fun in there," he mumbled, and flipped open another file. Alecto, evidently done with her picture, clambered onto the couch next to him, and his heart twinged a little bit when he realized how his little girl was getting so big. She didn't even need his help to get up on the furniture now. In another year, she wouldn't even need to climb on it. She was growing like a weed.
He cupped one hand over her little arm—which was still quite small—and pulled her to him, a wordless display of love. "Daaaadddd!" She whined, and he laughed lightly but didn't move his hand. She adjusted to looking into his file and he caught her trying to form the syllables of the person's name at the top of the file; he glanced down the file—Bob Smith, adulterer, seven families—and shut it with a loud snap.
"Daddy!" She whined again, but this time she wasn't the only one whining. Megaera disappeared from her chaotic drawing, using her powers to pop up behind him. He held back the urge to startle—somehow, he had never quite been able to get used to Megaera's little habit of teleporting behind him.
"I wanna go see mama!" Megaera said, banging on his shoulders. "Mama mama mama!"
Tisiphone stood and brushed off her overalls gently before turning toward him. She looked so much like her mother that it hurt a bit, to see her calmness. She seemed self-conscious as she slowly put her hands on his knee. "It is time, daddy. The two hands of the clock are like.." She brought her hands into the shape of 12:00, with both arms clasped together. Clever kid.
"So it is." He stood up, pulling Megaera with him as she wordlessly put her arms around his shoulders and let him pull her along. She giggled as he got up, her legs hooking around his chest to the best of her ability. Little monkey-child, he thought, but did not say, least Alecto prove her not the only one. He didn't like it in particular when the two girls showed off their powers around Tisiphone; it was hard on her, he knew, with her still trying to learn her gifts. They had not quite been blessed, just yet, with knowing what they were.
He held out two hands—one for Tisiphone, and one for Alecto, and both were quickly held. "Do you want to stop to get her something along the way?"
To his surprise—and considerable suspicion—the three answered in unison. "No."
"You always love to get mama a gift," he said carefully.
"We already got her one, daddy," Tisiphone said, matter-of-factually. He stopped for a moment and Megaera protested, her legs slipping and her arms holding his throat tighter in panic. He pulled her back into her perch and pretended his stopping was about that, when truly the answer was that he had not given them any money for a present, and he was damn sure they hadn't left the underworld. Not even Megaera.
Megaera got bored of riding on his neck and teleported to the ground in front of them all and started running ahead of him. "Meg!" Alecto cried out, and before he could even yell at them Alecto was already transformed into a pony, and his quiet little daughter was left walking alongside him. He opted to let the other two run ahead, and keep with Tisiphone, who was staring forward at her sisters with an expression that made his heart hurt a bit.
He knew that expression well; he'd worn it more than a few times with his own siblings. It was the look of a child who'd been left behind, and who resented it, and who was trying very hard not to.
"Sometimes I wanna trip them," she mumbled softly and he smiled and tapped her back. "'s not fair, daddy. That they got theirs already and I..." She started to get dangerously close to tears; he did not want that.
"These things take time, Tis," he said. "You will have them, and even if they never come...It would makes you no less a goddess. You will discover your giftsin time. Everyone’s…different, when their gifts manifest."
He did not tell her that most godlings had found an inkling of it by three or four. That knowledge wouldn’t make it any more likely to happen for her. And then, knowing it would take it off her mind, he smiled and knelt down next to her. She stopped and looked at him, all seriousness and pouting.
"You wanna start the engine today?" He asked. She looked at him wide-eyed and surprised; he hadn't offered before.
"Yes, daddy," she said softly. "You'll help? Or Unkie Char?"
Unkie Char, as usual, made his ears itch; he didn't like the girls being that familiar with Charon. But he shook it off; no need to correct her on it now.
"Of course," he said, and gave her a little smile. She leaned into him as they walked to the station, and he kept them both busy with talking about the different levers she'd need to press, and in what order.
But in his mind, he was wondering: what the devil did the girls have planned?
Megaera and Alecto had already buckled themselves in by the time he got there, both looking rather eager...but that was nothing new. He took Tisiphone's hands and gently helped her up the steps.
