Archive of Our Own

There are hundreds of stories about the acts of gods and mortals. Epics about how they shaped the world, comedy and tragedy dancing with one another in the same tale. 

Everyone wants to hear stories of such great figures.

Much rarer are the stories of nymphs.

And rarer still are those about nymphs that don’t find themselves to be a tragedy.

- - -

Mel remembers being woken up for the first time.

The soft sunlight creeping through the mature trees around her, the feeling of damp soil around her roots. The earth underneath her is rich and well-fed by the worms that call it home, and she curls her roots deeper with a pleased stretch. A song ripples through the roots of the trees around her, dimly reaching the edges of her senses as the woods connect to something greater than all of them.

To be a tree is to embody a single instance in a wider tapestry, a living breathing thread of something more. 

To be a nymph though is to take up a little piece of that tapestry, of Gaia herself, as their own. Each stream, tree, and hill can be loved enough to draw them forth from the land’s sleeping heart. There are simply too few who know how to coax something so delicate out into the open air.

Mel stretches out in her wood happily, content to rest in the heart of her tree under endless sun-bright skies. She can hear the distant calls of life outside her sapling, but she’s fine where she is. 

This is home and home is her. What else could she need?

Then a voice comes, pulling her from her slumber with an inhuman hum dancing through every syllable. 

“It’s time to wake up.”

And with that Mel finds herself given consciousness, one beyond roots and leaves and branches dancing in the wind. She releases her grasp on the soil below her for hands- her hands and limbs and individual form. 

Mel falls forward through her heartwood and phloem and bark until she crumples, free standing, on the forest floor.

She blinks new eyes as she stares at the shy sprouting grass under her hands, poking out between her fingers with a soft prickling sensation. Oh. It tickles. Mel smiles, flexing her hands for a moment as she feels her mind settle into her new form. And it certainly is new. Pale pink nails (so soft for something that’s supposed to be so fierce) give way to smooth unblemished hands. Mel follows the curve of herself up, from arms and shoulders to a torso holding a beating heart and breathing lungs (how strangely constant). Her legs sit underneath her, bare and soft like the rest of her.

As Mel’s discoveries of her new form slowly come to a close, she turns to look at her small sapling with new eyes. From the outside she can see its familiar curves and edges with a whole new clarity. Where it arches, she remembers the press of a gentle curve. Where it branches suddenly, Mel remembers the hard corners of herself.

She can still feel herself in the tree, the soil and the sunlight pressing against her, but it’s different now as she can also feel the breeze on her skin and the smell of flowers Mel hadn’t realized were so close. 

She’s alive and she’s split in two. She’s here but she’s there.

Mel is a dryad and this is her tree.

Dryads are not born like most mortals. They are not babies, brought forth without knowledge at first existence. Dryads are steeped in genetic memories, a gift given to them from their seed tree and the great mother Gaia and the wordless communication that trees share with one another across impossible distances. They are their trees, even when they aren’t, and that means age beyond physical form.

It also means that they are not brought forth by moments of accident.

Mel’s exploration of the world (with its rich blue skies and sweeping green trees-) is halted as she finally spots her awakener watching from just a few feet away.

A deceptively simple looking woman, wrapped in a wide sleeved peplos that falls to her ankles, stands in front of her with a motherly smile. She patiently watches Mel pull herself together as a hand rests protectively on the swell of her stomach. It isn’t a conscious thought for Mel to pull forth the knowledge of who this woman is. 

Demeter.

Goddess of the harvest and all things that grow - grain, fruit, and flower. Keeper and giver of seeds. Raiser of forests. And, as a matter of crossing destinies, awakener of dryads.

“My lady.” Mel breathes, lowering her head. The grass tickles her knees as she settles into a proper kneel but she’s careful not to show it. This is a very important introduction. she won’t let herself get distracted.

“What’s your name, little dryad?” Demeter asks, voice ringing warmly through the trees. How could it not? This is her grove. Everything here is hers.

From the greatest tree to the smallest unbloomed flower bud, nature will bend to her will because it, they, are her will. 

This is a goddess, a woman who sits eye to eye with the other great heads of Olympus. She isn’t one for silly nicknames and small titles like Mel had entertained herself with in her sleeping wood. Mel lifts her head slightly to look at Demeter, swallowing down her more beloved nickname for-  “Melissa, my lady.” 

Demeter hums for a moment, taking her in quietly, before stepping closer.

Mel holds her breath as the linen of Demeter’s dress comes dangerously close to brushing her hand, swaying slightly in the breeze. She doesn't dare breathing too deeply as a hand slowly reaches out to touch her hair, pulling it forward gently. It’s golden in the sun, bright and happy in a way that reminds Mel of the bees that sometimes dance around her flowers. Demeter's fingers comb through it, lingering on the edges of her senses, until finally a small piece of bark is worked loose.

The goddess lets it fall to the forest floor with clear disinterest as she works out the next piece, and the next. It was fine where it was if Mel was being asked. Dryads don’t have much of a distinction between clean and dirty when their lives are spent above and below. But her lady has deemed it something to be removed so it is. 

She has the sense not to interrupt her.

Stretching out her physical senses, in both forms, Mel listens for the sound of other nymphs awakening throughout the nearby trees. She can’t feel anyone moving around in the same tumbling steps. This is not the shared awakening of a forest coming to life all at once.

Whatever this is, the purpose is far more…singular. 

Finally Demeter steps back, looking Mel over with a close eye. Mel passes whatever standard she’s looking for as she nods once to herself, clearly pleased. “I have a task for you, little one.” Demeter says as her hand smooths over her swollen stomach once again, cradling it safely beneath her palm. “I will have a daughter in two months.”

A daughter!

Mel doesn’t ask how she knows. Demeter says it like a fact, one that the world will bend to give her. Perhaps it will. The business of the gods is far from the business of a simple dryad. She has said it and it will be so.

“The world is unkind, ready to tear and destroy with such ease.” Demeter sighs as something darker shadows her eyes even as she reaches out to lift Mel’s chin. Their eyes meet with a steadily growing fire burning in Demeter’s soul. “My daughter will need a playmate, and a protector. You will be that for her.”

Mel’s mouth falls open without conscious thought, words failing her. 

To stand at the feet of a god, to be trusted with duties, is a great honor. Maenads flutter around Dionysus in addled delight and nereids slip through the ocean currents on Poseidon's heels, just waiting to prove themselves. Even quiet Artemis takes a pack of nymphs, no sense of distinction between their kinds, on her eternal moonlit hunts. For Demeter, she is attended by the nymphs of her grove, the steady dryads in the trees and pleasant naiads in the streams. 

The duty of protecting Demeter’s daughter, a young goddess of the harvest, from a world that would chew her up in a moment - it’s beyond anything a dryad could hope to be entrusted with. 

Mel is young and her tree is still a sapling, trunk soft and flexible, but her goddess has chosen her for this task specifically. 

Has awoken her for a purpose. 

“I will.” Mel promises, stars in her eyes even under the burning attention of her goddess. “I will care for her and defend her against everything.”

Demeter leans in close, the soft scent of wildflowers drifting off of her in strange contrast to the amber fire in her eyes. “This is your greatest duty. One I give to no others. I expect perfection from you, little one. Do not let me down.”

Mel nods carefully, voice caught in her throat.

She won’t fail. Not with this. 

It is the first and most fundamental thing Mel ever learns about herself.

- - -

The gods celebrate Demeter’s smooth delivery with a celebration that lasts for weeks, rich with congratulations and games of sport. 

The mortals, hearing the bright news from oracles and sly-eyed travelers passing through their towns, take up the good cheer with an almost reckless abandon. Massive pithoi and other wine-stuffed clay vessels were passed around towns so freely that fountains seemed to run with it and poets started calling it the feast that would never end. The earth bloomed under their feet, each vineyard and tree bursting into life, as they toasted to the small babe with special reverence towards her new title.

There are many things that the gods cherish. Their domains, their lands, their worshipers. 

But even more than the rest, they value their true names.

Names hold a power, if not literally then certainly metaphorically. It’s for that reason that each god takes a greater title, one that exemplifies their role and duties to anyone who hears it. 

Zeus, king of the heavens.

Demeter, goddess of the harvest.

Their true names are lost knowledge, only held in their own minds and gifted with a careful reverence to close kin. When the gods toasted and celebrated Demeter's daughter, they did it with a newly bestowed title.

Kore, meaning maiden. As innocent and lovely a title as the babe herself. 

The delightful pull of new growth and seedlings drifts off of her, undeniably her mother’s child in every way. She grew over the long sweet days of celebration, never far from her mother’s ready arms even as everyone crowds around to meet their newest family member.

The hubris of men and duties of the gods never wait long though so one green afternoon Mel finds her goddess striding the familiar paths of the forest again, happy babe settled in her arms. 

Mel straightens at the sight of her, smoothing nervous hands down her chiton as she forces herself to stand at attention. The other nymphs of the forest had been surprised at Mel’s awakening, blinking at her stumbling into their glades with hasty confusion, but something about Kore’s birth seems to have tipped them off to her purpose as they begin passing her advice.

A goddess isn’t the same as us, her happiness is important but her sense of responsibility is more so. Keep her in line. A mountainous oread warns Mel, as unmoving as the stone she loves.

If you don’t change with a child, you will become what they push against. Be fluid. A naiad in the meadow stream tells Mel with a beaming smile.

Young ones need rest, even if they don’t see it for themselves. A mature dryad named Lena says as she teaches Mel how to braid her hair back. Her eyes are sad as she looks at Mel, heavy with something she doesn’t say. Growth happens when it happens, it shouldn’t be forced.

Mel memorizes all of their advice, even the parts that conflict, carefully. She intends to be ready for anything.

The little goddess, like so many divine beings, has grown unnaturally quickly over just a few short weeks. She’s already toddling as Demeter places her down in soft grass, sprouting further beneath Kore’s curious touch. Mel grins at her searching motions, already picturing all the places in her mother’s lands that Mel can show her. Demeter rubs a soft hand over her daughter's round cheek, watching her with an unbridled warmth.

It's like she's staring at her own heart outside of her chest.

Finally, Demeter looks up at Mel. “Her name is Becca.” 

Mel’s breath catches to be given such a task in one word.

Demeter has given her the gift of Kore’s closest name, and the responsibility of defending it, all at once. The heaviness in her lady’s eyes gives away the fact that she seems to know that it isn’t a kindness. “You will guard her with your life and care for her like her happiness is your own.”

“Yes, my lady.” Mel swears, bowing her head deeply.

Demeter hesitates for a moment, eyes stuck on Becca as she giggles brightly. Nearby branches lower themselves into her reach, playful and ready like everything else in her mother’s lands. The air holds still as they both wonder how she could leave such a treasured moment. Then Demeter draws upon whatever well of power compels her to carry out her duties and leaves down the same paths that she entered, eye set on the far horizon and the world of mortals.

With that Mel’s watch begins.

- - -

“I want to go to the grotto again!” Becca demands, crossing her arms as she falls into a dark pout. One of her feet stomps on the meadow bed sharply with the full force of a child’s disappointment.

Mel straightens up from her performance of Theseus and the Minotaur, the words drifting away from her at Becca’s sudden boredom. “Oh, I thought…of course, we can go right now.”

The young goddess has grown ever more talkative over the years, laughing and demanding her way across her mother’s lands with a delighted impunity to the word ‘no’. 

Mel is at her side constantly to smooth out any complaint she might encounter, be it her own hunger, boredom, or navigating the twisting paths of the woods. No tree on her mother’s land would dare ensnare her like some kind of mortal, but there’s a difference between safe and easy. Demeter’s grove is not all finely pruned gardens and fruiting trees. Untamed, primordial sides of the goddess’s power (born out of unspoken tempers) splatter the edges of her lands in dense woods and thickets. 

Without a fine understanding of the language of trees and a keen eye kept underground, it’s easy to get turned around by the lands themself without a guide. 

That’s what Mel is for.

She dusts off her chiton as well as she can, edges stained green from their play, and starts walking towards the grotto as Becca’s bad mood evaporates back into a sunny smile. They never last long. Mel won’t let them, even when that means doubling back to a grotto they were at less than an hour ago. 

The other dryads and naiads who call the grove home fawn over Becca whenever they can, but Mel is Becca’s most favored companion. 

Whenever the dancing and singing and general tone of the other nymph’s reveling starts to overwhelm her, Becca ensures Mel slips away from the celebrations with her, back into the uninhabited parts of the garden for one on one games instead. Mel never breathes a word against it, even when she just wishes to sit instead of finding herself playing for six just to make up for the difference. 

This is her duty. She just needs to try harder.

“What were the words of the fruit song Lena was singing?” Becca asks as she swings her arms. Her humor is already improving at Mel’s immediate acquiescence.

Mel thinks for a moment, trying to catch up to Becca’s rapidly changing mood. “Fruit song, fruit song…oh, I remember that one. Let me see-”

- - -

Years are a strange subject with gods seeing as they don’t age like mortals. 

How could they? 

They’re forces that are interwoven with the world itself. They move and everything moves with them. Time passes over them like a simple breeze, lacking any force to change them. When it's time that they transition into something new, it’s an almost indistinguishable shift from one moment to the next as they snap forward into new duty and purpose. 

A mountain becomes a volcanic landslide in a heartbeat, then returns to it's quiet timeless rest.

The gods are the exact same way, stable and unchanging until it’s time they aren't.

For all that Mel spends her days at the side of a goddess, she can't say she understands them. She is a dryad. What dryad can truly understand the call for more, to leave safe lands or abandon familiar paths? To look elsewhere would be unthinkable.

There is no shift in Becca’s eyes as she matures though, no lingering twist towards the horizons. She remains happily planted in the gardens, surrounded by lands that love her. Mel lets herself relax, set at ease by the calm of long peaceful years.

Perhaps that feeling of relief is why Mel was so unprepared for their world to change.

- - -

“We could go to the eastern woods?” Mel offers, watching Becca with a careful eye where she’s sprawled out over the sun-warmed stones lining the small river. “There are some sparrows that are supposed to hatch soon and-”

“I don’t know.” Becca huffs, hand coasting lazily through the cool water.

Mel fights to keep the frown off of her face even as Becca shoots down her fourth idea in so many minutes. She’s no longer a young girl, nevertheless Mel can’t help remembering her at a more…fussy age when she gets like this. Something has crept impatiently under Becca’s skin these last few days. “It’s been a while since we had a poetry competition, I could go get-”

“No.” Becca sighs irritably, showing no sign of noticing that she’s cut Mel off. Twice.

“No?” Mel echoes, smothering her disappointment. She's always been rather fond of poetry, and they haven't done it in weeks. “Perhaps the meadow then?”

“I don’t know.” Becca repeats tetchily. 

Mel winces at the reaction, floundering slightly as Becca shows no sign of letting up. “Are you feeling alright?” 

It’s more direct than she would typically offer, but nothing else has broken through and there’s only so many times Mel can offer the same things and be shot down the same way without needing to try something else. The warm day around them is perfect if not for the strangely discordant tone building between them. Mel shifts her weight back and forth on her feet, trying to release some of the tension trapped in her chest, as a cool breeze tosses the branches overhead playfully, sweeping over their sun-warmed skin in a welcome contrast to their mood.

Becca straightens up suddenly, something secret sealed away in her eyes. “I think I’ll go rest. I’m tired and the sun is draining today.”

“Of…course.” Mel agrees haltingly to the proclamation, unable to smother her frown completely.  

Demeter built a house in the heart of her gardens for Becca, just one more piece of her love and favor, like anyone could doubt her affection for her daughter. It’s a lovely little stone construction, comfortable and safe, that Demeter is said to have had built under the keen eye of Hephaestus himself. A little piece of her protection made physical under the greatest godly worksmith to exist. 

Mel has never particularly understood the appeal of 'architecture', but it’s a kind gift in any case. 

Becca rarely passes her time there beyond sleeping though. An odd game or two have pulled them inside the house’s sturdy walls during the day, but they rarely entertain her for long against the temptations of her mother’s vast lands. For her to be so interested in resting now, in the heat of the afternoon when she is usually most lively, is…strange. Neither of them say another word about it though as Becca gets up and disappears down hidden forest paths. She’s no longer the stumbling girl that she used to be. She knows the grove inside and out and can guide herself home from the farthest reaches of the land. 

She doesn’t need Mel. Not how she used to at least.

Something about that fact tugs sharply at Mel’s gut as she stares around the riverbed, not quite sure what to do with her sudden dismissal.

A small white dove flutters down to the sun-warmed stones that Becca vacated, staring at her quietly. It’s a messenger sent by Demeter to collect any reports Mel has on the goings on of the gardens. Mel never receives any compliments on her tireless work, but she doesn’t receive any reprimands either. Gods are busy beings. She won’t be ungrateful. Besides Mel can’t say that she’s exactly impressed with these inescapable moods that Becca has been falling into lately.

She sighs, carefully scooping the bird up to her chest. She’s not sure how to keep the strange rift opening between her and Becca a secret. It wouldn’t do to report that too hastily.

Mel isn’t sure what the consequences failing to keep Becca happy would be.

She doesn’t intend to find out.

“Do you have any ideas?” Mel asks the dove as it nests down in her hands comfortably. The dove coos quietly at the sound of her voice, staring up at her with a sweet face. Mel laughs, mood lightening for a moment as she pets its little head. “Yeah, me neither.”

- - -

Unfortunately Becca’s strange moods linger.

And even worse is that Mel still can’t make sense of them.

Some days she’s herself again, dancing happily and endlessly through the meadows. They’ll talk and play and Becca will challenge Mel to weaving competitions with the long flexible strands of grass. Then other days come where she’s quiet and withdrawn, eyes stuck on the distant horizon, until she carries herself back home for some peace and quiet. 

Nevertheless, when she returns from her solitary days in her home, Becca is brighter again. Returned to her old self.

For a time.

And the cycle repeats, over and over again.

Mel doesn’t know what to make of any of it, stomach twisting dangerously at the unpredictability of it all. It’s like she’s been locked outside of a room while trying to make out what’s happening inside by the shadows moving under the door. Hearty flowers built for much rougher climates seem to trail after Becca’s heels, bouncing happily in the wind as she passes. Mel stares at them for long hours after Becca has retired into her home, unsure what to make of any of it.

She can’t help hoping each morning that this is the day that Becca’s strange restlessness will break for good and she’ll return to the happy girl she was before…something happened.

Mel hasn't been right yet.

Today isn't much different from the rest as Becca sends her away for the morning in order to sway aimlessly in her hammock, a secret brightness pressed into the corners of her eyes. Not quite sullen, not quite sociable. 

An in-between kind of day. 

So Mel comes up with an idea to nudge it in the right direction.

It’s a long walk to the eastern slopes of Demeter’s lands that stretch far into the distance. The sun slips through the forest branches to warm Mel’s skin in fluttering kisses as she walks, cutting through deer trails and nymph paths with ease. It’s a perfectly lovely summer’s day, vibrant and warm. It’s the kind that everything in the grove seems to adore.

Mel feels a little dried out if she’s being honest. The sun is lovely, but Mel can’t help daydreaming about a good rain. She can always feel the steady seep of it into her roots, soaking it up greedily every time the clouds roll in, even as Becca groans at the disruption to their games. She’s never quite able to explain what makes rainy days such a treasure, the way the trees sing together in voices that aren’t.

Becca never seems to hear it the way that Mel can.

A dryad is not a separate, free-range being. They have a home, a waypoint to guide them at all times. They are their tree and their tree is them, and every tree that dances with theirs above or below ground speaks in impossibly knowing voices. Even the ones with no dryad pulled from their bark. Mel’s work, entertaining Becca day in and day out, takes her away from her tree more than any dryad should be away from their other half. To be away from it, especially so often and so young, is not a natural state. Other nymphs look at Mel’s tree in tutting whispers and sorry eyes, taking in how small it still is even after all this time. There are dead blooms scattering her branches and all sorts of competitive seedlings germinating in the ground around her, trying to steal away the resources in the soil.

It’s a poor showing from any dryad, but especially one supposedly in the goddess’s attentions. 

Mel’s tree, a short Juneberry sapling, calls to her as warmly as ever even with their long periods of separation and her split attention. Life rarely slows for the timeline of a tree, leaving her no time to slip back into her wood. Becca would never accept being separated for such an unknown amount of time anyway. Mel tries to make do with the care she can give her tree in the late hours of the night when Becca is asleep, but it’s not the same. 

She has a job, a duty handed to her by Demeter herself. 

That’s more important than anything. Even the lingering ache in her chest.

The sun is high in the sky by the time Mel reaches the fig trees scattered around the foothills that drew her all the way out here. There are trees of any and every kind scattered throughout Demeter’s grove, but Becca has always favored these the most. The eastern facing trees seem to grow fruit twice as sweet as anywhere else, early morning sun soaked into their very fibers. Mel plucks the best of the figs, filling the lap of her chiton like a makeshift sack. This should certainly help change Becca’s mood. The world never seems as upsetting with a treat in hand.

Mel presses a hand to the tree's trunks with quiet thanks before she turns and starts making her way back towards the heart of the grove. The hike is slow-going as Mel takes care not to lose any of her prizes, but she finds her way back to familiar woods eventually. She strains her ear as she approaches Becca’s home for the sound of her absent-minded humming or the creak of the hammock swaying in the breeze, but neither of them make themselves known.

In fact the air feels particularly still right now, like the world is holding its breath.

Mel blinks at the strange shift as she steps into the clearing proper to find Becca’s hammock abandoned. Where did she go? She wasn’t gone that long, and Becca tends to be more sedentary when these moods strike her.

“Becca?” Mel calls as she turns in a circle, listening for a sign of her. Perhaps it’s a new game? Becca hadn’t seemed up for it before Mel left, but maybe she changed her mind. Those changes are harder and harder to predict nowadays. The idea doesn’t do much to still the worry bubbling in her chest though. Mel shuffles forward a few more steps, heart beating faster even as she tries to hold herself calm. “Becca? I brought you some of the figs you like, the ones from the East by the old oak.”

No one answers.

Mel’s stomach twists sharply at that. Becca loves those trees and even in her most sullen mood bringing them up is enough to rouse her for a demand to go back at the next chance so they can see them properly, together. 

Becca doesn’t reveal herself even at that, remaining stubbornly hidden. 

Perhaps hidden isn’t the right word.

Mel almost doesn’t notice the figs falling from her grasp as she makes her way over to the hammock. The fabric is still warm although it’s impossible to tell if that’s from Becca or the afternoon sun. She spins on a heel, the still air of the glade sticking in her throat as she searches the house. Then the gardens around it. Then into the trees around that. 

It takes twenty minutes for Mel to lose her smile completely, and thirteen more before she starts truly listening to the pit in her stomach.

Becca isn’t here.

And there’s no sign of where she went.

Mel stumbles out of the glade around Demeter’s heart and expands her search into larger, more desperate circles. Hours pass without notice, day and night slipping by interchangeably. She searches every gully, grotto, tree, and field with a rising fervor. Every nymph she comes across is questioned for any sign of Becca, any hint of her slipping away for some silly game. 

They haven’t seen her.

No one has.

The facts are impossible, but they come back to Mel over and over again from sympathetic faces. There was no game to join or invitations to join her in a wander. No scream or cry to summon anyone to her side in some case of danger. No new growth or desperate flailing from the trees to protect their lady. 

Becca simply vanished into thin air.

Mel walks on persistently, bare feet unprepared to travel the rough ground she finds herself on. The edges of Demeter’s lands are far less tame, wild in a way that no claimed space ever truly can be. Hours, days slip by without anything to show for them as Mel searches the most desolate and far-flung places she can think of on fading hope. Any sign, any direction. Anything at all.

Demeter gave her a duty. 

Mel scrambles up the rocky face of a waterfall for a better vantage point. She finds nothing.

Mel has to fulfill it. 

None of the trees can answer her questions, only truly sure of the soil wrapped around their own twisting roots.

This task, Becca’s safety and happiness, is her reason for existence.

Mel stumbles as she descends the rocky path over one of the mountainous hills edging Demeter’s gardens. There’s nothing here except silence and winds whistling over stone. She slips between two boulders, eyes set heavily on the green horizon, when a voice interrupts her.

“Why are you here?” 

Mel jolts as she turns to find an old oread suddenly sitting on one of the stones. Her hair is gnarled and the lines of her face look like they’ve been carved from stone itself. While they’re both nymphs, the differences between a dryad and an oread feel almost too vast to number. Their only true similarity is their tie to the land, to something greater than any one piece of itself. The oread watches Mel with a careful eye, raising an eyebrow at her. 

“H-Hello, watcher of the caves and stone.” Mel says, clearing her throat as she drags up the best manners she can. She’s not in the heart of the gardens anymore. Respect is crucial to getting something out here in the wild edges of claimed land. All sorts of things cross through this place with no allegiance except to themselves.

“Why do you wander so far, dryad?” The oread asks, tilting her head at Mel judgmentally. She can’t strike a very imposing image, exhausted and desperate as she is.

“I’ve lost my charge and am searching for her.” Mel breathes, chest squeezing tight. “The goddess of new growth and daughter of Demeter, Kore. Have you seen her?”

The oread doesn’t emote, even at the sound of such a prestigious being. Typical reactivity of an oread. “I haven’t.”

Mel’s shoulders slump in exhaustion. Another lead gone and still no sign of Becca. The ache in her feet grows a little sharper at another path cut off with nothing to show for it. Mel fights a prickling in her eyes, fighting to hold herself together.

“There is no sign of her to be found?” The woman asks, something low and knowing in her voice.

“No.” Mel blinks as she shakes her head.

“No note, signs in the grass?” The oread continues, like she has no idea how someone would get something from that, but needing to close every possibility first.

Mel shakes her head again, slower this time as she sees a dark expectation already lingering in the woman's eyes.

The nymph nods like that only confirms her worst fears. “Then above ground may not have what you seek. You may need to explore somewhere more…bleak.”

A shiver runs down Mel’s spine without permission, skin prickling at the thought. 

Becca is nowhere to be seen, not one hide or hair of her, in all of her mother’s lands. It’s as if the earth herself swallowed Becca whole, sweeping her away without a trace. There is only one domain so possessive and greedy as to steal the living away with an unquenchable hunger. The place has many names: Underworld if one is being proper, Tartarus when someone is feeling more evocative. The one most commonly said in whispered voices is also the one that comes to mind first. 

The Pitt. 

A hole where the most vile and despicable souls are trapped beneath the feet of long dead mortals. It’s not a safe place for one to find themself and even more so, not while still alive. 

Certainly not for a lively young spring goddess.

The God of the Underworld is as unknown as his lands. A dark mysterious figure said to have piercing eyes that can see through a soul itself and skills on the battlefield that single-handedly forced a changing of the tide against the great Titans. A god that would have no qualms about stealing himself a treasure from the earth. Or a bride to fill his bed.

The oread seems to take pity on Mel, watching her carefully as she gives one last small gift. “There are caves in these hills that even we don’t follow. Ones that go deep into the earth and are too dark and smooth to be anything but…intentional.”

Mel’s breath catches in her chest as she stares shakily at the oread, following her words to their natural conclusion even as her mind flinches away from the possibility. Buzzing fills her ears, drowning out the rest of the world as Mel stares at the barren landscape around them. She's not sure what happened after that, memory going soft and blurry. Somehow she left the mountain and stumbled her way back through the woods on blind feet, mind a million miles away.

The moon is high in the sky when Mel finally falls to her knees in front of her tree, knees hitting the ground hard enough to reverberate through the rest of her body. She blinks, staring down at her own hands as they shake in her lap.

She’s home and Becca isn’t.

She's safe and Becca isn't

Mel has failed most singular and important duty. She has not only lost Becca, but she's lost her to a realm darker and more possessive than any other in mortal or divine lands. One that claims all and releases none. The cold moonlight is her only companion as tears finally break free to drip down her cheeks, the woods silent and air painfully still. Mel leans forward, falling over her own legs as the first sob breaks loose.

- - -

Everyone knows the story of Ganymede, the mortal so beautiful he was stolen away by Zeus to be his cup-bearer. A cautionary tale of the greed of great gods, the possessiveness that fills their grasping hands. No one is safe from it - not mortals or nymphs. Not even other gods.

- - -

Dawn stretches her rosy fingers into the sky slowly, pulling Mel from her silent vigil.

Her mind refused to rest so she spent the small hours of the night thinking of what she has to do. With the rising light, there’s only one path laid out in front of her.

Mel needs to find a way into the Underworld.

There is one path for a mortal to reach that fell place where they all must rest and most of them aren’t in a hurry to find more. There are stories though, like the oread told her last night, of tunnels that can lead down into the dark earth. Silent cave entrances that never seem to end no matter how far one travels down them. Ones that are tinged with a feeling of more. No one is quite sure if they’re real, if there truly is something waiting at the bottom of them. Wherever they lead, those tunnels are tucked away in lost corners of the world to prevent an endless parade of beggars and foolish heroes. Mel tries not to think about the fact that none of them have returned to prove or disprove such stories. She doesn’t know what she’s doing getting her name tied up in a group like that, but she has no choice.

If she wants to reach the underworld, this is her best shot.

Mel sets off for the mountains edging Demeter’s gardens as soon as Dawn’s light has illuminated the worst of the path. It’s slow work, marching across the land, but Mel holds herself together with a tight grip. The sun has breached the horizon, carried high into the sky, by the time she reaches the foothills and begins her search. It’s almost past noonday when Mel finds it.

Hidden in craggy rocks with an impossibly perfect natural architecture sits the entrance of the Underworld.

Nothing marks it as such, but there is a soft motion in the air as she stands at the mouth, almost like a massive beast exhaling. Plants don’t grow around the entrance, warned away by the force that lives inside, and the rocks are silent without guardians settled in their hearts. This small opening off of a path that no one takes is wrapped in warnings determined to send away all but the most desperate.

Mel is desperate.

Beyond foolish hope, she is desperate.

Nothing changes with her first step inside, the sun still lighting her way and warming her back. Still it feels heavy, like a place she won’t leave the same. Changing her a little more with each step. The Underworld is a possessive realm after all, there is always some payment for visiting.

Mel closes her eyes and puts it out of her mind as she takes the next step and the one after that. 

The rocky path curves down into the earth, air cool and still. It grows dim as she leaves the daylight behind but never so dark she can't find the next step forward. Still it’s not the light, but the quiet that digs its way under Mel’s skin more than anything. A forest is not a dull place and certainly not one inhabited with nymphs. This tunnel, it’s not natural. Not as mortals understand the phrase at least. A chill runs down Mel’s spine at the thought and the knowledge of how far she grows from the sun with every step. 

In it's own strange way, it’s not as alien as she had feared though. She’s a creature of leaves and roots, above and below. The earth is not such unfamiliar territory. She clings to that feeling as she continues on her ever-twisting path.

Mel isn’t sure how long she walks, feet growing cold against the well-worn stone, but the path opens in the course of a single turn to reveal an arching doorway, walls sweeping up and away as if wedged open wider by the arch. Overhead text has been carved into the arch itself.

Αυτό που είστε τώρα, κάποτε ήμασταν εμείς· αυτό που είμαστε τώρα, θα γίνετε εσείς.

What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.

A shiver runs down Mel’s spine as she squares her shoulders and passes through the archway. She doesn't look up at it again.

A cool presence washes over her skin on the other side, officially welcoming her to the realm of the dead. 

Mel breathes slowly, trying to hold herself steady as her body adjusts to the feeling of entering a new god’s domain. It almost works. It’s a shock to her whole system after living under one godly hand her whole life. There’s nothing to be done but keep going, so Mel forces her legs to move again even as they shake slightly. Distance is hard to judge underground, but it’s not far past the archway that the walls of the tunnel fall away again, this time with a finality that has Mel stepping out into what looks like a whole new world. 

The cave walls peel back into an impossibly massive cavern with the ceiling arching away like a distant grey sky. The tunnel that she steps out of is set into a massive rock face that comes to a sudden stop like it was sheared away by some impossible force of nature. It stretches out in every direction like…well, like a whole domain tucked away under the earth. Mel spins slightly as she takes it all in, mouth falling open without conscious thought. The smooth stone under her feet gives way to small rounded-off black river stones as she slowly approaches a wide river separating the entrance from the rest of the cavern.

The river Styx, one of the five rivers that sweep through the Underworld and divide its lands. Oath-Holder. River of Hatred. Oldest of the oceanids. 

It’s an imposing set of titles, ones that keep Mel from drawing too close to the water’s edge. The shades clustered on the shore around her seem to agree.

There is an old wooden dock that looks decades past its last day a small ways down the shore that Mel finds herself drawn to. She’s not the only one as the dark shrouded figures mill quietly around the edges of it, none of them daring to step foot on the worn wood. Mel finds her way to the front of them, bowing her head quietly at those she slips in front of.

She still has her manners, even if she’s not sure the shades can enjoy them.

“And who might you be?” 

Mel lifts her head to look at the figure guiding a small wooden boat closer. Dark black robes cover most of his body, but a near skeletal hand wrapped around the pole pushing the ship is all the information she would need if his task didn’t do it for her. Charon, deliverer of souls and sole bargeman permitted to cross the Styx.

“A messenger.” Mel says as she fights the urge to fidget. It’s not enough. The rules of the Underworld are strict about who might visit and who undertakes a one way journey when they pass under the archway. Mel isn’t here under the direction of her goddess or intending to remain as an inhabitant. She has no claim to anything more than any other mortal that marches down here on foolish hope and prays to meet a merciful master. Charon doesn’t have to guide her, not technically dead or living, but the belief that a dryad would never be so foolish as to walk down into the cold heart of the Earth for no reason is powerful. One that she intends to exploit for as long as she can. Mel holds out a gold coin, warmed from her skin as she’s clutched it all this way. “Will you carry me across?”

Charon laughs in a strange barking voice, voice rippling over the water. “Oh yes. Little lambs on little quests are a favorite of mine. We’ll see if I carry you back over these waters when your message is given.”

A chill runs down Mel’s spine at the mention of after, even as she steps into the narrow wooden boat. 

None of the other shades approach their vessel, despite the throngs waiting silently on the shore. Charon pays them no mind as he pushes off again, setting his pole against familiar stones in the murky river’s depths to ferry them down the current. Mel doesn’t dare touch the water, keeping her arms close to her body.

There’s no going back now.

Mel distracts herself from that thought by taking in the far shore of the river as it slowly grows closer. Surprise steals over her as she realizes that there is no vegetation. Not even the heartiest pothos vines tucked between the damp river boulders. In the mortal world, it would be the sign of a great calamity that nothing is growing here. In this place? Nothing survives without sunlight.

Or their lord’s permission.

Their ship slowly reaches the other shore and Mel climbs out on shaky legs.

“Good luck, little lamb.” Charon calls out as he pushes himself back into the river’s flow, voice curling with something mocking. “You’ll need it.”

Mel lets out a steadying breath, wiping her sweaty palms on the edge of her chiton as she makes her way up the shoreline to the dark sprawling palace rising out of the earth in front of her. Massive wooden doors open as she approaches, welcoming her in closer to the lion’s teeth as the air tinges with something powerful. The feeling from the archway swells again. This isn’t just the domain of a god, but one of the Kronidai. A son of Kronos, holder of one of the domains of existence.

There’s…nothing like it.

Even Demeter in her greatest temper, letting her powers loose on the edges of her grove, has never sent such a powerful sense of other coursing through Mel’s skin.

The shades in these halls are more solid, dressed in simple robes like attendants, as they stare at her like she’s an intruder.

Mel supposes she is.

“Who are you?” One of them steps forward to ask her, features obscured and shifting with each second.

“A messenger, and I come to speak with your lord.” Mel says, fighting the urge to twist her fingers together. She needs to look purposeful. Like she knows what she's doing. Guided by something greater than base fear.

The shade looks at her closely with hidden eyes, features still moving and twisting strangely. It’s like trying to decipher the fine details of something in the distance through the rain, every time Mel thinks she recognizes something it disappears. Whatever it finds in her seems to be enough, sending it spinning on it’s heel to lead her deeper into the palace. They weave past darkened halls and down long winding hallways that Mel makes no attempts to memorize. There will be no last minute escapes from a place like this. Either she leaves with permission or she doesn’t leave at all.

Finally they come to stop in front of a grand set of doors made from a rich carved wood like all the rest. Servants stand at attention outside, waiting patiently for some unknown signal. The attendant that brought her here seems to listen to something that Mel can’t hear, holding still as it receives it’s orders. 

After a moment they nod and turn back to Mel. “He will see you now.”

The doors are pulled open by two of the waiting servants as Mel desperately drags up all of the courage she has left. She enters the throne room on shaking legs as the end of her quest stares back at her with icy blue eyes. 

Hades.

God of the Underworld and Host of All, eventually.

Mel only prays that she might not be one of his number by the end of their conversation.

His eyes are a shock of blue after being surrounded by so much dim grey that Mel almost can’t look away, even as they look through her with a harsh searching light. Pieces of his armored chest plate catch the light as dents in the metal whisper of old glories, covering his black chiton with a threatening gleam. Most of his body is obscured by a black fur cloak wrapped around his shoulders though, one that hides him in the darkness of the throne itself. 

If he was a mortal man, Mel would think that he’d killed some kind of bear or great wolf for it. 

Since he’s a god, she’s not sure she wants to know what kind of beast makes such a coat. Or what it cost to get it.

Mel forces herself forward even as her legs wobble. It’s clear in every shadowed corner and flickering lamp why coming down here is a fool’s errand, only mentioned in stories of the truly lost. There are forces beyond mortal comprehension, cruel and unbending, that live only by their own laws. And Mel is here to beg one of those immutable forces for precious mercy.