"About time!" Alecto said.
Tisiphone's face flushed with anger, and he sighed. "If you girls hadn't run ahead, you wouldn't have had to wait for us, Alecto."
"It's not our fault we're efficient, daddy!" Megaera protested, and he rubbed at his temples. He shouldn't have tried to teach them about efficiency yet. Persephone had been right on them being too young to really understand productivity.
"Maybe not, but your sister and I can't just teleport or fly, so you will need to wait for us regardless, hm?" He said.
"It's not their fault, daddy," Tisiphone mumbled, and abruptly ran toward the engine car. He sighed. It might be a longer trip to go see their mother than he thought, and he'd have to talk with Persephone about this. They'd have to find a way to encourage the girls to embrace their powers...without making their sister feel worse about her current lack of them.
"Apologize to your sister when we get back," he said, following Tisiphone up to the engine.
"Where are you going?!" Alecto was being needy today - gods above knew where she got that. Probably Zeus. He'd decided any negative trait he didn't like in the children had come from there, but such was excusable when they generally took more after their mother than their grandfather.
"Tisiphone's going to help me and Charon with the engines," he said.
"Uncle Char!" Megaera started to teleport out of her seat, but he shook his head. "I'll send Uncle Char in to watch you two. Tisiphone needs to concentrate."
Alecto looked a little guilty, down at the ground, and Megaera sighed. "Fine."
"Alright," he said; he walked across the cars and talked to Charon, who quickly grinned at him.
"So uh, rather than driving this train—the train that is my express job these days...you want me to babysit?" He ran one hand down his sharp little jaw and grinned. "Think I might need a raise, boss. This is a new job duty, ain't it?"
"Then you will have one for all of the five minutes it will take," he said, glaring at him. Charon pulled off his wrinkled, thread-bare old hat and winked at him.
"Alright, alright. Think I know a couple good new songs for 'em anyway." He cleared his throat and started to sing a lyric that dangerously resembled the there-once-was-a-girl-from-nantucket poem he'd been trying to remember the lyrics of for the last hundred years or so. He looked back at Charon, then up at Tisiphone, who was still standing quietly near Charon's seat at the top of the train, and he opted to pick his battles.
He smiled, walked forward, and picked up his daughter, placing her in Charon's chair.
"You remember which one I said has to go first?"
He watched as Tisiphone put her hand up to her mouth, counting over the levers until she found the Johnson bar. She put her little fingers on it and looked at him, and he nodded.
"Good girl," he murmured. He heard a bright peel of laughter from the next car down—he'd cut the train to two cars today, and he was beginning to wonder if that wasn't a mistake since there was nowhere to truly avoid Charon. Still, one thing at a time. He watched Tisiphone struggle to pull the Johnson lever, but with a little effort she got it, and found the release lock and locked it in place.
Tisiphone gained some pleasure from that; he caught the smile on her face. She found the cylinder cock and quickly threw it. She was gaining confidence now and didn't look over at him. He picked her up from behind and wordlessly held her up to the front headlight's switch. "All the way over," he said, and watched as she clicked the dial until she hit front-full to light their way.
"Can i blow the whistle daddy? Just in case any workers might be near the tracks?" Tisiphone looked back at him, so very serious, and he could not deny her a damn thing in that moment. He held her forward and she grabbed the chain.
"You remember what the signal is for the train going forward?" He asked.
She nodded and pulled it toward her; she pulled it in two quick staccato bursts and grinned. "I did it!"
"Yeah," he said, and gave her a little squeeze. "Proud of ya."
He put her down and she jumped up and down, unable to contain her excitement. "You want to do the brakes, too?"
She nodded, too excited to speak, and he leaned down, ignoring the way his knees cracked unpleasantly as he did. "See these two brass horizontal levers?"
She nodded again, grabbed one, and didn't ask him before turning it from right to left. It only went so far under her tiny control; she struggled to turn it past a point, and he quickly threw his hand behind hers, adding more force to release the brakes on the engine.
The engine lurched forward, and he almost lost his balance. Not the smoothest opening, but Tisiphone didn't seem to notice.