Hades’s throne is raised, sitting high on a small series of steps. It’s enough that no matter where Mel stands, she still has to raise her head to look at him. It’s a very effective bit of staging. She comes to a stop a few feet away from the first step, falling to her knees in a deep kneeling bow. 

Respect is not a question in a place like this. It’s a demand.

The room hangs silent for a moment as Mel waits to be acknowledged, heart fluttering dangerously.

“You’re a messenger?” Hades asks, voice flat and unreadable.

Mel swallows, fighting back a wince. That may have been enough to ward off questions from the inhabitants of the Underworld, but its king is a whole different matter. One who would not appreciate trickery. “Of a kind, Lord Hades. I humbly come to beg for knowledge that I might ferry it back to the world above.”

“Knowledge?” He echoes in a cool voice. It rumbles in a strange way, like the sound of far off thunder lines every word. “What knowledge do you think I have over gods of wisdom and justice?”

“I wish to know the fate of a soul.” Mel says, hands twitching on the ground in front of her. She doesn’t dare look up at him even as her chest squeezes tight. She needs to know if Becca is here, if she was dragged down to this dark place.

The room holds still for a moment as Mel stares at the cool stones beneath her. What is he thinking? What is he-

Hades finally lets out a deep sigh, sound coming from far closer than Mel expected, as the black edges of his cloak enter her vision. Almost against her will, Mel's head lifts to looks up at him with wide eyes. Hades’s face is softer than before, watching her with a gentle knowing. He looks kinder like this, outside of the harsh trappings of his throne. “No.”

“N-no?” Mel blinks, startling at the rejection.

“No.” Hades repeats himself, face still impossibly kind despite his refusal. “Let go of your mortal love. It’s not yet your time, this is no place for you.”

Mortal love?

Oh. 

He believes that she’s here for herself, a love taken too soon, grief and chance all tangled together in raw hope. Mel feels a stab of pity rock her chest at the idea that his hearings are all with the grieving. It is a gentler assumption than Mel would have expected from a man who guards the very worst of existence. 

Then he turns to leave with a small shake of his head. “Charon will give you passage back-”

“I can’t.” Mel interrupts, exhaustion and fear pressing down on her shoulders. She can’t even make herself feel properly horrified at having interrupted a god as the last ounces of her manners seem to evaporate. This can’t be a dead-end. She has to know. “I have to know if you’ve claimed this soul. Please.” 

Hades turns, just enough to look at her. Mel stares back desperately. Something in her expression seems to convince him as his shoulders fall. “Their name, little dryad?”

“Kore, beloved daughter of Demeter, goddess of new growth.” Mel says, listing her titles like it’s second nature because it is. “Do you have her?”

It had been a careful debate on her walk on how to phrase that question. Something vague enough to apply to Becca both living and dead, but vague enough not to immediately offend the God of the Underworld who might very well be the one holding her.

Hades’s eyes widen slightly, surprised by the subject. “I do not.”

Mel slumps with a quiet gasp, falling forward on tired limbs. He could be lying, but she doesn’t think he is. Hades is terrifying but his epithets include just for a reason. He’s not one to let people suffer or to lie needlessly. Which means that Becca isn’t in this place and Mel is just as far from an answer of where she is as she was before she came here. She collects herself, slowly, forcing herself back up on shaky arms. “Do you know where she is?” 

“I have suspicions." Hades admits, face soft as he watches her collect herself. “I hear all sorts of whispers from all sorts of souls.”

Mel blinks, latching onto the opening with both hands. “Please, I beg you to tell me.”

“I will not.”

“Why?” Mel asks with a lost frown.

“My whispering voices tell me things. That doesn’t mean they’re mine to share, nor yours to know.” Hades says with a shake of his head. It’s something between duty and principal staying his hand.

Mel shakes her head. “Please-”

“This is not a place for mortals to linger. Go back to your sunlight and meadows.” Hades says, voice curling around the word meadows strangely, like it’s been so long since he said it he’s not sure if he’s got it right. “Leave this place, now, until it is your time or you have a better reason for coming.” 

He turns back again towards a small branching hallway hidden almost behind the throne platform.

He’s leaving.

He has some idea of where Becca might be, and he’s leaving.

“Wa-wait!” Mel fumbles, lurching forward desperately as the same shifting servant as before enters the room on some silent cue. Hades turns around to look at her, eyes patient even as it’s clear in his face that he’s made up his mind. 

There are precious few reasons one would extend a visit to the Underworld, especially when given the rare gift of leaving as intact as they arrive.

Mel refuses to leave regardless.

There is nothing up there for her, not if she can’t complete her task. This is the first hint of someone knowing something about Becca’s fate. Hades won’t betray the faith of the dead by sharing what they’ve told him and no simple request will be enough to pull it out of him. There are precious few laws that gods and mortals are equally bound to. Mel rifles through her pockets for something suitable. She has nothing, not enough for this, but still she looks. Finally her fingers brush a small velvety petal and Mel holds out a small slightly crumpled iris with both hands. “I wish to court you.”

The room - her, Hades, the attendant halfway down the hall - all freeze as her words hit them like a wave. She can't tell which one of them are more surprised by Mel’s words. 

“...What?” He asks, blinking at her repeatedly like she may shift into something completely different if he does it enough.

“I wish to court you.” Mel repeats herself, holding the flower a little higher with a strange sense of calm. There’s no going back on her words now.

“Court me?” Hades echoes with a confused frown like he still can’t understand what she’s saying. That isn’t a rejection though so Mel presses forward.

“I am a dryad, with no mother or father to represent me. I am free to put forth my own suits, and I am, now. To you.” Her words trail off into the silence of the hall.

Hades blinks like he’s not sure what to make of anything happening right now. Tentatively, almost like he thinks she’ll pull it back, he reaches out to take the flower. His fingers trail over the petals, right over where hers rested a few seconds earlier. “And if I accepted this suit?”

Mel takes a deep breath, chest squeezing tight. “And if you were to accept…then I would be owed a gift in return, as a binding of intent to one another.”

“And what would you ask me for? What tempts you?” Hades asks, raising an eyebrow at her even as the flower remains delicately cradled in his hands.

“An answer.” Mel murmurs, unable to raise her voice any louder. Air feels trapped in her lungs as she prays beyond words that this works. “For the gifts I bring to convince you of my intent, I would ask that you would grant me the answer to a question of my choosing.”

Hades’s face cracks into a (dare she say almost impressed) smile. “Clever.”

Mel straightens under the praise, biting her lip as he deliberates for a long moment. 

The iris catches the light strangely in his grasp, bright and alive. Something about it seems to finally make up his mind. “Very well.”

With his acceptance, something in the air itself seems to shift. The room brightens like a shade pulled off of a candle and his form warps as unnaturally dark shadows slipping away from him. Where before Hades stood as a god and a force beyond mortal control, now he looks strangely…alive, fit to hold such a delicate bloom so carefully. Like this, Mel can see the soft fall of his hair over his forehead and the dimple in his chin, both things that her eye seemed to skip over before.

Mel blinks at the transformation, heart pounding out of her chest. She had not anticipated any sort of change, but it is far from an unwelcome one. Unexpectedly, she finds herself fighting down a blush as she realizes he looks almost exactly like she had imagined Nerites when she was younger, staring at the meadow streams with a wild imagination, all blue eyes and dimpled manners.

“What’s your first question?” Hades asks, drawing her back to the present with a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

Mel is careful to think over her options. Too specific and she’ll have wasted her question, too vague and she won’t get anything to work with at all. Mel has a feeling that asking outright is still as prohibited as it was before, but Hades is giving her this loophole to ask questions without asking the question. She’s not sure what the impact of breaking that respect would be. 

“Is she hurt?” Mel asks finally, the simplest question weighing on her the heaviest. Is Becca hurt, is she scared, is she waiting in some dark place that Mel doesn’t know how to find?

His face softens further, shaking his head before Mel can get all of the words out. “No, she isn’t. Content, if I were to put a name to it.”

Mel’s head drops as a heady wave of relief courses through her. Unharmed, not in the Underworld. Thank the gods. Becca might still be missing, but she isn’t in pain as she waits for Mel to find her. She can work with that. Mel looks back up at Hades to give him an honest, grateful smile as some small release settles on her shoulders for the first time in days. “Thank you.”

The words encapsulate more than she can say. For allowing Mel to come beg in the first place, for accepting her hare-brained attempt at cleverness. For the second half of his gift, a reassurance he didn’t need to give. 

Hades flusters under the attention strangely, waving towards the exit with a surprisingly inelegant motion. “I believe that’s all our time for today.” 

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.” Mel promises as she rises to her feet and gives him one last parting bow before following the attendant back out of the hall. 

The strange side-looks and silent communication that zipped around her as she approached the palace feels like nothing compared to now. Nevertheless her path back out of the Underworld feels much shorter than her journey down. Charon hesitates for a moment as he sees her again, eyes wide behind the cover of his hood, but he doesn’t say anything as she steps back into his boat. Mel travels back over the shores of silent shades, through the archway, and up the smooth stone tunnel’s winding path.

It's only when she slips out of the mouth of the cave, the light of the evening sun dyeing the rocks outside gold, that Mel finally lets go of herself, falling to the ground to bury her hands in the scrubby vegetation.

She survived.

Becca isn’t down there.

She survived. 

Hades will give her answers if she returns with a gift and a question.

A backbone of steel replaces her own as Mel looks back at the mouth of the tunnel. Tomorrow then. Her aching feet make themselves known as she pulls herself back together. First Mel needs something to eat. Then to speak with Lena in the southern meadow.

She’s going to need some sandals if she intends to make this journey again.

- - -

Everyone knows the story of Echo and Narcissus, the lonely love of the unrequited as a nymph chased a mortal man to her own doom. Mel isn’t sure if there has ever been a story of a nymph chasing a god, or what became of them. It’s not a done thing.

- - -

“You’re back.” Charon blinks at her, obscured face still somehow giving away his shock at seeing her returned here so soon.

“I’m back.” Mel echoes, passing over another coin as she steps back into his boat.

He hesitates for a moment as she gets comfortable before he makes up his mind, the pole scraping over loose river stones to push them back over the river.

Mel squeezes her fingers together in her lap, feet flexing in her new shoes. They make her feel weird, separated from the earth in a strange way. There isn’t much to read in the stone though and this will keep her from hurting herself on these treks. Even if it did take the better part of the morning to get used to them and make it down here.

What she’s doing is unprecedented. A shocking choice that goes against every expectation of the natural order.

It’s the only path that Mel can see though.

Hades has information about Becca. It’s worth anything to be able to find out where she is and how she’s doing. So Mel will court the God of the Dead until she gets enough information to bring Becca home.

Easy.

Super, super easy.

Passage across the Styx is as smooth as the first time, carried silently by Charon’s oar. He seems deep in thought, mind a million miles away. Mel leaves him to it. She’s not sure what must occupy the mind of a being who carries souls into the Underworld day in and day out. She’s not particularly eager to find out. The cavernous stone sky is just as encapsulating as the first time she was here, stretching far away from the ground and Mel entertains herself debating if it almost seems a tinge lighter than it was yesterday. 

They reach the far shore and Mel climbs her way up to the palace and through the same dark corridors. An attendant silently appears at her side between one moment and the next to lead her back to the throne room. The doors are swung open with the same gravitas as before, revealing Hades settled back on his throne. His head lifts from quiet conversation with an attendant to glance at her before he snaps to look at her fully, shock clear on his face.

“You came back?” He asks in a disbelieving voice, unable to smother his surprise as he takes her in.

“Of course.” Mel frowns like he’s making a joke. Why wouldn’t she? She proposed this after all. Quite literally. 

Hades blinks at her for a moment before rising to his feet, gesturing at her to follow him down the small side exit she had spotted hidden by the throne yesterday. It leads down more dark stone hallways that he navigates through with ease. Mel is careful to keep close, not wanting to find out what happens if she gets lost down one of these identical paths. Dryads really, really aren’t built for recognizing architecture. Hopefully that doesn’t come up.

They finally emerge into an open-air courtyard, stone walls and a small arched walkway around the perimeter giving it a secluded feeling from the rest of the palace. A quiet fountain burbles from its place against one of the walls, almost resembling one of those mortal wishing spouts. 

“I thought privacy might be preferred.” Hades offers as he gestures at the space, faltering somewhere between his role as king and the softer version of himself that Mel caught a peak of yesterday. 

“It is, thank you.” Mel nods as she wanders over to the fountain. The water looks clean and clear but she doesn’t touch it. There are too many rivers in the Underworld, with too many purposes, for her to go around touching strange fountains carelessly. Mel bites her lip for a moment as she turns back to look at Hades properly. “How shall I address you?”

“Is that your question today?” He asks with a raised eyebrow, almost teasing.

“Yes.” Mel agrees immediately. Getting to Becca is important, the goal thrumming in Mel’s chest brightly, but she isn’t foolish enough to pretend she knows the gods. Hades is giving her a gift by allowing her here. Treating him with the respect he deserves seems like the least she can do. 

Starting with addressing him by whatever name he prefers best.

The habit of not speaking his name aboveground to avoid calling his attention only works until she finds herself starting conversations with him. Mel is strangely unprepared for what to say.

Hades freezes, staring at her strangely.

The moment stretches on between them and Mel finds herself shifting her weight between her feet. Oh no. She hadn’t meant to offend, this was supposed to start them off on a good footing. “Lord Hades-”

“Frank.” 

“What?” Mel blinks at the interruption, almost failing to register the sound as a name at first.

“We share our personal names with those who earn them.” Hades- Frank says with a confused glint in his eyes, watching her closely as he hands her something unquestionably precious. “My name is Frank, well, one of them at least. A favorite.”

Mel’s mouth opens and closes for a moment, unable to speak. She hadn’t meant to demand his name, just a particularly liked epithet or title- she’s not sure what to say. It’s no small honor to receive such a thing. She inclines her head slowly, mind racing at the gift. “My name is Melissa, but I prefer Mel. With friends.”

She doesn’t mention that it’s the first time she’s shared her nickname. She’s never had a reason to share it with anyone else. It’s not nearly as valuable as being given one of Hades’s true names, but it’s the most precious thing that she has. 

Frank nods and Mel can almost see him tucking it away in his mind.

“How did you receive your…?” Mel asks tentatively, frowning slightly as she feels out the edges of the unfamiliar syllables. She hasn’t heard it before. It's certainly not a common name among the nymphs.

“Gods travel.” Frank says as he approaches the edge of the fountain slowly, words low and thoughtful. “I certainly did. My work is not as tied to the land as some of the others. To pass is to call out to the Underworld.”

“And you’re the one to collect everyone?” Mel asks, meeting his eyes again. Even without the assistance of his throne, he still has enough height over her to make her look up. The look in his eyes is much kinder now though, softened from the icy blue of yesterday into something much warmer. Almost like a clear morning, one that promises cool breezes and fluffy passing clouds.

“No.” Frank says with a small shake of his head. “But I used to follow fights, when I was younger, thinking it would help somehow. There were always more than I could ferry.”

“Is that where…” Mel trails off as she gestures at the scratches and dents in his armored chestpiece. There are plenty of smiths who could have repaired that damage for him. To keep it means that it must have been important, carved into the surface from stories that must blur with legends.

Frank’s hand hovers over them for a beat, mouth twisting with something almost like a smile. “I keep it as a memory of what happened. These are from our aunts and uncles, from when the Titans ruled the world.”

Mel’s breath catches in her throat at the sound of such an awed time being captured in the armor itself. “I’ve never met anyone that would mention those days so casually.”

“Few gods stand at the black gates containing those pieces of history.” Frank shrugs, unoffended. He looks at Mel carefully with an uncertainty in his motions, like he’s not sure what the boundaries of this is. “If I might ask, I’m surprised at your willingness to travel so far from your grove, even for a cause like yours.” His voice trails slightly as he watches her closely, looking unsure of how much he wants to push. “Demeter herself doesn’t like to come down here if she can help it. You seem quite...different."

Mel nods to herself, trying to figure out how to phrase what she wants to say. “Demeter is the goddess who awoke me and whose grove my tree rests in…” Mel agrees, biting her lip. It’s almost treasonous to say what she wants to, but Frank has already given her so much honesty, surely it would be rude not to repay it.

“But?” Frank prompts quietly.

“But…nymphs share stories through generations, passing them from seed to sprout. And there is a thought, among some,” Mel hedges, glancing at Frank out of the corner of her eye. She can’t read his expression. “That we may not be so far from the Green Lady herself.”

There are plenty of gods and goddesses with a hand in growing and tending to the land. There is only one Green Lady, the mother and grower of all. Gaia. It’s not something that nymphs make common knowledge, certainly not in Demeter’s grove where they live under such a green goddess already. What she said could be considered seditious to a more temperamental being, a disrespect of superiors.

Frank just smiles, nodding at the thought as he takes the final steps forward to settle on the edge of the fountain in front of her. “I think you might be right.”

Mel fights back a wave of surprise at his acceptance, something warm lighting in her chest. Oh that’s new.

“Have you spoken with her before?” He asks, tilting his head back slightly to look at her from this new angle.

“I- no. No, I’ve never been so blessed…have you?” Mel asks, voice lowering automatically like they’re sharing secrets. She can’t help the fascination from creeping into her voice.

“A long time ago, when I was young and barely real.” Frank tells her, eyes bright as he finds the memory. “She whispered to me. Nothing clear but the feeling of her…it stuck with me.”

Mel finds herself sitting next to him on the rim of the fountain, hanging off of every word. The feeling in his words, the reverence for something greater, resonates with her own feeling around the earth. He doesn’t speak with the carelessness she worried he might.

“I suppose that’s why when my path led down here, I didn’t grieve like my brothers would have.” Frank says finally, coming back down from his memories with a small unsure smile. 

“It’s not a bad lot.” Mel tells him, thinking about being ensconced in the earth. It’s not so alien of a concept for a dryad who lives in both. She tries to give him a smile just as earnest as he gave her. “And to answer your question, there are worse things than living below ground.”

Frank blinks at her, eyes thick with something that Mel can’t describe. 

“Oh!” Mel hums as she reaches into her pocket to pull out a small grass woven sack filled with candied almonds. She convinced Daphne to trade them to her in exchange for the hearty blackberries she’d picked as she climbed out of the hills yesterday. From the widening of Frank’s eyes, it was a good choice. “My gift for today.” Mel smiles, mouth twisting teasingly. “For giving me such a pretty name to call you by.”

Frank takes the bag from her with a careful grip, rubbing the small sack between his fingers slowly as he stares at it, mouth hanging slightly open.

Mel finds herself getting distracted more by the length of his fingers than his expression. They’re long with hints of calluses that have clearly been well-earned. They must be ideal for whatever weapon he uses, strong enough to wield some big sword with chilling efficiency. The thought that seizes Mel’s attention with far more interest is whether or not they would make him a particularly gifted tree climber.