"Daddy, I did it!"
"Yes, you did," he said, straightening up and quickly opening the throttle—that was a little tricky, and he'd wait until she had the arm strength to quite handle shifting the bar easily before letting her do that step. She didn't seem to even notice that step, instead dancing around the engine room.
"Wait here," he murmured; he didn't want her crossing the cars, not on her own yet. With Megaera or Alecto, he'd worry they wouldn't listen, but that wasn't Tisiphone's problem. He put her back in the chair and she leaned forward, watching the underworld as they moved forward.
"Kay," she said, and clearly didn't mind.
He strode with a few quick steps back to the other car. Alecto and Megaera were watching Charon do some sort of...dance routine? If one could call that swaying, cracking ...movement, dancing. "Charon," he said, and flicked his head forward.
"You didn't ruin my train, boss?" Charon said, turning toward him, and then he wheezed.
"Not this time," he said dryly.
"Does uncle Char have to go?" Alecto asked, and Charon shot her a grin.
"It's my job, little lady. But you'll see me again soon. Nice thing about being the conductor, I get to say hi and bye to every-body." He laughed again, hard enough he had to grip his ribs. There wasn't even a joke there as far as he could tell, but Alecto smiled then looked at him.
"Is Tis okay?" He nodded.
"She did good. But I still expect you to apologize." Alecto looked a little sad at that but nodded. He turned toward Megaera.
"You okay?" She nodded at him and held up a juice box; he sighed. Charon had been there five minutes and had already given one of the children the start of a sugar rush.
Still, they had plenty of time to run it out; he grabbed her used Juicebox and pulled a new one out of Persephone's old bar, then thought for a moment and grabbed two more. He distributed the two to Megaera and Alecto—the juice worked, effectively, as a bribe, and her pouting was forgotten in the face of—he glanced at the label—wild cherry? Huh. Odd marketing, he thought. What on earth was wild about cherries?
He took the last juice box and put it in his pocket, walking back to the engine car quickly. He didn't bother to talk to Charon, who was leaning against his chair and pointing something out to Tisiphone. Instead, he let Charon finish, then said his goodbyes for the moment and grabbed Tisiphone and held her tight to him. "You don't let go of me, okay?" he murmured as they crossed back. She nodded and held tight until they were back in their family car, and didn't protest as he strapped her into her seat.
He held out the juice box and smiled at her, then took his seat next to Megaera across the aisle.
"I'm sorry, Tis, for runnin' ahead." Alecto muttered, looking at her sister.
"Me too," Megaera said. "'m sorry."
"'s OK," Tisiphone said, but she looked a bit sullen, so he brought up a new topic.
"You did a good job with the train," he said, and that lit up her face, especially when Megaera, picking up on his topic change, loudly screamed GO TIS and Alecto clapped for her.
"Thanks," she said quietly, but it was enough to lighten her mood.
"So what did you guys get for mama?" He asked, trying to casually change the topic.
Their reaction—three heads swiveling toward him, then all three giving him a big grin—made his stomach sink into his toes.
"Girls," he said softly. "Daddy asked a question."
"We know." All three, in unison. He winced. Not great.
"It's a secret," said Tisiphone.
"But it's good," Megaera said, and patted his arm, as if he needed comforting.
"You'll like it," Alecto agreed. Then she shouted OH, a RHINO!!! and all three girls spent the next few minutes trying to find an animal that he knew couldn't possibly exist this far down.
But it gave him time to think, so he closed his eyes and tried to think. It couldn't be too bad—none of the girls had asked him for anything particularly unusual, so it couldn't be made out of something terrible.
Unless they managed to get into the armory which was...entirely possible. He'd given Cerberus orders to let them in case of an emergency, not knowing at the time that the damn dog would be so soft of them that them asking would likely be construed as an emergency. His leg jittered in nervousness. Megaera leaned forward and he caught her arm starting to poof over toward her sisters.
"Daddy, do you think mama will be happy to see us?"
"'Course she will." He raised an eyebrow. "You ever known your mama not to be happy to see you?”