Becca certainly is. Perhaps it’s a godly trait.

“Thank you.” Frank says finally when he lifts his head again to look at Mel again with his unreadable eyes. His voice is light though, almost wondering, so she goes ahead and congratulates herself on a gift well done.

“Of course.” Mel smiles. The moment lingers between them, warm with something strangely honest. Mel wonders if she should ask something next, prompt the conversation a little further and see if there are any other stories he would be willing to share with her-

“I think it’s time for you to go.” 

Mel blinks, drawing back into herself slightly at the sudden dismissal. “...If I did something to offend…”

“Time doesn’t move quite the same here as it does above.” Frank says gently, shaking his head at any offenses Mel might come up with. “It’s hard for those who aren’t local to feel the flow properly. It’s almost evening above ground.”

“Oh.” Mel says as she stands up, blinking as she realizes their legs are almost brushing. When did they get so close? When did that stop feeling quite so dangerous? “Of course, I- thank you.”

Frank stands as she does, still holding the bag as carefully as the iris yesterday. Mel is almost tempted to ask what happened to it. An attendant appears with a bow, hovering in the doorway like it can’t come any closer. Mel can’t help a small warmth in her chest at being allowed into such a private space.

“He’ll take you back to the shore.” Frank says with a small nod, the lightness in his movements stifled slightly under new observation. 

“Thank you.” Mel repeats herself, crossing the courtyard with much steadier legs than her departure yesterday. She can’t help turning around a few steps from the attendant to look back at Frank, waving slightly. “Good night!”

She can’t hear if Frank echoes the words back to her, but she can see his hand hovering halfway through the air like he hadn’t realized what he was doing before he already was. The aborted motion brings a smile onto her face for most of her walk back to the surface.

The rest of her journey is spent silently feeling out the syllables of his name on her tongue.

- - -

Talking seems to become a part of their routine without either of their permission.

There’s nothing that says they have to. In fact for many, gods and mortals alike, marriage is more often a measurement of coin purses and good deals than affection. No one would fault them for having a more rigid sense of interaction. 

Especially in a situation as irregular as theirs.

Somehow those expectations don’t come up though as Frank excuses himself from his attendants as soon as Mel reaches his throne room, leading her back through the hallways to their private little courtyard. The whole Underworld is his domain, they could probably talk anywhere uninterrupted, but something about the courtyard feels personal. This is a space just for the two of them.

They never have a plan when they talk, but the words find them anyway.

Questions and truths and little losses of manners as they speak more familiarly than Mel would have ever presumed.

“This is not a path many would take. Not even for this.” Frank says as he traces invisible figure-eights courtyard almost absently as they talk. “I know the stories about my domain, the facts of its existence. It is not for the faint of heart.”

Mel nods, fingers swishing the water of the fountain around slowly (Frank had assured her, repeatedly, that it is just water, no mother river to be angered). Most dryads would have told Demeter and suffered for their failure already. Let the gods handle their own matters. Mel isn’t most dryads though. She’ll see this through, come hell or high water. “I know.” 

Frank stares at her, peeling away the layers of her delicately-non-answering answer. Mel has a feeling he reads far too many of her thoughts from her expression, but he’s kind enough not to mention what he sees. “What’s your question today?”

Mel had thought it over carefully on her walk. “Does Becca know the way home?”

“That is a good one.” Frank smiles, nodding as he thinks. “Yes, I believe she does.”

Mel straightens up proudly, adding that detail to her mental list. She finds herself memorizing the small compliment just as automatically.

- - -

Gift giving isn’t something that nymphs find themselves doing regularly. Mel only had to think of it once a year for Becca’s birthday and she was usually swept off with her mother for a day or two so the timing was always a bit lenient.

Mel certainly had no reason to think of courting gifts before all of this. 

Now she finds herself doing it on the daily.  

Knucklebones and pretty stones she passes on her walk and fresh myrtle, candied almonds and almost crushed flowers. Frank accepts all of them with a surprised fascination, like he’s never really expecting the next one before it’s in his hand. He never shows any kind of preference for one gift over another which somehow makes him harder to gift rather than easier.

Some days that means what she lands on is the work of a few passing seconds on her way down to him.

“This is a leaf.” Frank says with a teasingly serious expression, holding it up to the light like he’s going to find something more to it. The dim lamps around their courtyard illuminate the veins and midribs of a perfectly average oak leaf.

“Well, I thought you might enjoy it.” Mel says, stifling a smile to keep up a pseudo-serious tone. It wouldn’t do to look like she was giving poor courting gifts.

Frank laughs for a moment, noise jumping out of him without permission even as he thumbs over the uneven edges in a shockingly gentle motion. “I do.”  

Oh, good.

Mel tries to stifle her delight every time he accepts one of her gifts, almost sitting on her hands to keep them from giving her away. “It’s an oak leaf, they’re considered to be good luck. They represent a long life.” 

Frank shakes his head as he looks at her with dancing eyes. “I don’t know if I should feel complimented or insulted.”

“I would say complimented, but I wouldn’t dare to tell you how to feel.” Mel smiles, stretching her legs out from her seat at the fountain. Her chiton is stained green at the edges where it falls just shy of her knees (an incurable side effect of life in the trees). She looks up to see Frank staring for a beat, eyes flicking lower before he turns almost forcefully to look elsewhere. 

“A compliment then.” He says, picking up the thread of conversation smoothly.

Mel lets the moment drop, falling into the pace of easy conversation.

Other days her gifts take a little bit more effort, a careful addition to her day before she enters the tunnel. 

Mel finds herself trading with some of the mountainous oreads for more exotic gifts in exchange for things they can’t find so readily in their rocky homes. The other nymphs never understand what she’s doing down the dark tunnels, whispering to each other in the strange language of stones that Mel has no hope of understanding whenever she speaks with them.

She doesn’t pay their gossip much mind. Besides, it must be equally confusing to listen to the trees sing together right in front of them.

Making her way through the palace with her most recent trade, Mel finds her way to the courtyard through sheer force of will. Architecture still doesn’t make much sense to her but the servants take her out to Charon through the same paths each evening and she’s been memorizing the turns. Sort of. It's only the matter of three double-backs before Mel finds the familiar space.

Frank meets her outside within a few minutes of her arrival, surely alerted by one of the dozens of attendants around the palace.

“You didn’t want to say hello?” Frank asks as Mel watches his role melt off of his shoulders. Hades slips away and Frank takes his place smoothly, like a transformation in some kind of play. There’s a boyishness to him, preserved behind the firm rules of his domain, that Mel can't help leaning into every time she sees it.

“I wanted to keep you on your toes.” Mel smiles, immediately thrusting the bag in her hands out to him. “Here, I can’t wait anymore. Your gift.”

Frank opens the small bag to pour a set of dice out into his hand, each made with a rich reddish clay that seems to glow in the lamp light.

“Do you know how to play?” Mel asks with no small amount of excitement. Becca doesn’t like most dice games and refuses to play often, meaning that Mel doesn’t get to play often. Still she loves the luck and strategy of them. And she’s found that she’s got a pretty good spin throw all things considered, which might be why Becca doesn't like to play.

“You think I don’t?” Frank asks, raising an eyebrow at her in disbelief.

“That’s not an answer to my question.” Mel says, waving off his mock offense. “For all I know, you think they’re ornaments.”

Frank tosses the handful of dice into the air smoothly before catching them again in the same hand. “I play games, on occasion.”

“I would be so lucky as to see it.” 

“Perhaps I can arrange it.” Frank says magnanimously, something bright captured in his eyes that reminds Mel of the sun at noon. It’s almost too much to look at directly. Mel finds herself leaning in as instinctively as any sunflower regardless. “Do you have a favorite?”

“Ship, Captain, Crew?” Mel offers, trying to think of the proper names. Most of the dice games she knows seem to be invented in the moment, rules building on top of one another organically. This is one of the few she can say she remembers as its own non-cheating-based structure.

Frank nods after a beat as he lowers himself to the worn stone floor of the courtyard. “I think I know that one. Five dice and we have three rounds to get a six, five, and four, then the highest sum of the last two dice wins?”

“Exactly.” Mel nods as she joins him on the ground, folding her legs underneath her.

They play a few warm-up rounds, hashing out the fine details of the real rules (and getting rid of Frank’s attempts at adding some of his own, primarily involving do-overs for all people sitting farther from the fountain (him)). Eventually they get started with the game itself as the second side of the game naturally reveals itself.

Smack talk and all variations therein.

“If we were really interested in playing properly, we should be wagering between rounds.” Frank says, staring at his standing dice, a six and a four. One round left to pull it all together.

“Interested in stealing yourself some extra gifts?” Mel asks, watching him with a smirk as she catches onto his meaning immediately.

“The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.” Frank gasps before tossing the dice. A five, to round out the set, and two three’s. Not bad at all. Unfortunate, for Mel who is throwing next. “Although it would be a shame not to celebrate such talent.”

“Is that what you call it?” Mel laughs as she scoops up the dice for her turn. “Now hush, I’m determined to win and your predictable distractions have no place in my victory lap.” 

“I can be surprising when I want to be.” Frank says, straightening at the challenge. 

“Really?”

“Of course, just this morning I was thinking of getting a dog.”

“What?” Mel laughs, pausing for a moment to look at the God of the Underworld beaming at his own idea proudly. “You want a dog?”

“Yeah, you know, God’s best friend.” Frank shrugs like that makes any sense. Or is a phrase that anyone but him has ever used.

Mel snickers, chest warming as she props her hand on her hand to looking at him with a warm smile. “What would you name this mysterious friendly dog?”

Frank deliberates for a long moment, chewing on his answer. Finally he comes back with-

“Spot.”

Mel cracks, falling into an uncontrollable wave of laughter at the thought of Frank trying to govern with a wriggling puppy in his lap. He joins her a few seconds latter, clearly picturing the same headache.

(She ends up losing the round, not in small part because of Frank's jokes. It doesn’t feel like much of a loss.)

- - -

Visits become predictable as they move in an increasingly familiar dance each day.

Their conversations roam to any and every topic as hours fall away in seconds. Poetry and nature and games are spoken of as easily as the pieces of old godly history that Frank entrusts Mel with. Stories of which mountains were formed around ancient enemies and which were cast down into the center of the earth to be guarded by Frank himself are given over with confiding smiles. Mel soaks each of them in with wide eyes and tries to repay that trust with her own stories, explorations through the grove that ended in more bumps than fresh fruit or tumbling discoveries of new swimming spots.

Frank never seems any less interested in her stories for their smaller scale, taking them in hungrily.

He never has to wait long for his present as Mel hands it over with excitement as soon as she can, before immediately leaning in to watch him open it. She can’t help it, he gives such perfect responses every time and she never wants to miss it. Delighted and gentle, exploring with soft hands and careful grips. It doesn’t matter if it’s a smooth river stone or a small pouch of sweets, they’re all handled with the same care.

The question always comes last, before Mel needs to leave to catch the evening light for her walk home.

It’s their goodbye and for some reason she can’t see why she should give it too early.

- - -

Charon has become a less ominous figure with time. All of the Underworld inhabitants have. It’s hard to keep up a foreboding air when Mel sees them twice a day, every day, for weeks.

“Another message?” Charon asks with a teasing twist to his voice, leaning heavily against his pole as Mel climbs aboard.

“Of course.” Mel says, stifling a smile at the regular back and forth. “Very important.”

“I’d hate to keep anyone waiting then.” Charon huffs as he straightens up to push off with a quiet crack of old bones.

Mel frowns, blinking as he skips a step in their routine. She turns around to look at him, holding up her passage coin pointedly. “Aren’t you forgetting something important?” 

Charon doesn’t reach for it. 

“Keep it.” He says, almost shrugging at her as he continues to ignore her coin. He shoves them off from the shore in a practiced motion. “Important business between important people. Special rate.”

Mel squints at him in confusion. That’s not how…any of this works. She's not sure if a teasing comment or two on her ferry rides makes them friends, but it certainly doesn’t seem like enough to have him waving laws of the Underworld. That’s the kind of thing that has ramifications with higher ups, bad ones.

Well.

Those ramifications only occur when the higher ups intend to collect.

“He said something to you, didn’t he?” Mel asks, squinting at his hooded face. She’s not one for reading people, but she can make out his sly smile even in the shade.

“My lips are sealed.” Charon side-steps with a smile that admits everything.

Mel huffs, tucking her coin away as she shakes her head at Frank's antics, fighting down a fluttering warmth in her chest. 

- - -

There are immutable facts of the universe.

Saplings become trees, gods don’t take disrespect without retaliation, and it’s when she’s most comfortable that fate always sees fit to drop a new problem in Mel’s lap.

Mel makes her way back to her tree after a long day in the Underworld, having pushed for a few extra minutes to talk with Frank that leaves her finishing the last stretch of her journey back in the dark. They’re familiar lands though, letting her pass without issue. It’s only when she reaches the glade her tree lives in that she notices the difference in the air.

It’s cold.

Not just the whisper of a cool breeze, but the bite of a genuinely cold wind settled low over the earth. This is more than some passing breeze. Demeter is upset.

Mel’s stomach drops as she eyes the shadows. Demeter isn’t here, but she's never needed to be present to make herself clear and she certainly has a point to make. Mel hasn’t been sending any notes about Becca since she disappeared. It had started earnestly, with Mel not wanting to send anything in the early hopeful days of her search but every day that passes makes the truth that much more impossible to breach.

She tucks her arms tight around herself, pressing up against her tree. It can't share any warmth, but Mel curls her mind into the comfortable press of her roots as a distraction against the cold that burrows its way into her thin skin.

It’s a long miserable night as ice seems to find a way to creep into her bones, chilling her from the inside out.

As soon as the first warming hints of the sun appear in the sky, Mel pulls herself from her tree and sets out for the mountains. The Underworld itself may not be a much cozier place than the gardens at the moment, but the thought of Frank is warm enough offset the chill and she’s not sure there’s anyone else she wants to see right now. Her frozen limbs don’t want to cooperate, aching at the familiar hike, but Mel forces herself to keep moving even as the motion doesn’t seem to dispel the shivers rippling through her skin.

She finally makes her way into the courtyard to find Frank already waiting for her, brow creased tightly at the extra time it must have taken her to travel from the archway. He turns around at the slight scuff of her sandal, a light-hearted smile on his face before it falls away into nothing at the sight of her.

“Mel.” Frank breathes, closing the distance between them in a few long strides.

“H-Hi.” Mel chatters, arms wrapped around herself to retain whatever warmth she can. She attempts a smile but she's pretty sure it comes out like a grimace, face tight and refusing to move like normal.

“You’re almost blue.” Frank tells her, shaking his head as he reaching out to touch one of her frozen cheeks with a grimace.

Mel blinks at the warm contact, wavering between leaning into it and away from it. It's strangely overwhelming after so many hours of cold. Frank seems to read that debate on her face, expression growing more severe. She opens her mouth to say something to make Frank stop worrying, but he's already in motion, sweeping his large furred cloak off his shoulders and onto hers in a single movement.

It's like suddenly being wrapped in a full-body hug in an instant, warmth pressing into every one of her senses as a familiar earthy scent fills her nose. Mel feels like she's been wrapped up by Frank, even as he pulls back to look her over carefully, tugging at the cloak to ensure that she's fully covered. Manners dictate that she should at least try to offer it back to him, but it’s so warm and soft Mel can’t make herself say it, eyes slipping closed for a moment as she buries herself a little deeper.

"Oh, that's nice..." She hums, cracking her eyes open again to look at him with a slightly more thawed smile. "Thank you."

Frank watches her for a beat, settling slightly as her shivering slows under the warm cover. "Of course." His voice is thick with something Mel can't make out, eyes cutting away to the entryway she just walked through. "Why don't we stay inside today? While you think of your question." He offers as his hand gently directs her back inside, trailing down new hallways of the palace. “I have a petteia board, do you know how to play?”

“Perhaps.” Mel says, remembering the waves of laughter and groans from the older dryads playing a similarly titled game etched in the dirt with leaves and pine cones. “Although I make no promises of skill. Or knowing the rules for it that you might use.”

“Then I’m sure this will make for a very good game.” Frank promises, corners of his eyes still tight with worry. 

They eventually emerge into a comfortable set of hosting rooms somewhere deep in the palace. The walls are covered in richly woven tapestries and the whole space is centered around a set of couches surrounding a table and lit brazier. Mel isn’t sure if he sent notice of them ahead or if he just always has such a cozy space tucked away in the middle of his domain, but the fire in the brazier seems to heat the entire room comfortably. He leads her to the cushioned seats, ensuring she’s settled before he sits himself.

“Is that better?” Frank asks, a small crease in his brow marring his expression as he looks her over.

“Absolutely.” Mel nods, hands peeking out of the cloak just enough to warm over the brazier itself. The whole space is surprisingly comfortable, designed for conversation, not flaunting. Mel likes it much more than she expected to. The ever present dark stones give the room a kind of encapsulated feeling. Here it’s just the two of them, fit to enjoy themselves however they’d like. 

“Oh-” Mel says, diving a hand back into the dark cloak to pull out her small wrapped gift from her pocket. “Here, before I forget.”

Frank takes the present from her gently, like always, but a frown pulls at his features sharply. He doesn’t move to unwrap it, hands tensed around the package. “I don’t want you to put yourself in danger getting me anything, sweetheart.”

“No, you didn't- I didn’t!” Mel says, waving off the concern immediately as she follows his line of thought. He must have thought she'd gone somewhere up in the mountains to get mixed up in the cold like that. A warm flicker of warmth curls in her chest at the endearment and his care, and she tries to give him her best non-hypothermic smile. “The cold isn’t related to that, it’s- I’m just…sensitive.”

His expression doesn’t waver even as Mel tries her best to look warm, straightening up smoothly. The attempt is ruined as soon as the cloak slips and she can’t stop a shiver in time, quickly pulling it back up to cover herself.

“Mel-” Frank says worriedly.

“It was cold in the gardens last night, that’s all.” Mel admits, cheeks flushing. There's a particular thread of embarrassment curling in her chest at needing to admit something so childish to him, but Frank catches onto her meaning almost immediately. A grove does as its guardian commands. If the lands, and by extension Mel’s tree, are cold, then Demeter’s hand tipped the scale.

Frank’s face hardens as he leans forward, eyes boring into hers pointedly. “What’s your question?”

She smiles at his problem solving, even as her chest aches. “You haven’t even seen your present yet-”

“Mel. Ask me a question. A good one.” Frank insists, eyes urging her to ask what he can't quite tell her to ask. It wouldn’t fix anything. Demeter wouldn’t be soothed with anything except the answer to the question, and that’s against the rules. That would end their little game and then Mel would have no more reasons to come down here. 

She isn't feeling like a particularly good sport right now.

“Do you prefer warm weather or cold weather?” Mel asks with a small smile. 

“That doesn’t count, ask a real one.” Frank refuses immediately, shaking his head.

Mel shakes her head back at him, something affectionate welling up inside of her at his urging. “I did, that’s my question.” 

“Mel.”

“Frank, it’s one cold night. Not so bad, all things considered.” Mel shrugs with more careless than she feels. The fact that this is just Demeter’s temper with Mel’s failure to communicate remains sealed tight behind her teeth. “It’s not like I’m completely unused to them.”

Demeter has had plenty of moods before, this isn't a completely unfamiliar routine. Mel and Frank have all but dissolved the manners separating a god and a dryad, but it suddenly feels like a presence in the room with them. Frank is a god, a king under the earth, who's able to throw his weight around with anyone he faces. And Mel is just a dryad. Tied to her tree in Demeter’s grove. At the will and whims of whatever mood might seize her goddess. Frank seems to be going down a similar train of thought, mouth drawn thin and tight. There’s nothing he can do to fix it for her and to speak to Demeter about any of this would just make things worse.

There isn't anything to be fixed here, just weathered.

The room settles into a thick silence. Frank looks like his mind is a thousand miles away, chewing on something particularly unpleasant. Mel bites her lip, turning to stare into the fire as she lets him think. Her fingers twist in the silky soft strands of the fur, cloak warm and encapsulating. There’s a comfort in wearing it, even as they disagree, like a physical promise that Frank wouldn’t hurt her no matter how badly it may go. It helps her weather the strange quiet until Frank finds his voice again.

“Did you know I can’t truly feel the cold down here?” He says finally.

“What?” Mel blinks, looking at him again to find his gaze still miles away from here.

“I don’t feel it. According to mortals, my heart is locked up in the deepest blackest pit.” Frank tells her before leaning forward in his seat. He reaches a hand out dangerously close to the flames in the brazier, fire licking his skin.

Mel lunges forward to pull his hand back from the prickling heat before she knows what she’s doing, lungs squeezed impossibly tight. She cradles it between both of hers as she looks him over. His skin isn’t red and the hair on his arm isn’t even singed, protected by something between his godhood and a flame in his own domain. His hand is large and malleable under her touch, twisting and bending at the barest pressure from her.

It’s a nice, firm hand. One used to work and fights instead of gentle touch.

One still connected to Frank, who had been speaking about something before she panicked. Mel lets go of him, heat rising to her cheeks. “Sorry, I…worried.”

Frank stares at her with dark eyes, taking his hand back and flexing it gently. After a moment he speaks again, voice lower than before. “Mortals say that’s why there’s no heat in the Underworld, and why it’s a fool’s idea to apply to my softer nature.”

There’s something underpinning his words but Mel is shaking her head before he finishes speaking, refusing to entertain the idea. “I don’t believe it.”

“No?” He asks quietly.

“No.” Mel frowns. Whatever disrespectful concoctions mortals say about Frank is absolute nonsense. “There’s no heat because we’re underground.”

“What?” Frank snorts, blinking as it bursts out of him without permission.

“There’s no heat underground.” Mel repeats herself. “There aren’t many things that gods need to concede to dryads, but knowledge of life above and below at the same time is our expertise. And as for you-” Mel’s words fail her as she tries to figure out what she can possibly say to encapsulate how she sees him, hands still tinging from the feeling of his palm under hers. “You’re not nearly as bleak as all that, Frank.”

It’s not enough but he seems to hear the words she can’t quite bring herself to say outright.

Demeter may be a goddess of plants, but that doesn’t make her a being of easy temper or fast forgiveness. And while Hades may be a god of the dead, that doesn’t mean he’s one to hastily condemn those who end up before him. People make whatever the judgements they make, but it’s the little things that make the person. If there’s one thing a dryad is good at remembering, it’s the little overlooked things. 

The silence that settles over the room is lighter this time. Less upset and more…contemplative. 

“I think you’re right.” Frank admits finally as he reaches some internal conclusion. His eyes are full of something thoughtful that Mel is pretty sure he won’t share today.

“About what?”

“My heart. It’s not nearly as lost as they all say.”

Mel smiles, straightening up slightly at Frank taking her words so seriously. “I told you.”

He hums quietly, watching her with warm unreadable eyes. 

(Frank insists that she keep the cloak on until she stops shivering every time she offers it back. Mel can’t find it in herself to argue, burying herself into the soft warm fur until it’s finally late enough she can’t put off leaving any longer.)

- - -

Demeter lets up on the cold after a few days, point made and the complicated lives of mortals tugging away her attention momentarily.

Mel isn’t sure what she’ll do when it returns.

- - -

Days slip by with question after question promising Becca’s safety and security.

Is she locked up? No.

Does she have food and drink as she wishes? Yes.

Could she return to us, if she wanted to? I believe so.

Day after day, question after question confirming the same things. Becca is alive, safe, and happy. By all known standards, she could come home by her own power. And in payment with every question Mel finds herself in Frank’s company, filling the air with something delicate and warm. She finds herself hesitant to ask about Becca’s location outright. Mel is increasingly sure that if she were to ask, Frank would give it to her. And in return, that would end the game. End their time together. Everything would just…go back to how it was, their little faux courtship dissolved.

Frank doesn’t seem interested in prompting her for the big question anymore than she wants to give it. So life continues.

- - -

They’re back in his hosting rooms again, warm lamps illuminating their admittedly tense game of petteia, when Mel finds herself distracted by a new question, one that isn’t quite as passing as the rest.

“What is it?” Frank asks, head lifting to look at her as soon as her eyes leave the board. A small smile already tugs at his lips, more than a little self assured. “You want to surrender already?”

The joke would normally have pulled a smile from Mel along with an immediate refusal (he has no respect for her more subtle strategies or the fact that she’s set to beat him in four moves), but she finds herself frowning for a change. “Do you have time for me?”

Frank blinks, expression falling as he catches onto her more serious mood. “What makes you think that I don’t?”

“I mean you have subjects, don’t you?” Mel asks, twisting her fingers together as her worry solidifies into something concrete. She’s not nervous around Frank. That feeling passed a long time ago now, disappeared in wandering conversations and petteia losses. But his responsibilities are important, crucial for the function of…everything, and Mel has been spending long hours down here every day without thinking of what that might be doing to his work. “Shouldn’t you be seeing them? Casting judgements? I don’t want to break anything.”

“Nothing that would break from my negligence could ever be laid on your head.” Frank shakes his head immediately, voice falling low and serious for a beat. He lightens cautiously after a second though as he addresses the other side of her words. “I have been more absent than I typically would be, but it was my own choice. I restructured my time so as to take care of the day’s work when you leave.”

“But when do you sleep?” Mel frowns, watching Frank fight down a wince.

“Gods don’t need rest as often as mortals-”

“Nonsense.” Mel has been in service to a goddess for far too long to buy that. Becca without sleep is a Becca about to do something far from advisable. Frank at least has the good sense to smile at her sheepishly, not arguing that he was (perhaps) stretching the definition of possible and advisable. “I don’t want to distract you from your work, or keep you from resting-”

“Come with me.” Frank interjects, leaning forward in his seat.

Mel blinks at the new tangent, trying to keep up. “Come with you? Where?” 

“To my hearing room.” Frank says, something lighter and hopeful in his eyes. “We don’t need to separate too soon, if…if you’re still deliberating on your question.”

Mel swallows at what he’s offering her. To join him in his duties, to see the Underworld from an angle that she doubts anyone else, alive or dead, ever has. It's a powerful trust that he's offering her. Mel's heart pounds dangerously as she nods. “I am. Still thinking about my question, I am.”

“Good.” Frank smiles for a moment, bright and impossibly boyish. Mel finds herself trapped in it, greedily soaking in every detail until he finally tucks it away under the rising title of Hades.

It’s the matter of a few orders to have attendants scurrying off to find Mel a proper seat, palace hallways coming to life in a wave of choreographed chaos. Servants zip up and down the halls relaying orders as Frank gives them out. Mel slips off as he plans how the petitioners will be brought in with the head attendant. He’s got that well in hand and Mel could use a moment to collect herself before whatever is about to happen.

Hopefully Frank won’t let her make too big of a fool out of herself, or him.

Nymphs may think they work fast, spreading gossip like a well-fed wild fire, but the servants in Frank’s palace are on a different level. By the time Mel makes it back to the throne room, with only two and a half wrong turns, a second imposing stone seat has already been placed in the throne room. Her stomach clenches, even as she takes it in with wide eyes. There is delicate interweaving stone lattice work along the top in a pattern that almost looks like roots. If Mel didn’t know any better, she would say it’s the kind of seat not just accidentally selected for someone of a greener persuasion, but created for them.

Mel flushes at that little detail, carefully tucking it away, before the location of the seat fully sinks in.

It’s one thing to join Frank in the throne room as he works, but it’s another thing all together to sit side by side with him on the dais like she's some kind of important figure. 

Mel is just- Mel. She doesn’t want to confuse anyone.

Whoever placed the seat there has already disappeared which leaves she alone with the problem of how to move it, let alone get it to the bottom of the stairs for something more proper. She presses her palms flat to the back of the seat, giving it a tester push. 

Well.

It’s certainly made of stone, she’ll give it that.

“What are you doing?” Frank asks, appearing next to her.

Mel jumps before settling and turning to look at him with a huff. He knew exactly what he was doing, popping out at her like that.

“I was trying to move my seat.” She explains, pressing a hand against it as it barely moves. “Someone must have gotten mixed up and put it up here next to yours.”

Frank slips closer, hand wrapping around hers carefully as he pulls it away from the seat. Mel goes still at the touch, feeling the feather soft motion of his thumb running over her skin. It’s so gently that she’s not even sure that’s what she’s feeling, eyes trapped in Frank’s.

“It's no mistake.” He promises, looking at her with a small smile. “You’re here as my guest, I’d like you to sit next to me. That way everyone will know the respect that you deserve.”

“I’m not a god.” Mel reminds him quietly. 

“No, you aren’t.” Frank agrees, something flickering in his eyes. “But join me anyway?”

Mel can’t argue with that, nodding and watching as Frank pulls her seat back the few inches she managed to push it with barely any effort at all. Their seats sit side by side again, in perfect parallel. They settle into them and Mel can’t help tracing the fine carvings on her armrests, fingers running over the scenes of leaping deer and lush woods with a smile. It’s strange to look at the hall from this angle, staring down at the room with a strange sense of control.

“Would you like me to explain now or as we go?” Frank asks, leaning over the arm of his seat in a strangely intimate gesture. There’s no one to overhear him but he still lowers his voice enough for her to know it’s just for her. Mel flushes at their proximity, more pleased with it than she expected. She tries to press that feeling deep, deep down. 

“Now, if we have the time for it.” Mel says as her toes curl in her sandals. She’s still not entirely sure what she’s signing up for.

Frank nods easily, thinking for a moment. “What do you know of the Underworld?”

“Rumors and increasingly what my own eyes have seen.” Mel shrugs, not bothering to pretend to know more than she does. He doesn’t seem upset by her honest ignorance, taking it in stride.

“There are more than one realms within my domain.”  Frank explains, a smile tugging at his face as he thinks of the Underworld. “For the great heroes and those favored by gods, their resting afterlife is found in Elysium."

“Golden paradise.” Mel murmurs, remembering the stories about the final resting place of great heroes.

“Exactly.” Frank agrees as a pride burns in his eyes. Mel has met so much of the man behind the duties that it’s strangely exciting to meet him again as Hades. The love he has for his work and domain, no matter how unplanned its assignment, is illuminating. Frank’s expression falls into something more serious as he continues. “For the unrepentant all the way to the truly monstrous, there is Tartarus.”

Mel remembers when she thought the whole Underworld was an evil pit like that place. She's no longer so confused, but she has no interest in knowing that place any better than she already does. The thought of what must be down there is enough to send a shiver down her spine.

Frank seems to understand, moving them on smoothly to the final realm. “And for the rest, there are the Asphodel Fields.”

“Are they nice?” Mel asks, remembering conflicting stories between endless fields of grass and an eternal plain of ash. 

“They are…an existence.” Frank says, head bobbing for a moment as he thinks. He’s careful when he speaks sometimes, like he’s finding a way to give her the right words, not just the easiest. “Neither glorious nor terrible, they’re simply rest at the end of a long road.”

That’s a nice way of putting it. 

The Asphodel Fields are the destination of nymphs after they die. They don’t achieve notoriety or fame during their lives, leading to their fading into quiet shadow in the Underworld. Most talk about it as a second destruction but Mel can hear the kindness in Frank’s voice. The gift of laying down and taking a slow breath at the end of it all isn’t one to be taken lightly.  Quietly Mel wonders if Frank will give her a smile on her way there. 

“And judgement…?” Mel prompts.

“To see where each petitioner who comes before us belongs.” Frank says with a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, you won’t be expected to talk.”

Mel nods, trying to look confident. Frank smiles at her one last time before waving his hand. The wide entrance doors are pushed open and an attendant enters the room, followed by a mortal man with a balding head and full grey beard. They come to an almost coordinated stop at the base of the stairs before the servant opens a scroll. 

“Before you, Lord Hades, stands Alcides, son of Diodoros, of the city Amphipolis. He begot two daughters and a son, all of whom still live, with his wife Chiore who also lives. He made his living as a wood-cutter.” The servant announces, voice carrying the same hard to pin down quality as their features. It almost sounds like the pronouncement of a chorus singing in unison.

Frank nods, taking in the information with regal equanimity. Mel can see the routine of ceremony settling over his shoulders, filling both a mask and a duty in one gesture.

The man, Alcides, shifts his weight back and forth between his feet silently as he stares up the dais. Their eyes meet for a moment and Mel gives him a small smile even as a strange recognition teases at the edge of her mind. She can’t place him, but she’s pretty sure she knows him, somehow. Alcides smiles back at her nervously with a slight incline of his head.

“Does he stand accused of any ills?” Frank asks the servant .

“Yes, my lord.” They nod and the small smile on Alcides’s face drops as his shoulders rise. “He violated guest rites, turning men away when they approached his door for food or drink.”

“You turned away guests?” Frank frowns, attention turning fully to the man as the haze of Hades descends onto his face. The shadows in the room grow darker, curling in the corners of the room hungrily. Mel feels strangely safe at his side, even with the rising threat.

Alcides winces in front of him, mouth opening and closing. “I- y-yes, I did-” 

Something finally clicks into place as Mel recognizes him. She must have done something to indicate what she just realized because Frank immediately holds a hand up to cut the man off, turning to look at her. 

Frank tilts his head after a moment, frowning gently. “You know this man?”

“Indirectly.” Mel admits. She’s not sure it’s important enough to mention, but Frank gives her a small nod of support and that pulls the words out of her. “I heard about him from travelers who crossed into our grove. He gave prayers to his local dryads before cutting down their trees and he waited three days between prayer and cutting to allow the dryad to depart with some of their seeds.”

It’s hard to describe the way that the world seems to steam over nymphs, how those who don’t live in protected forests and groves can find themselves destroyed by hasty hands and ignorant eyes. Acknowledgement is no small thing to a dryad.

“It’s…it’s not a respect that everyone gives.” Mel clarifies, fingers twisting together in her lap.

Frank takes in her words, nodding to himself for a moment before turning back to Alcides. “You didn’t flaunt all the laws of the gods, just some. Why?”

“I-I’m a poor man, Klymenos.” The man wavers, bowing his head respectfully. Mel almost smiles at Frank’s epithet. Apparently the urge to avoid drawing the god’s eye continues even after death. “I did not have enough to go around for my own kin, I could not uphold guest rites properly without taking the food from my children’s mouths.” Alcides’s gaze drifts over to Mel for a second, wide and unsure, as he bows his head carefully at her too. 

Mel blinks at the motion even as he seems to miss it, attention turning back to Frank.

“So I…I turned away would-be guests before they could reach me. I tried to lessen this offense by giving all possible respect to my work and the trees I had to cut. I swear, I make no light of my choices.”

Frank is silent for a long moment, immune to the impatient eyes that watch him for final judgement. A glance at Mel seems to decide something for him though as his brow loosens, just slightly. “And so I give my judgement. Your completed duties have been found greater than your grievances. You will rest in the Asphodel Meadows with your forefathers, to await your kin in peace.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Alcides gasps, bowing deeply as his shoulders slump in relief. He turns to Mel and repeats the same bow, just as deeply. “And you, merciful Pótnia.”

Merciful mistress.

Mel blinks at the title as Alcides retreats with the servant, stomach churning as she glances at Frank for a reaction. He just smiles, seemingly unconcerned with her being treated like some kind of equal.

“How was that?” Frank asks, Hades slipping away for a moment as the subjects to perform for disappear.

“Not too bad.” Mel says, trying to stuff down the prickling running over her skin at the thought of how quickly Frank listened to her, how easily he changed course. “Thank you for, you know.”

“Of course. That’s exactly what I was hoping you would do, why wouldn’t I listen?” Frank says like it’s the easiest thing in the world. If only. “Would you like another?” 

Mel can tell just from how he asks that he would send everyone away if she said no. They could walk back out to the courtyard or his hosting rooms without another word about the souls that must be waiting outside the doors. Frank would make them wait until Mel had her fill of him first.

It’s a powerful realization.

It’s even more powerful as Mel looks at herself and finds that it’s not actually what she wants. 

“Yes, I would.” Mel says as she shifts a little further back into her seat, getting comfortable and shooting him a smile. 

Frank’s grin is impossibly bright, hand flexing around the arm of his seat for a moment before he pulls himself back together and gestures at the entryway for the next one. “Your wish is my command.”

- - -

It’s not the last time that Mel finds herself assisting Frank with his work. She doesn’t want him to fall behind or inconvenience himself too much. 

The idea that she does it because she doesn’t want to offend his hospitality though is paper thin, even to her. Mel likes the feeling of Frank turning to her when someone speaks, asking and prompting in the same motion. He asks for her opinions and waits for her to give them like the passage of time doesn’t even register to him.

No one asks Mel her thoughts and they certainly don’t wait for her to give them.

It’s strangely addicting.

- - -

Mel’s feet grow tougher with each trek as she roams far beyond the easy strolls of life within the inner grove. She’s not sure when she started thinking of it like that. The inner grove, soft and safe, used to be her whole world. Now it feels strangely liberating every time Mel finds a new deer trail or unknown path between her small tree and the entrance to the Underworld. 

She’s not sure what to make of the change.

Just like she’s not sure what to make of the fact that the walk back to Frank always seems to be faster than the return, her feet only dragging one way.

- - -

Somehow, after all of her visits and questions, Frank still finds ways to surprise her.

“You have your own grove?” Mel asks, blinking at his back as she hurries after him down the halls.

“All the gods do.” Frank says with a smirk in his voice. She ignores him, overtaking him in the final steps through the archway out into the orchard. The walls of the palace pull away to encircle the distant edges of the grove comfortably. The trees are dark wood, almost black like most other things in the Underworld, with long thin branches almost bare of leaves. 

“You know what I mean. I didn’t think anything could grow down here.” Mel says as she leans down eagerly to unlace her sandals. It’s not her land, but it's still soil and earth - she can read those as well as she can speak not matter where she is. 