"No," she said, and then went back to craning her neck this way and that, trying to look out the window. Which was a bit atypical, that they were all so interested in the windows, but he would take it while he tried to quiet his own anxieties. The girls were clearly picking up on them.
"Tisiphone, I think I saw one!" Megaera yelled suddenly, and Alecto said I did too! in her little squeaky-mouse voice, and all he could do was ask what before all three heads turned around to him.
"It's a secret," said Tisiphone, again.
"But it's good," Megaera said, and patted his arm, as if he needed comforting again.
"You'll like it," Alecto offered once more.
He sighed.
What was a man to do?
He racked his mind for the rest of the trip, trying to think of what the girls could possibly do. He had been with them for nearly every waking moment that Persephone had been away; surely he would notice if one had left his side longer than a few moments in the bathroom?
"Daddy, do you think rhinos smell nice?" Megaera asked, after a few moments of his ruminating; he looked at her and smiled.
"Sure they do," he said, distractedly. "To other rhinoceroses at least."
"Alecto!" Megaera yelled across the aisle. "Can you become a rhino?"
Alecto wrinkled her nose and closed her eyes.
"Don't even think about it," he said, the old foreman command slipping easily back into his voice. Alecto looked at him pleadingly, and he once again regretted that he could not quite say no to these girls as much as he felt that he should.
"Wait until we’re back at home," he said. “And no goring mama.” She accepted that with a nod. A good kid. They were all good kids. He smiled thinking about that; he and Persephone had, by some miracle, made some truly good children.
Now if only he could figure out what they were up to!
The train ran fast, and his mind had gotten no closer to the gift the girls had somehow bought or made. He’d tried to pull it out of the little moppets with all kinds of underhanded techniques; he'd resorted to trying to play 20 questions, he'd tried to tease them into it, he'd even offered a small bribe in the form of candy, and then a larger one in the form of twice the candy of the previous answer.
But always it was the same answer.
It's a secret / it's good / you'll like it.
He huffed. His mind was consumed with it, to the point that the girls yelling MAMA! as the train broke the surface startled him; he'd lost track of time. A juice box was jostled onto the ground; he stared at it, watching the liquid run into the floor’s channels before quickly realizing he had to pick it up and toss it.
"Daddy can I have another one?" Tisiphone asked; he glanced outside, his eyes watering into the sun—but the soil was red, and those trees were cypresses, and he knew from that he was close to Demeter's home from that.
"On the way back," he said, softly. "Not far, now."
"Okay," Tisiphone said, but sounded a bit disappointed, and he squeezed his hand in his pocket to try to prevent himself from getting up and getting her another juice box. Damn her adorableness!
The last few minutes were mostly smooth; still, he didn't relax until Charon blew the whistle in warning. When he leaned toward the window, he could see it: Persephone's green dress and curls flying in the breeze in the distance. She was breathtaking, as she always was. His chest tightened when he saw her, and the girls clamoring in excitement did little to calm his own excitement.
To say he all but tore off their seat-belts was not an understatement.
The girls didn't wait for him, either; once Megaera was free, she teleported outside of the train, and he heard her running toward her mother, and Alecto was not far behind. She, however, stayed until Tisiphone was unbelted, at which point they quickly held hands and ran forward. Megaera, he noticed with some pleasure, had remembered his words and had, surprisingly, stopped, waiting for her sisters, joining hands, and running toward their mother, who was all too happy to receive them.
He watched as Persephone hastily passed her luggage over to her mother before leaning down and throwing out her hands; she was swarmed by their three girls who all clung to her, and he walked forward, figuring that he would need to wait ’til the girls had gotten her warmed up before he was going to get his hug. No Hermes this year,he noticed; odd in itself but perhaps he had lost interest after a few years of relatively peaceful transitions. It wasn't like Persephone needed his close eye now that she had been sober for a few years.
Persephone looked up at him and smiled—she had missed him too, then, and didn't his heart swell more at them, all his girls huddled together like that.
"Hello," said Demeter, her voice a bit strained—what was a moment of happiness for him was never a moment of happiness for her, and he nodded, gently tapping her on the wrist.
"You doing well?" He asked. Their relationship was still a bit strained, but they were making an effort, and Persephone's hand on his shoulder told him that such was being rewarded.
"Good as I can be." She smiled at him, and then pivoted over to the children, bending down to get a good look at her grand-kids.
Which gave Hades a moment with his wife, and he took advantage of it. Persephone put her arms around his neck and he dipped her a bit, smiling. She kissed him, and he ignored the chorus of noises from the girls as she did so.
"Missed ya," he mumbled into her hair, and she smiled.
"Missed ya too," she whispered into his ear. "Hopefully I'll get to show you how much, later."
His ears pinkened, and he looked away before the girls decided to ask some questions that he wasn't prepared to answer.
"Let's get a move on," she said with a soft smile; she was ready to go home, and he certainly wasn't going to fight her on it. Demeter handed him Persephone's luggage and the family clambered back on the train, and he repeated their tasks, buckling in each girl. He was satisfied that this time the girls all stayed together, and he nodded and smiled as the three all hit their mother with a large variety of excited yells, pulls, and repeated attempts to beg—but they did not fight his attempt to put them into their seat belts. Persephone, for the most part, focused on putting away the luggage, securing it onto the rack. Teamwork, he thought.
Then she collapsed into the seat between Megaera and Alecto, and looked back at him, sitting with Tisiphone.
"Mama I started the train!" Tisiphone blurted out, before waving her hands back toward her mother. She raised her eyebrows and smiled.
"Oh, that's impressive, baby. Did Uncle Charon help you out?"
"Daddy," Tisiphone said smugly. "Daddy did."
"Uncle Char was with us!" Alecto chimed in, eager to have something to add to the conversation. "He was doing the bone-man dance."
"The bone-man dance?" Persephone looked at him, and he shrugged his shoulders. Who knew what went on in the depths of Charon's befuddled old mind? Certainly not him.
"Mommy, what's a Nantucket bucket?" Megaera asked.
"A what, baby?" She ran her hands through both triplets on her side's hair, and he could tell she had missed them terribly. Terribly enough she wasn't picking up on where that poem was going.
"Charon up to his usual nonsense, I think," he said, cutting it off. He opted to change the topic to something a bit less ribald, and instead pivoted toward a topic that he was still rather curious about. "Girls, just what did you get for mama?"
"For me?" She smiled, pulling both girls closer to her. "Did your dad help you with that?"
"It's a surprise to both of us," he said, and she looked up at him, her eyebrows asking a thousand questions he had no answer to.
"You'll like it," Tisiphone said, quite confidently this time.
"I see," she said. "Is it at home?"
Alecto looked to Tisiphone, who in turn looked to Megaera, who in turn looked back to Alecto; their telepathy seemed to have stalled. "Kinda,” Alecto offered.
An unhelpful response.
"Is it...outside?" Persephone's guesses were, as usual, quite a bit sharper than his own. She put her hand on her chin and smiled. "Is it a dinosaur?"
"No!" Tisiphone shouted. "They're all in Elysium!"
He chuckled. "I think they might need my help to get that, love."
"I don't know. These girls..." She gave both of the two near her a squeeze, and he gently reached out and squeezed Tisiphone close to him as well. "Mighty industrious little girls, Hades. Can't imagine where they get it from." Her tone was teasing, and her smile suggested they got it from their father.
"Don't know where they get it, either. It must be their mother's side, to be so capable of mischief."
She looked at him with one eyebrow wide, wordlessly calling him out. He shrugged back and let the accusation sit there, a playful little game between them.
"Maybe it's both," Megaera said, never one to go without adding a little fire to the conversation. He nodded and pretended to study Tisiphone.
"Perhaps so," he said. "But they absolutely got their cuteness from their mama."
All his girls giggled. They slid back into the earth and the girls started looking outside again; he wondered what was so interesting out there. Another "rhinoceros" sighting?
"What are you looking at, baby?" Persephone asked, the question wordlessly directed at the girls—none of whom opted to answer, and so he did.
"I'm lookin' at you," he growled, and Persephone giggled, the sound music to his ears.