“For all the good it does me.” Frank hums behind her.

“The good?” Mel snorts, turning around to face him with her sandals in hand. “Why would you have something to do with it? It’s for the trees.”

“My apologies, I forgot my audience.” Frank smiles warmly. “I meant that my green thumb is rather…lacking. I’ve had this grove for centuries and for all that these trees refuse to rot or topple, they won’t grow for me either.”

Mel pets a hand over the bark of the closest tree, listening to the slow crooning from the land. It’s a different song than her grove, more relaxed and unhurried. No hand would ever dare disturb their rest here and they sing like it, all lingering notes and rocking choruses. It’s a heady thing to listen to them sing with the leisurely pace of the earth itself. 

“They’re happy.” Mel tells him finally as she drags herself back from the flow of their music, not sure how long she was listening. The earth doesn’t mark time nearly as crisply as everything that lives on it does.

“Yeah?” Frank asks, having drifted to stand next to her at some point. His eyes are soft, watching her with something almost impossibly gentle.

“It’s no small thing, getting their loyalty like this.” Mel tells him quietly, chest clenching as she speaks. “Any tree would be proud to settle in a grove cared for this kindly.”

Frank ducks his head, unable to meet her eyes as he swallows thickly. Mel isn’t feeling particularly unaffected herself. They find their way back into the palace for the rest of her visit, even as their minds remain under silent bowed branches.

- - -

The air in Demeter’s garden hangs heavy as Mel makes her way home that night, a living condemnation and demand all in one. 

Her business in mortal lands has concluded.

Mel is out of time to find an answer for Becca’s disappearance before Demeter comes herself.

Sleep takes on a stressful dimension as Mel waits for the morning that she’ll find Demeter standing over her demanding answers. It’s hard to fight the feeling that she’s just working on borrowed time. The noose tightens just a little bit more each day the trap doesn’t snap closed, and Mel scurries down to the Underworld as early as she can for a few hours of relief.

- - -

“Are you even trying?” Mel asks as she leans back from the incredibly one-sided petteia board with a laugh. Her tiles overwhelm Frank’s almost two-to-one and it’s not looking any better from his most recent effort to shifting things around.

“Yes, I am. Very hard.” Frank says absentmindedly, waving his hands at hers like she’s somehow messing with his play. Their fingers brush for a passing beat and Frank doesn’t pull away quickly. The physical touch has been new, thrilling in its own way. It never lasts for too long, or anywhere more intimate than hands, but it sets off butterflies in Mel’s stomach all the same. She can’t help imagining mapping out the curves and edges of his calluses, taking them in with gentle hands and patient eyes.

“It’s like you don’t even want your gift today.” Mel says with a sorry shake of her head, sighing at his poor performance like that’s the deciding factor of whether or not he receives what she collected for him.

“And what might that be?” Frank asks, losing all semblance of focus in the game at that. 

Mel’s hand tenses around the slim length of the branch in her pocket, the same one that she’s been working up the courage to give him all day. Nerves have gotten the better of her twice already, but Mel is determined to see this through as she carefully pulls out a small spring branch from her own tree, still holding a handful of bright green leaves and three small juneberries. 

Flowering is rare for her, and making it all the way to fruiting is even more so. Her tree always seems to lag behind, smaller and weaker than the others. Mel hadn’t been sure what to make of it when she’d returned from a day in the throne room at Frank’s side to find the white blossoms unfurling all over her branches. She hasn’t been able to get it out of her mind these past few days and eventually this is what she settled on so she could share it with him too.

Frank’s teasing expression drops as soon as he sees the branch, catching onto some portion of its meaning almost instinctively.

“It’s a branch from my tree. I…I thought it might be nice, since you can’t see it yourself.” Mel explains as she passes it over, immediately busying her hands in her lap so she doesn’t do something foolish at the sight of her tree in his hands.

He cradles the branch almost cautiously, thumbing over the berries still clinging to the branch with a slow touch.

“They’re ripe.” Mel assures him when he doesn’t say anything immediately, trying to make sense of his expression. Is he worried that she would insult him with a bad batch? She was very deliberate about what branch she brought him.

Frank hums with dark eyes, a sly smile rising to his lips. “It’s beautiful, Mel, although it does beg the question: are you trying to feed me food from your domain?”

Mel flushes at the implications even as her chest heats dangerously. To eat the food of another’s domain without guest rights would be to accept a kind of...debt. Ownership. An acceptance of who is the provider and provided. Her gift can’t do such a thing to him, given freely in his own lands, but for Frank to bring it up at all is heady.

“And if I was?” Mel asks, feeling braver than herself for a moment as she watches him with hungry eyes.

Frank turns his attention back to the branch in his hands, rolling one of the dusty red berries between his fingers before plucking it with the softest motion. Mel holds her breath as he examines it, heart pounding so loudly she’s sure he must be able to hear it. Slowly Frank lifts the berry to his lips before locking eyes with her and biting down. It disappears in a whisper as he savors the flavor leisurely, eyes still fixed on Mel.

Juneberries are compared to all sorts of things, blueberries and cherries and apples. Sweet but not tart, with a nuttiness born from the small seeds inside. 

Mel’s cheeks burn as she waits for Frank’s verdict, choked by a strange breathlessness. She wraps her hands around the edges of her seat to prevent herself from doing something she shouldn’t at the smile creeping over his lips. “Do you like it?” 

“Perfect,” Frank tells her with a gravelly base to his voice, not as unaffected as his smile claims. “Like the sweet summer sun itself.”

Oh.

Oh.

Mel may have been the one to give him the branch, but she wasn’t ready to hear that. 

Warmth prickles through her body in a buzzing wave, filling her skin with a vibrating energy. He can’t just- say that, that’s not fair. Mel leans around the long forgotten game board without a conscious thought, pulling Frank down just slightly so she can kiss him, pressing her lips to his in a bright burst. His lips are soft under hers, warm and pliant with surprise.

After a beat, she pulls back, staring up at him with wide eyes. That was-

She’s pretty sure neither of them expected that. 

“...Are you going to say something?” Mel asks, not sure what to make of his frozen expression.

Frank wakes up at her words, leaning in immediately to steal kiss of his own as one of his hands comes up to cradle her jaw. Mel presses into the touch, warmth radiating through her whole body as his thumb pets over her cheek gently. She thinks she might be able to taste herself on his lips, the sticky sweetness of the berry still lingering there. When they separate, there's barely a foot between them, Frank staring at her like she set the stars in the sky.

“Just as sweet as your fruit.” He says, shaking his head in wonder.

Mel can feel herself flushing scarlet, heat building in her chest. Oh, that’s a very unfair thing to say. Especially given how late into their visit they already are. “Does that mean you like it?”

Frank’s mouth curves as she speaks, smiling at something in her words. “A little more than that I think.”

Mel fights the urge to whine, even as she glances at the doorway. She would give anything to be able to stay here, even just for a night, but neither half of herself would survive something like that. She already lingered too long, her path back tonight will be taken in the dark. He seems to read the debate clear on her face as she desperately tries to argue how she can afford to stay for just a few more minutes.

Just to hear whatever other pretty words he can come up with.

“You haven’t asked me a question.” Frank reminds her, just as impatiently patient to keep her here as she is to be kept. His thumb continues rubbing over her cheek in steady lulling strokes. 

Mel’s chest flutters dangerously at the comfort she wants to fall into more than anything. “I’ll ask it tomorrow.”

It's the best promise she can give him.

Frank lifts her hand, kissing her knuckles with a soft reverence. “Tomorrow then.”

It can’t come soon enough.

- - -

Mel can barely make herself sleep that night, grinning to herself as she curls against her tree, replaying their kisses on loop behind her eyelids like the sweetest daydream. She can’t help collecting a few more berries under the early morning light.

Just in case Frank needs something to remind him of where they left off.

She slips down the stone tunnel with quick feet, only slowing enough to make sure she doesn’t trip over the uneven rock. Passing under the archway feels different though, making Mel come to an uneven stop for the first time all morning. The air of the Underworld tastes strange around her, a new note mixing with the typical harmony. Mel isn’t sure how to describe it, but it forces a frown to her face as she makes her way down to the river at a slightly slower pace.

Whatever it is, it doesn't belong.

Charon has a rigidness to his shoulders as Mel settles onto his boat, pushing them away from the shore quickly like he doesn't want to linger. His pace slows as they hit the center of the river though, something tense buried in his expression. “You’re not the first one I’ve ferried today.” 

Mel frowns, looking at him in confusion. She knows that. She doesn’t expect him to wait around for her...

He catches her expression with a small shake of his head though. “Not the first living one I’ve ferried today.”

Mel’s breath catches immediately. “Who?”

“The Harvester.” Charon says as his mouth creases tightly, like he doesn’t dare speak her title directly.

Ice trickles down Mel’s spine. 

Demeter. 

She’s here, in the Underworld. 

Something about it feels impossible, like she shouldn’t be able to breach this bubble Mel has found for herself. Another side of her feels like she’s facing down a storm that has been brewing on the horizon for months. It was always going to come time to pay the price of her failures. Mel just never thought it would be here, like this. The rest of their journey seems to pass in the span of a few seconds, as Mel blinks herself back into the present at the sound of Charon’s boat grounding itself into the rocky shore. She pulls herself to her feet and stumbles out, legs feeling strangely wobbly underneath her. Mel needs to find Demeter, now-

“Lamb.” Charon calls, dragging Mel’s attention down the beach for a moment. He hasn’t pushed off yet, still watching her with a shadowed expression. “Be careful.”

Mel gives him a single nod. She’ll try.

The journey up to the palace takes on a distorted quality, her feet slipping on the loose river stones, as the feeling of different grows heavier and more charged in the air. It’s like the sky before a thunderstorm, heavy with the smell of rain and potential destruction. No one stops her as she enters the palace, attendants hidden somewhere to avoid drawing the attention of something greater.

Mel is only a few hallways away from the throne room when she finally hears the sound of very familiar voices, already barking at one another sharply. 

“-n’t take orders from you-”

“By right, you should have come to me the instant you knew anything about her whereabouts!”

“By right?” Frank echoes, something coldly haughty in his voice. “You’re owed no rights from me-”

“I have every right to know about the actions and location of my daughter.” Demeter snaps, voice sharp and as intent on cutting as Mel has ever heard it. “I am her mother, her sole protector and guardian-”

“Does her father agree with that assessment?”

“Don’t you dare bring him into this.”

Mel creeps around the corner to find the doors to the throne room already thrown wide, still no attendants in sight, as Hades and Demeter face one another down in the grand hall. And she does mean Hades. The full force of Frank’s title sits clear in the lines of his face, hard as stone and just as unwilling to give ground. Demeter isn’t any different as the fire in her eyes burns bright enough for Mel to catch it halfway across the room. Dark circles underline her eyes, a wildness set into her skin intent on finding some weakness to tear through and get the answers she wants.

They both notice Mel in the doorway at the same time, heads turning to look at her almost simultaneously. She feels like an insect pinned beneath their attention. Frank’s expression gentles slightly at the sight of her, a hint of warmth softening his eyes. 

Demeter’s doesn’t.

“You.” Demeter hisses as she turns her attention on Mel instead. 

“My lady.” Mel forces out, voice strangled as her chest squeezes tight. The daydreams that filled her mind last night crumble to ash with the bracing sting of reality. 

Demeter shakes her head, lip curling dangerously. She points at the floor next to her like she’s speaking to a particularly ill-behaved dog. “Here, now.” 

Mel moves without conscious choice, legs carrying her across the floor even as her mind flinches away from the sharp temper and sharper tongue that she knows await her. She comes to a stop almost directly between the two gods, stomach clenching dangerously.

“What are you doing here?” Demeter asks, voice low and churning. “Colluding with the man who refuses to return my daughter to me?” She grabs Mel’s upper arm in a vice grip to prevent her from pulling away. “Did you two conspire together? Do you sell her off to him for some paltry reward?" 

Mel shakes her head desperately, wincing at the iron grip on her arm. “Never, my lady, I swear! I came here to search, that’s all.”

Demeter isn’t satisfied by her answer, Mel can see it in her face as her frown etches itself a little deeper into her skin. 

“Enough.” Frank snaps, forcing Demeter’s attention away from Mel for a moment. He looks wild, eyes dark and hands clenched at his sides as he looks between the two of them. “Control yourself, sister.”

Mel’s heart feels like it’s pulling out of her chest as she looks at him, so many little things she wishes she could say all clogging her throat. This isn’t what today was supposed to be like. It was going to be different. Good. Just the two of them and their courtyard, their own little slice of peace. Not here, with the creeping fear she’s going to end the day ripped in two.

Demeter snarls, expression twisting sharp and unnameable at the reprimand, before she pulls herself together under a forced calm. The grip on Mel’s arm loosens by the slightest degree. “Of course. I would hate to disrupt the peace of your lovely halls.”

Frank glares back, but he doesn’t rise to the bait. “Say what you need to, calmly, or you’ll find yourself removed.”

“You would threaten to remove me from your lands like some kind of errant messenger?" Demeter asks, eyes wide and offended. Mel blinks at the reminder of herself all those visits ago, stepping into this room under the same title.

“I will if you don’t contain yourself.” Frank says, words edging on something greater as the flickering lamp light catches the dented memories in his armor. It’s a threatening display pulled off in complete silence. Demeter blows a sharp breath out of her nose, split between the desire to assert herself as a fully-fledged goddess of Olympus and not to try the patience of one of the few gods who can still humble even an Olympian. “A goddess acting like a child in front of one of her subjects? It’s enough to send a nymph running for new lands.” 

Mel’s stomach clenches as she catches Frank’s eyes for the briefest second.

While those words may have been a reprimand for Demeter, they were also an offer. Mel still has a question, a request, owed to her by the God of the Underworld for one of her courting gifts. Outside of their gentle back and forth's, that is no small offering. And his words are a promise, urging Mel to use it for exactly that. If she were to use it to ask for sanctuary in the Underworld, Frank would grant it. He would shield her from Demeter’s temper, and the gods inevitably angered by her insubordination, and the disruption of every natural order. He would keep her safe down here in his lands where none of them could reach her. 

He's offering to stand against-

Everyone. 

To make every cruel story and stereotype about his possessive hateful nature true, to be the boogeyman envious of the other god’s lots and jealous enough to do something about it. For Mel.

Her chest tightens at such an offer, the scale of what he’s saying is almost too much to look at directly.

“So, if you aren’t a traitor and he doesn’t have my daughter,” Demeter says, turning back to stare at Mel. “What have you been doing down here?”

“Asking questions.” Mel says quietly, biting her lip as she debates what is safe to admit. The delicate warmth Frank has shared with her remains firmly sealed behind her teeth. “One a day. To figure out where she is and how she’s doing.”

Demeter raises an eyebrow, staring at Mel so closely it almost feels like she’s looking through her. “And he just, what? Gives you these answers for free?”

Mel’s mouth opens and closes for a second. “It’s part of a game.”

“A game?” Demeter asks, voice rising into something more humored. Not happy, just…entertained. Attention filled by something smaller than her that she can laugh at. It makes Mel’s shoulders rise even as she keeps her mouth shut.

“Petteia. I get a question per petteia match that I win.” Mel says, fingers twisted tight in front of her chest. “I- I still have a question from yesterday.”

Demeter stares at her for a long moment, eyes drifting between her and Frank with a silent debate. Finally she lifts her chin to look at Mel with a challenging expression. “If that’s the truth, then ask your question. Ask Hades where my daughter has been hidden away from me.”

Mel turns to look at Frank, the grip on her arm still holding her in place. He gives her the barest of nods, a silent promise reaffirming what he said before. Just say it, ask him for protection, and he’ll grant it. Regardless of the cost they both know it will take. 

He is willing to pay it without a second thought. 

Mel isn’t. 

“Where is the goddess of new growth hidden?” Mel asks, shoulders slumping with something impossibly heavy.

They’re not her words.

Mel’s words are smaller, softer. Conversations about groves and games of dice. These are Demeter’s words, echoing through Mel like a puppet. But she won’t let Frank prove the world right about him when it’s a bald-faced lie. Frank is good, and kind, and so much better than anyone realizes. 

She loves him, and that means she can’t let him destroy himself for her.

“Is that your question?” Frank asks, something small flickering in his voice that Demeter doesn’t seem to catch. His hands flex at his sides, knuckles bleached painfully white. “Is that what you would ask of me?”

He wants her to take it back, to ask for his protection and trust that he’ll give it. 

Mel’s throat clogs with desperate denials as she nods once, impossibly slowly. She’s sure.

Frank seems to age a century in seconds, eyes growing heavy as his shoulders fall for the briefest moment. It’s wiped away quickly though as he lifts his chin to look at the question asker directly, staring into Demeter with a coldness that almost freezes the air itself. “Your daughter is safe, as she has been for months. She’s with Zephrus, the god of the west wind, in his homely castle. They’ve been courting for quite some time as I hear it. A mutual attraction turned to love.”

Mel blinks as his words wash over them. Courting? That hadn’t even been a possibility in her mind. It feels impossible. She’s always by Becca’s side, keeping her entertained. Who could have possibly crept past her? 

The winds don’t obey anyone but their own minds though. 

Zephrus seems like an almost perfect companion for Becca now that it’s all laid out. A young god of a playful domain - who better for a goddess of new growth? The memory of warm breezes stealing Becca’s attention away from Mel in the days before her disappearance slips neatly into place.

A hidden romance in plain view.

“You knew of this the whole time, and didn’t tell me?” Demeter asks, temper ignited freely again now that she has her answer. Mel flinches at the sight of it, unable to shove down her reaction as she’s held tightly in place. Demeter is not a figure anyone wants to see angry, but certainly not a dryad. Demeter doesn’t notice the motion, but Frank does, eyeing her for a moment with a cloudy expression.

“If your daughter wanted you to know, I’m not the messenger she would have sent.” Frank snaps back, arms crossing over his chest tightly.

“I’ll take this to Robby.” Demeter hisses, grip tightening around Mel’s arm again. Mel shrinks at the sound of a name that she’s sure she shouldn’t know. “I’ll tell him about your lies and deception-”

“You stand in my domain right now.” Frank says, voice dropping low and heavy at her threat. “My domain which claims all living things, and which by my blessing are people permitted to leave. Do not threaten me while standing under my mercy or we may both find out how thin it is.”

Demeter falls silent at the threat. The God of the Underworld is not someone to be angered lightly and there's a limit, even with family. Finally she lifts her head with a flat expression, staring at him down the bridge of her nose. “We got what we came for. We’ll stop intruding on your hospitality.”

Frank stares at Mel with an aching expression, almost begging her to argue. To say something.

Demeter has her daughter’s location, the world is spinning back onto its natural axis. One that doesn’t - can’t - include a dryad flitting herself away into the belly of the earth on her own whims.