"Daaaaad," Tisiphone said, tugging at his sleeve but not looking away from the window for even a second. "You're not baby. We're baby."
"Alright, alright." He patted her shoulder. "Why don't you answer mama's question that was directed at you then?"
Tisiphone leaned her little neck further toward the window and ignored his question, deciding to shout instead. "Mama! Look now! Look now!"
Mama turned her head toward the window, doubtless as fast as he did—he was not entirely sure what he thought it would be, but whatever it was, he wasn't thinking it would be on the damn tracks.
The first thing he caught was greenery, tons of it—Tons and tons, the normal dirt utterly transformed into greenery. But there was no sun here, so how...? He caught a light glowing in a lantern—the glow was a bit odd, not one of their edison bulbs then, no – was it one of his grow lights?
"How on earth...?" He asked, but the question went unfinished and unanswered as he took in what the girls had managed to do. Vines filled with flowers—cleatis on green ivy, violets and roses, a bird of paradise, somehow, and then some purple and pink flowers he didn't recognize—occupied a large stretch of the tunnel. Then it terminated back into dirt, and he wondered how the hell he'd missed it on the way up.
"I wanted to finish the whole tunnel but..." Tisiphone bit her lip. "There wasn't time. Sorry, mama."
"Oh, baby, it's okay." Persephone turned back to look at their flowers as they were fading away from it. "How did you get all that?"
"Tisiphone wrote grandma for seeds, and unkie Herm brought the seeds, and Alecto brought them inside—" Megaera was excitedly giving away their plan, showing her mother big puffy cheeks to suggest just how Alecto got it in his home—he had noticed she was more into her chipmunk form lately, but he'd assumed that was just a phase for the little godling, not that she'd been using it to smuggle seeds. He filed that one away for their teenage years.
"—And then Tisiphone made the light, and asked unkie Char which path the train takes, and he said this path, and then Megaera poofed down the lights and the seeds, then she watered 'em!!" Alecto's eyes were giblet bright as she took up the story.
"Why didn’t you tell me, girls?" He asked.
"Cuz it's a gift for you, too," Tisiphone said. "Everyone knows daddy loves flowers."
Hades raised his eyebrows and a glance out of the corner of his eye showed Persephone doing the same. "Do I now?"
"Mmm-hmmm. Mommy is always going on about how daddy made her a flower. And that's our flower, too, 'cuz daddy made it for us, too, and that's why its on our baby beds."
"Yeah, I guess I do like that flower," he said, his throat a little choked up.
“And mama said you kept her weddin’ flowers, and we gotta share wen we play with'em, ‘cuz there’s only crowns but three of us!” Megaera interjected.
"And all the flowers in the garden!" Alecto sighed and looked at him. "Face it, dad. You like flowers."
"Yeah," he said, softly, his throat suddenly thick. Some of those flowers were...harder to think about than others. "I guess I do."
"Daddy and I loved the surprise," Persephone said, gracefully pivoting conversation topics and he'd never loved her more for it. "Thank you, babies."
"See? We're baby." Tisiphone beamed at him, smug in her proof, and he took the correction.
"Duly noted," he said. "That was some impressive work, Tisiphone, putting some of the lights from mama's garden in some lanterns." He'd made those for her a couple summers ago, when the triplets were small enough he couldn't have any large gift for her.
"Their diameter was the same," she said, softly. "And the screwy-bits were equal."
"Threads," he said softly. "It was very clever. From all of you," he added. He did not add his second thought, which was that it was terrifying that the girls could hide so much from him and that was with one of them not even discovering her true gift yet. And that he was, admittedly, a little shaken thinking about all they'd get into by the time they were all confident in their powers.
"Yes it was very smart." Persephone smirked and looked at him. "Did you know we made such smart girls?"
"A complete surprise to me," he mumbled, and she smiled.
"That, you most certainly get from me. And maybe from your dad, too. A little, at least." She winked at him, and he smiled and pulled Tisiphone close to him, thankful for the girls and his wife. And as the train rumbled back towards home, he felt himself relax—at least a bit.