Mel doesn’t know what to say, how to close the distance between them under Demeter’s watchful eye. Heat prickles in the back of her eyes. “I-I’m sorry.”

It’s the wrong answer. There’s not a right one, but that one is wrong. Too close to the goodbye that Mel doesn’t want to give. She can see it hit Frank sharply, the mask and shield of Hades falling back over his eyes in an attempt to protect those soft sides of himself that he let her see.

Frank draws himself up to his full height, the blackness of his cloak as consuming and terrifying as it was that very first day. “You are no longer welcome in my kingdom. Do not return here, you won’t find kindly passage back out again.”

Mel blinks, tears burning in her eyes. She doesn’t even know how to name the grief in her chest, too sinking and complete. “I-”

“Come on. It’s time to finally put this whole ordeal behind us.” Demeter says, pulling Mel away by her arm. It’s like being wrapped in a brand, burning with a divine force that Mel can’t hope to overpower. She stumbles, trying to keep her eyes on Frank as the world picks up speed around them, impatient to snap back to normal.

Mel wants to beg, to make him understand why she couldn’t say yes.

To apologize for not being able to take the leap with him.

Frank refuses to meet her eyes though, staring past her with a heavy gaze and an unbending mask.

Mel stares at him desperately for as long as she can, but finally Demeter drags her out of the room and he’s cut off from her sight forever.

- - -

Everyone knows the story of Adonis, a mortal set in the middle of Aphrodite and Ares, who was torn apart by a squabble greater than his small form. Aphrodite is said to have wept bitter tears at his passing. In no rendition of the tale has Mel ever heard about his pain from a love lost. 

The one leaving breaks two hearts at once.

- - -

The journey back out of the Underworld and across mortal lands is fast as the steeds of Demeter's chariot throw themselves forward with near reckless abandon. At least Mel thinks it’s fast. Her mind might simply be slow, feeling the distance from the Underworld in every aching heart beat like a physical tie drawn tight.

She’s not sure how to breathe around it, almost surprised to see that her chiton is still white. No sight of a bloody heart ripped out of her chest.

They’re going to collect Becca. To bring her home. To rescue her from the happy torment of a willing disappearance into the arms of a god she loves. It doesn’t feel like Mel expected it to when she set out from the grove so long ago. It’s almost anti-climactic in the end. Demeter doesn’t say a word to Mel as they travel, eyes trained on the horizon. Mel appreciates the silence. She’s not sure what she would do with words right now. 

The horses finally bring them to a stop on top of a cliffside overlooking the coast. Zephrus’s castle, a warm limestone build set with dozens of windows, overlooks the view with a comfortable design.

They don’t even have time to dismount before Becca is running outside with a wide happy smile, looking just as whole and healthy as she was before she disappeared. 

“You’re here! I wasn’t sure if you would make it before we finished off the latest batch of apricots.” Becca beams, gesturing back at the house excitedly. Mel blinks like she’s speaking another language. Apricots and castles. Becca is talking like this is some kind of invitation to dinner.

Demeter slips off of the chariot, pulling Becca into a tight hug. It's long overdue, but Mel can see it serve two purposes at once as Demeter fights to smoother the fire in her eyes. It’s a side of her Becca has never seen. It’s not a record she intends to break now. “Of course not, my love. I would never miss something so important.”

Becca laughs, pulling back to grin at her mother brightly.

Something about that bubbling happiness finally forces Mel to move, slipping out the chariot quietly to join them in front of the castle. 

“He’s wonderful, Mellie, you’ll love him.” Becca gushes before turning to her mother to point out every little thing on the exterior that he let her change to her liking. Demeter listens to her stories with infinite patience, watching her daughter with warm eyes. Mel blinks at the castle with unseeing eyes, the design blurring and warping in front of her. Nothing feels how she expected it to when she imagined this moment over and over again. She keeps trying to pull together the delight she had anticipated just to find it falling through her fingers like sand.

Only Demeter seems to note her silence.

It’s only a matter of a few short minutes before a short gust alerts them to new company.

Zephrus, a strapping young god, lands on the ground a few feet away with a happy grin, waving at the group welcomingly.

“You’re back early!” Becca cheers, slipping away from her mother to join him a few feet away.

“One of my brothers spotted them headed this way so I knew I had to come back early.” Zephrus explains as he riffles through the pouch on his hip. “I found something that reminded me of you on my trip though.”

Becca bends closer to examine the collection of seashells that he pulls out as easy conversation picks up between the two of them, oblivious to their guests and the passage of time. 

Mel and Demeter give the couple a moment to speak with one another. There’s something untouched by the two of them, disconnected from the heartbreak of the world. A goddess of new growth and the god of a kindly wind. The effort that led Mel and Demeter to stand here before them almost feels staining, like they shouldn’t touch anything for fear of infecting this quiet moment with something too real and painful.

“You’re quiet.” Demeter says, a simple trailing observation, even as her eye remains firmly on her daughter.

“It’s an overwhelming day, my lady.” Mel whispers, trying to pull herself together. Somehow.

“That it was. But you should be happy, it’s no small feat what you did.” Demeter tells her, voice lighter than expected. She’s already gotten her victory. There’s not much more she can ask for.

“Feat?” Mel echoes with a confused frown. Feats are something to be proud of. Something to be respected. Nothing Mel did today feels worthy of the smallest ounce of praise.

“Traveling to the Underworld. Tricking a god, Hades no less. It takes guts. It’s what stayed my hand.” Demeter says, waving her hand in the air vaguely like Mel should understand what it means.

Mel’s stomach drops at her praise. It wasn’t a trick, she wasn’t- that’s not why she was going down there. She bites that back to ask a much more pressing question. “Stayed your hand?”

Demeter nods, turning to Mel for a moment. “I almost uprooted your tree for losing her. Being so negligent in your duties.” She sighs, looking at her daughter and her beau still chattering away happily with no sense of time. “All’s well that ends well, I suppose. He could have been worse.”

She steps away to officially meet her new son-in-law as confused grieving tears build in Mel’s eyes. 

For all the sentiments of love and care that Mel sees from her, Demeter is a goddess and her whims are a brushfire across those smaller than her. Only Becca is spared from such things. Mel was almost uprooted for this. She was almost unmade in the most treasured heart of herself because Becca ran away.

The happy party find their way inside to talk more comfortably, likely over a bottle of wine or two. Mel can’t make her feet move to join them, frozen in place. No one notices her absence as they slip inside. She’s done her duty, Becca has been returned to under her mother’s protective eye.

There’s no need for her whipping girl tonight.

So Mel waits outside with the horses, ice burrowing into her skin with each breath. 

Everything is right with the world. 

She’s not sure she’ll never be warm again.

- - -

The wedding of two gods is a major cause for celebration. The two never actually went so far as to get formally married in all their time away so Becca returns to her mother’s gardens to be looked after as the festivities are planned properly. They wish each other tearful goodbyes with Becca waving to him from the back of the chariot and Zephrus promising to visit whenever he can.

The other gods laugh at their dramatics.

Young lovers, always such a foolish happy thing to be.

Becca steps off her mother’s chariot with a happy glow, overwhelmed by congratulations from other inhabitants of the grove. Every dryad and naiad, and even a few quiet oreads, make their way over to wish her well. 

Mel finds herself off to the side of the celebrations, unable to shake a bitter knot clogging her throat.

She was almost unmade for this. She has been in a way, split in an unnatural set of three with a piece of her laying in the cool dirt of the Underworld. Something sharp and jagged in her chest almost wishes Becca had been kidnapped. At least this triumphant return wouldn’t burn so badly. Mel makes sure to shake those thoughts out of her head immediately. That’s awful. She doesn’t think awful things.

Demeter picked Mel, from all the trees in her grove, to watch over her daughter. 

Mel is grateful for it. Grateful for any service she can provide.

She just isn’t sure how to do it anymore.

Demeter is pulled away within a few days to mediate whatever discussions surround the marriage of two gods in Olympus and Becca takes the opportunity to escape the almost ever present reveling over her return. She slips away to her little stone house, gesturing at Mel to join her, and she does, trailing after Becca aimlessly, almost feeling like a mimicry of herself.

Surely there was more to it than this.

Right?

“Everything is as I left it.” Becca cheers happily as she wanders through her house and grounds with a grin. She misses the small pile of abandoned figs dropped in the dirt outside, even as it draws Mel’s eyes like a heavy weight. 

Just as she left it. 

Mel feels like she’s a thousand miles away, staring into distorted reflections of the last few months in every corner of the grove. How did Becca leave and Mel is the one who failed to come back?

“Come on!” Becca says, bustling back out of the house with an easy smile. “I’ve been away for so long! I want to make flower crowns with those new blooms in the meadow before they’re all gone.” 

Mel blinks the figs out of her vision, forcing her head up to meet Becca's. “What?"

“I want to go make flower crowns while the sun’s still high enough for it.” Becca says, pointing almost back where they came from. “Come on, I’ve been patient.”

Patient isn’t what Mel would call not being able to play because she chose to leave. 

Mel feels tired in a way beyond words, out of sync with the flow of everything around her. She doesn’t want to make conversation or flower crowns. She doesn’t want to hear about how perfect Zephrus is or paper over the cracks so Becca doesn’t have to feel bad about running away. Mel doesn’t want to feel like this anymore and she’s not sure how to feel any different. If nothing else, her sharp-edged exhaustion feels like a sign that she’s not fit to be around people right now.

“I’m tired. Why don’t you go without me?” Mel says, summoning up a tight smile to ease her rejection.

Becca falters halfway to the edge of the glade, turning to look at Mel blankly. The moment stretches on unnaturally as they stare at one another.

What does she…?

Oh. 

Mel is supposed to react.

Her old self would have already been jumping into action, apologizing and redirecting for Becca. Of course she can have what she wants, she should never be kept waiting. The new Mel, the one breathing around a ragged hole in her chest, just stands where she is and waits. If Becca wants something, she can ask for it. Command it from Mel the way that all gods can. 

The way that all but one of them do.

Becca’s patience is far shorter than Mel’s though as she gives in with a huff. “Fine. Rest up quickly though, I want to go see everything again tomorrow.”

Mel ignores the condemnation in Becca’s words as she slips off into the woods. She’s too changed from who she was when that used to control her moods so completely. She doesn’t fit her old skin anymore.

She’s not sure who that leaves her.

- - -

Few know the real story of Thetis, the sea nymph who birthed Achilles. She spent her life surrounded by gods and heroes, wrapping her hand around the strings of fate time and time again. Only the nymphs truly remember the woman she was though. The rest of the world eclipses her with the distorted shadow they claim she cast.

- - -

Night time becomes Mel’s reprieve as the days slip by, all other times ruled once more by Becca's idle whims.

It’s also when her thoughts run most rampant, echoing Demeter’s idle threat to uproot her tree on a loop. She finds herself thinking about it a lot lately as she stares at her tree under the cool moonlight.

It’s alive, she’s alive. 

Their small bowed branches are sparse, with fewer leaves than many of the other saplings in the area. None of them are as old as her with as little to show for it. It’s the cost of Mel not having time to tend to her tree. 

She’s always been rather particular about it. 

With a rather hands off approach to pruning as she tries to rehabilitate every wilting bud she can instead of plucking them away. Other dryads tut and say it’s an unfortunately permissive approach. Mel would say it’s one borne from not being sure if she’s willing to lose the bad parts of herself yet. They should be at least ten hands taller than they are, but her duties pull her away too often. There’s no time to coddle her roots when Becca wants to walk to the mountains and meadows and far off grottos. This will be another year of growing too little as the woods around her stretch higher to take that much more sunlight, their branches already reaching out to crowd the air above her.

Scabs already picked open, Mel leans her head back against her trunk as she lets her thoughts fall down a different path.

Frank.

She hasn’t been back to the cave in the mountains since Demeter pulled her away weeks ago. There’s been no time, no room. Becca is returned so life is as it was. Mel lives to serve her lady’s whims regardless of the call of her own heart, buried far and away under the soil.

She finds herself tracing the path there every time she closes her eyes, bright forest trails flashing against her eyelids. Her dreams are endless twisting paths of that conversation in the throne room. Nightmares where she’s torn to pieces between them. Fantasies where she says yes to Frank and never finds herself parted from him again.

She always wakes up in tears after those.

Without Frank around to speak to, Mel finds herself admitting the words she never had a chance to say to the quiet curve of her tree.

She loves him, more than she knew she could.

It wasn’t fear or duty that drove her down to the Underworld so many times. Not once she knew Becca was safe, not when she realized what kind of man Frank is. Mel may have asked him about her charge as their game demanded, but with each visit she planted part of herself in the cool soil of the Underworld. Stories and jokes and little passing thoughts spoken without censoring first. Parts of herself that no one but Frank has ever been interested in. He took every single one of them with the soft hands of someone who somehow saw what she gave him as precious. And in turn he gave those same parts of himself.

She can still feel the press of his lips under hers, soft and responsive for one fleeting, perfect moment.

Mel made the right choice in the throne room, the moral choice that keeps both of them safe. 

And she’s regretted it every day since. 

Becca is safe under her mother’s protection, somewhere Mel suspects she'll always be, even in her husband's house. Where does that leave Mel? Standing at attention for the rest of her life, just waiting to be called to serve? Letting part of herself atrophy away to keep the peace? Becca is getting married, growing past the small confines of one unchanging land. Mel should be allowed to do the same.

Mel tilting her head back against her trunk, feeling it press against the bare skin of her shoulders comfortingly.

Frank refused her easy passage through his lands, a fact that burns even as she understands why. One goodbye was hard enough. One visit every few months, a parting dragged out for years through brief encounters. It would rip out whatever is left inside of both of them. Best to hurt once, even if it means closing the door himself. It makes it hard to get him a message though. Whatever Mel does will be a sign, a promise and a question all at once. Something to tell him everything she couldn’t put into words before.

Mel stares up at the lonely moon for a long moment, resolve building in her chest. She knows what she needs to do.

This time Mel is the one who leaves the fair gardens of Demeter, eye trained on the distant horizon. 

She supposes she’ll never see them again.

- - -

Everyone knows the story of Eurydice and Orpheus, a love so powerful it drove a mortal into the heart of the earth on desperate hope to save his love. 

Mel wonders if anyone will tell her story.

She supposes that every generation needs a cautionary tale. 

- - -

Mel’s arms shake as she props the awkwardly-sized basket on her hip, making her way down the cool stone path one last time. Something about it feels almost nostalgic, familiar for all that she’s different from the version of herself that first experienced it. It feels like a homecoming in its own way. Down into the dark earth Mel travels as she passes under the archway and finally emerges onto the shore. Her arrival seems to startle the shades lingering there, parting for her in a strangely conscious acknowledgement.

She makes her way up to the small dock, watching the lone ferryman cut his way across the river towards her. Charon stares at her with wide eyes as he pulls up alongside the dock.

Mel adjusts her grip on the basket, giving him a small smile. “I don’t have a coin.” 

“Special passage.” Charon says, shaking his head immediately. “For a friend.”

Mel climbs aboard gingerly, careful of where she places her feet. He doesn’t move until she’s settled properly, legs weak and trembling under her. Mel cradles her basket close to her chest and lets the soft rocking of the waves lull her as they cross. They don’t speak as he carries them forward, the same as always, even as something thick lingers in the air between them. 

They both know this is her final trip. 

Something about that almost makes Mel laugh. She’s taken many final trips down to the Underworld. It’s strange that this one still feels special.

They land on the far shore and Mel forces herself back up to her feet, legs wobbling dangerously for a moment as she scoops up her basket again. “Thank you.” She offers with a genuine smile, something quiet twisting the corners.

Charon nods silently, not moving to shove off, despite of the tight schedule he keeps himself to.

Mel can feel his eyes on her back, heavy and patient, until she slips inside the palace walls for good. Inside the dark halls, so close to her destination, Mel's body feels like it's barely holding itself together. Her muscles ache and her legs threaten to go weak and something in her chest sobs painfully.

Still she holds herself together by her fingernails, forcing one foot in front of the other.

Not much farther now. 

It’s almost like a mirage when Mel stumbles her way into their courtyard. This has always been their place. The site of so many of their conversations, so many of their games. The first place she heard Frank's laughter as it burst out of him unexpectedly, taking both of them by surprise for one shining moment. The place he had looked at her so gently as she spoke about her life and achievements, like they meant just as much to him as they did to her.

The place she thought she’d never see again as she walked out of the throne room with two broken hearts in her hands.

The stones look the same, dark and comfortingly cool, and the fountain burbles with quiet consistency. Mel finds herself drifting towards the water with unsteady feet, a small smile pulling its way onto her face. She falls to her knees beside it, exhaustion finally overpowering her. 

She's made it. This will be as far as she goes. 

Mel tries to be gentler with the basket, lowering it to the ground next to her carefully. She pets over her cargo with soft hands. It looks more than a little worse for wear, as worn down as she feels. Mel knows that she’s fading, and this isn’t much for such an important message, but it’s all she has. She hopes it's enough.

Time passes in a strange sticky haze from moment to the next, until Mel blinks and finds Frank standing in the entryway of the courtyard, breathing like he just ran all the way here. 

His eyes find Mel immediately, staring at her with a horrified expression. She’s sure that she doesn’t look like much. Tired and dull with her knees scraped red and hair left loose and wild over her back. Still Mel can’t help smiling at the sight of him, straightening up slightly as something hopeful twists through her chest. It’s hard to feel scared when Frank is with her.

He crashes to his knees in front of her, cupping her cheeks with barely contained panic. “What did you do?” 

He’s warm, he’s so very warm. Mel smiles at the feeling. It feels like the first spark of heat she’s felt since she left his side. His thumb rubs over her skin insistently until she looks at him. Frank looks pale, scared in a way she hasn’t seen him before.

“Mel, what have you done?” Frank asks, voice crackling dangerously as he begs her not to have done what she did. 

“It’s my last gift for you.” Mel says as she looks down at her sapling tucked in the basket, soil still clinging to each of its roots as it slowly wilts away from the earth. She finds herself leaning into his hands a little more as her strength drips away from her.

Frank shakes his head almost instinctively at her words. “No, no- Mel-”

“I don’t have anything else to offer you, not of value. Not, not to show how much you’re worth to me.” Mel says, summoning up as much energy as she can. She needs to get this all out. “I didn’t mean it. The question. You have to know that I didn’t mean it. I would have asked for you a thousand times over if I didn’t know what it would cost you.”

Blackness spots the corners of Mel’s vision for a moment, making her head spin as the world drifts away for a second. She can feel herself being moved as a gentle warmth presses insistently to her skin. When she blinks her eyes open, Mel is suddenly much closer, looking up at Frank as he cradles her carefully in his arms.

“You’re okay, stay with me.” He whispers, warmth prickling into her skin everywhere he’s touching her. Even with that, Mel can tell that it’s only a matter of time. 

“Frank.” She says, waiting until he meets her eyes with a suspiciously shiny gaze. “It’s you, I love you.”

The watery sheen in his eyes breaks loose at that, two tears streaking down his cheeks furiously. Frank looks between her and her tree with an almost desperate shake of his head. “You were supposed to stay up in the sunlight, in the soft breezes and sunlight. You were supposed to have years- not, not come back down to this dark place. You’re not supposed to be here-”

He’s always so surprised that Mel would pick him, that she would find her way to him over and over again. That choosing him isn’t a sacrifice. 

Mel can’t think of anything that’s ever felt more natural.

Her head is pressed into Frank’s shoulder, body carefully held away from the cold stone. Mel lifts a heavy hand to rest over his chest, a steady heartbeat echoing under her palm. It’s a comforting rhythm. She smiles slightly at the memory of the old story he told her about his missing heart. “Found it.”

Frank leans forward to press their foreheads together, shaking his head. He pulls back with a desperate fire in his eyes. “Don’t go to sleep. Not yet.”

Mel wants to ask what he means, but the world tilts strangely as he stands, holding her close to his chest. Two servants appear in front of them, each lifting one handle of Mel’s basket with careful hands before setting off down one of the hallways splintering from the courtyard.

What-what are they doing?

Mel isn’t left to wonder long as Frank follows behind them with long strides, weaving through the palace to-

The grove. 

“Stay with me, Mel.” Frank tells her whenever her eyes slip closed for a moment, voice pressed tight. “You need to stay awake for this.”

Mel nods, forcing her eyes open as they make their way through the grove laid in the protected heart of Frank’s palace. Three servants are already there, standing in an already open space between the trees and digging into the soil with untiring strokes. The attendants carrying her tree wait off to the side, every motion carefully controlled like they don’t want to jostle it. She can’t muster up the energy to thank them for it. She can’t find the energy to say anything.

She put everything she had into getting down here and now the yawning pit inside of her feels like it’s growing beyond her control. 

Frank seems to feel it too, arms tensing around her as he holds her close. “There’s no time, plant it now.”

Two servants gently grasp Mel’s tree itself and lift it from the basket, drooping branches and all. A soft note of recognition rings between her and her sapling for a moment, an exhausted and enduring affection. Then the shades carefully lower it down into the hole, scooping handfuls of soft broken up soil over her roots in steady motions.

The air hangs still for a moment before Mel shudders, a chill running down her spine as the strange sucking emptiness in her chest gives way to a swirling whirlpool of something more, pressing up into her from all around. 

This isn’t dying, this is death.

The full reach of Frank's domain slipping into her chest and cradling her as surely as each of her roots.

Mel’s head falls back onto Frank’s shoulder with a finality, dizzying lights blurring beyond her eyes at the sensation. 

Frank notices (like he does with everything, he’s always so careful with her), already turning back towards the palace. “I want a full score of soldiers guarding this grove at all times, no one enters without me.” 

The servants chorus something back (agreements? A wordless sound of loyalty? She isn’t sure), but Frank doesn’t wait to hear it as he makes his way through the twisting hallways too fast for Mel to follow. His footsteps are loud as they bounce off the stone, strangely opposite to the soft press of his hands, wrapped around tired limbs and aching joints with a gentle touch. Mel's blinks grow longer, slower to open than they are to close as the sensation of other grows under her skin.

Finally the world seems to shift under her as Mel feels herself being laid onto an impossibly soft bed. She cracks her eyes to squint at him, trying to bring the world into focus again.

“There we go.” Frank whispers, almost to himself, as he pulls back just enough to kneel down next to her. Something about that feels wrong (He’s a god, she’s a dryad, he shouldn’t kneel-). His hand gently rests against her cheek, petting her skin softly. “You’re okay, sweetheart. I’m going to keep you safe.”

Mel isn’t sure what’s going on, but she knows Frank and she knows he means it. She’s safe. 

“You can sleep, I’ve got you.”

With that final promise, Mel's eyes flutter closed and she falls away from the world into darkness. It pulls her down with heavy hands into a space without beginning or end. It’s not painful, just encapsulating. Filling. It almost reminds her of being wrapped in Frank’s cloak, a shield against the world.

Sometimes light flickers through her sleeping mind, filling her vision with half-understood images.

Frank watching her with worried eyes, pressing a cool cloth to her forehead (she wishes she could reach out and soothe the furrow in his brow).

A shelf across the room littered with flowers and leaves and pretty river stones (what strange decor for someone of his station...).

A soft black cloak laid over her her chest (so warm, almost familiar).

Each moment passes through her mind with perfect clarity and little understanding. She’s drifting, unbound to everything and anything. All that exists is this long, dragging sleep.

Then a tugging appears.

Somewhere low in her chest, pulling on her insistently like a child at their parent’s hand.

The feeling guides her up through the darkness, pulling her up, up, up, until Mel’s eyes slowly open with genuine awareness in…she’s not sure how long. She sits up, soft black cloak falling off of her as she slips out of the bed. She has never come to this room before, not awake, but the tugging in her gut is all the direction she needs, drawing her towards her destination like a waypoint.

Mel walks down quiet stone hallways as a strange disconnect buzzes in her skin. She’s not quite awake or asleep. She just can’t sleep here any longer.

She needs rest.

Real rest.

She isn’t aware of her destination until her bare feet hit the soft soil of the grove. Lamps have been brought to warm and light her branches and they guide her way now, lighting up the grove with a glow that would make the most vibrant noonday sun jealous.

Two guards straighten as she approaches, almost blocking her path forward.

“Halt, no one is allowed-”

“Out of the way.” A voice snaps from behind her. Frank. She’s not sure when he showed up, but she knows deep in her gut that he’ll take care of whatever it is.

The guards immediately step to the side and Mel smiles as she closes the distance between them to pet a heavy hand over her bark. They hum with new life in a way that they haven’t had in so long. Her tree looks different somehow. More than they used to be. Mel presses close to her trunk with a bright smile.

“I missed you.” She whispers, feeling her bark beckon her home. Mel lets herself fall forward, slipping into the wood and bark and branches smoothly. 

Home.

Time takes on a lazy quality again, slipping by without end. This time though Mel doesn’t hover in nothingness, but in everything. The trees around her offer her their roots and Mel intertwines herself with her unawakened kin without reservation, listening to their wordless stories. Stories of a god’s loving care, a safe home, space to grow even without the light to carry them. Her consciousness spreads over her tree, from the lowest root to the highest branch. Then her roots stretch out, past the grove and stones to wrap around the deeper heavier parts of the world unimpeded.

Her network buries itself in the earth, illuminating the world with Eyes-That-Aren't.

She can feel the hesitant feet pressing into the grove soil as they replenish the oil in the lamps around her. The still figures of the guards, keeping themselves at attention, and the more loose movements of the guards further away, yet to take their shifts. 

And she can feel Frank, visiting her patiently day after day when he completes his work.

He’s her most fascinating visitor by far. 

Hades, God of the Underworld and protector of this grove, is more than capable of calling her from her tree. A simple command, a pull at the heart of her being would have her by his side again in a heartbeat, as easily as Demeter had called her forth the first time. 

Instead he waits for her to emerge herself, settling himself at her side like if he can’t feel the time passing. 

He sends the guards away whenever he visits her, settling back against her trunk like some kind of pining town boy come to pine in her comfort. Frank will bring different stories and pieces of poetry from his library, reading them aloud to her in easy peace. Mel buzzes at the feeling every time he rejoins her, treasuring it against every one of her senses. Today is poetry as Frank holds up the scrolls with an excited hand.

“I found a poem that I think you might like, by a man named Theocritus.” Frank narrates as he gets comfortable, shedding his cloak into the dirt below him without a second thought. Mel presses against the lines of his body just as happily, relishing the feeling of him against her trunk. “Apparently he’s known for writing about nature in a very loving longing way.” He pauses for a beat, leaving her space just in case she has anything to add. “I find we have that in common.” 

What a sap.

Then Frank opens his mouth, and reads.

I shall not go thither,

Here are oaks, here is the galingale, 

Here bees hum sweetly around their hives;

Here are two springs of coolest water, 

Here birds warble on the trees,

Nor is there any shade equal to that beside thee,

And the pine showers its cones from on high. 

Mel can feel a flush build in her Body-That-Isn’t, a beating of a heart that she laid down to rejoin her tree. Climbing back into her skin is a strange task, slow moving and strange as she fits herself back into a more compact space. Leaving her tree again after so long is less about natural movement and more about falling into a motion that her body has forgotten. She finds herself tumbling out of her wood into Frank’s lap, toppling him over onto his back in a mess of limbs that leaves her leaning over his chest.

“Mel.” Frank breathes, staring up at her with wide eyes.

“Such a romantic.” Mel whispers, looking down at him with a growing smile. She feels better, different than she did before. She pets a hand over Frank’s jaw, heart still fluttering at his low romantic words. “You want to sit under my shade?”

Frank grins, taking one of her hands in his to kiss her knuckles and swear, “No rest would be sweeter.”

Mel’s skin prickles with goosebumps. She leans in to press their lips together, smiling as Frank wastes no time in kissing her back. One of his hands buries itself in the hair at the nape of her neck, gentle and firm all at once.

When they pull back, Frank is panting, staring up at her with a growing smile. “Who knew you were such a lover of poetry?” 

“Or perhaps just the poet.” Mel says, pressing her head forward into Frank’s chest. He’s dressed simply today, without any of his armor. Just a simple chiton and miles of warm skin as if he just stepped out of the sun.

“How do you feel?” He asks quietly, carefully.

Mel pauses for a moment to see. “Good, I think.”

There’s a new awareness in her senses that she hadn't be able to truly decipher before. Through the other trees of the grove, through roots woven deeply under stone and gravel. Mel can feel the Underworld, distances on the horizon echoing information back to her with ease. Mel turns to blink at her tree. It’s larger, shot up like a spring bud faster than any tree should be able to. She stretches well beyond what could have fit in her basket, rivaling nearby oaks with at least thirty years on her.

That’s impossible.

Her size, her scope - Mel never had such awareness in Demeter’s gardens. It would hardly be possible for an ancient nymph like an oread tied to the heart of a mountain, let alone a dryad. 

“What happened?” Mel asks with a small frown as she turns back to Frank. “It- everything gets hazy.”

“You brought your tree down here, to the Underworld.” He tells her, one of his hands finding hers to intertwine their fingers. Mel nods, remembering the journey down here. “You were dying.”

The word sends a shiver down her spine, even as she can tell that there is an impossible warmth in her that wouldn’t be there if she wasn’t still alive in some way. Her tree is proof enough of the fact that she isn't dead. “But I didn’t.” Mel finishes for him.

“No, you didn’t. I refused.” Frank says as his lips cutting down sharply at the very idea, like it's completely untenable. “Instead, I tied you to me.”

Mel blinks, staring at him with wide eyes.

Frank didn’t just refuse to claim her soul, he refused to let her die at all. He split his domain, the heart of his power, with her. Mel is no longer a dryad. Not just a dryad anyway. She’s something more. As tied to this land as any chthonic god ever has been. Her tree is still hers, but as her roots intertwined with the rest of the grove, it also became hers. Then they grew beyond even that, past gardens and palaces. Into the earth and the far flung realms of the dead.

Into the heart of the earth and all corners of the Underworld. She can feel it, those quiet whispering voices at the edges of her roots.

Souls awaiting judgement.

Desperate, hungry, scared. Hopeful, kind, brave.

Hers.

Theirs.

Frank gave her an open door into everything he is. He gave her the same as she gave him - all of himself.

Mel stares down at him as he gives her a small hopeful look, biting his lip for a moment. “Do you…do you like it?”

Frank loves his domain, his responsibilities and his people. Even the parts that people flinch away from. Especially those. It's what makes him such a good ruler. And such a tender-hearted romantic, sharing it with her in the hope that she'll care for it too.

“I love it.” Mel swears, cupping his cheek to make sure he's looking at her properly. “And I love you.”

Frank’s expression cracks again, love and relief clear as day as he leans in to kiss her again. “Oh, good.”

Mel lets the fear and stress of the world above finally fall away from her as she presses herself closer to Frank, skin buzzing with a bright sunny warmth. Her tree is her home and Frank's home is the Underworld - and the Underworld is hers, wrapped up into the very roots of her tree.

Frank is her home.

- - - 

Just because something is technically possible doesn’t mean the gods are happy to accept its happening.

To split a domain with another god would have already been a massive upheaval, but to have one of the Kronidai do it? With a mortal woman? One who by all accounts should be serving at Demeter’s feet with happy gratitude?

A better term for the response was apoplectic.

Especially from Demeter herself.

All told Victoria can’t find it in herself to care very much about the supposed impertinence. It may not be talked about publicly, but Zeus’s paramours are beyond counting. Hades taking a dryad wife is far from unforgivable in the grand scheme of things. Victoria herself is a minor goddess born to greater gods, who is she to judge?

That attitude may have been why Cassie decided to send her on this little trip in the first place.

Unfortunately.

Victoria slips through the shadowed souls crowding the shoreline smoothly, refusing to look at them directly. She wanted to fly over the river and speed this whole process up, but Cassie had been very clear in her instructions. Paying the barge-man is the only way to cross. The Underworld doesn’t take well to fast tricks, no matter how blessed her winged sandals might be. She passes a coin to Charon, careful not to touch his strangely skeleton fingers, before climbing onto the rickety boat. It looks more suited being firewood than an active vessel, but no one seems to informed the boat of that as it carries them over the river smoothly.

They're about halfway across, far shore growing closer with every slow stroke, when Victoria finally notices the water. Or, more accurately, what's in the water.

White flower petals drift past her, sweet and soft and so shockingly alive that she’s not quite sure if what she’s seeing is real for a moment.

Charon laughs at her confusion with the patience of an old joke. “On the left.”

Victoria turns and blinks at the massive flowering tree towering in the distance. It’s giant, growing wild and unburdened beyond any natural limits, with a few limbs arching over the palace walls close enough to the water that the drifting petals land in the water. 

The result of a very happy dryad. 

It is a gentler view of death than Victoria had expected.

There's a soft kind of mourning to the drifting petals floating over the water. Her mind falls back to the dark shades crowding the shore behind them. Some of them lack the coins to cross the river and will remain there for many years to come. There is a kindness in them still being grieved, despite of the lack of it they received in life.

Their boat lands on the far shore quicker than expected, although Victoria might chalk that up to getting lost in her own thoughts, and she’s quick to climb back onto solid ground. She may be deeper into the Underworld, but at least over here she isn't liable to fall into inescapable waters. Climbing up to the palace is fast albeit a little awkward since there's no easy path up to the foreboding palace. It's carefully designed to impresses any viewer with the importance of it's host before he even bothers to see them.

At least that’s how Cassie described it.

Small trellising vines creep up through the earth outside though, reaching up into the lower stonework of the walls where there are easy holds. A new addition if Victoria were to guess.

Attendants bow deeply at the sight of her as she reaches the doors, sending a blush to her cheeks. She might be here on a trip from Artemis, a figure owed all of the respect of a major goddess of Olympus, but no one would mark Hades as improper for not giving Victoria the same treatment. She’s a minor goddess and even if her parents' names demand respect, hers doesn’t. This is much more than she expected.

The shaded servants escort her to the receiving room, announcing her from the doorway with another ceremonial bow. “Nike, goddess of victory.”

Victoria flushes at her own title. Cassie has been telling her to use it more, but it still doesn’t quite fit right.

“Welcome, Nike.” Hades greets from his imposing throne across the room. “What brings you to the Underworld?” 

He embodies everything that Victoria thought he would as a God of the Underworld. Firm and judgemental, with a cold kingdom and colder eyes. Hades lives up to his reputation and stories with ease. There is one shining crack in his armor though as she traces the line of his arm, laid over the edge of his throne into his wife’s, to take her hand, fingers interlaced gently. He makes no move to hide it, even as Victoria is sure that it's obvious where her eyes went.

Even in front of a storied figure like Hades, Victoria can only keep her eyes away from the woman of the hour for so long.

Dryads aren’t given titled names upon their creation, resembling mortals in more than a few ways. Hades had been quick to correct that difference and bestow the honor onto his wife, right alongside her godhood. Ravens had slipped through dim skies to deliver the name to any and all listening ears.

The new Queen of the Underworld is named Melitodes. 

Sweet as honey. 

A kindly name for one who lives in the Underworld with a hand on the scales of destination. 

Victoria can almost see why though as she watches the softening of Hades’s whole body the closer it is to her. His heart beating outside of his chest.

Melitodes, for her part, seems right at home in her matching throne, smiling at Victoria warmly as she makes her way closer. Where Hades's chiton is all darkness and armor filled with unspoken stories of the past, hers is a dyed green that isn't quite enough to hide the stains of the earth licking at the edges. She’s certainly not a goddess who holds herself above. Everything about her feels simple, direct. The circlet resting on her brow is the most showy part of her whole wardrobe, shining with vibrant emeralds and flickering ambers. It's not hard to guess where it came from, decorated so vibrantly in the jeweled bounties of her husband's lesser mentioned domain.

“I bring a gift.” Victoria says as she finally reaches them, pausing at the bottom of the dais. “From Artemis. She is sad that she was unable to attend your wedding due to…scheduling conflicts.”

That’s the polite way to put it at least.

Elopement is another.

No one outside of the Underworld had been invited to the ceremony. If whispers are to be believed, it had been held in Hades’s grove under his betrothed’s own tree. Such a thing would be unbelievable if Victoria couldn’t see the doting look in his eye from here. 

“More wedding well-wishes?” Hades says with a strangely ordinary groan, having surely been bombarded by them for the past few weeks.

Privately, Victoria thinks that’s what he gets for keeping the wedding secret in the first place. If people can’t gossip at the event, they’ll gossip outside of it and everything they come up with will be five times worse for the effort they’re being forced to make. A small pile of gifts already sits by Melitodes's feet, full of jeweled brushes and shining mirrors and even the odd shovel or two. Everyone’s best attempts at guessing what a dryad must like.

She wonders if Demeter sent anything for the couple. Or her daughter.

Victoria will have to ask Cassie if she's heard anything.

She passes the package over to Hades, holding her breath until she can step back from his throne safely. Cassie had told her to put the gift in their hands directly, but that doesn’t mean she has to enjoy the proximity to something so…other. All three of the Great Gods feel different from the rest of them, more in a way that’s hard to explain. Hades holds a particular kind of chill that she doesn't want to linger near though.

No one ever wishes for a closer brush with death.

It’s something his new wife seems completely immune to as she leans into his side for a change to catch a better view of Artemis's gift.

Three fat pouches sit at the center of the waxed paper, filled with seeds collected from far off lands Cassie had collected from some of her most distant hunts. Next to them sits a silver medallion, stamped on both sides in sharp relief. On the first is the sight of a beautiful untouched lake, tucked so far into nature that it almost seems easier to reach the lands of the gods than such a hidden place. Victoria knows from personal experience it’s certainly no easy journey. On the other side is the symbol of the moon, intercut with Artemis’s bow and arrow. Undrawn, of course.

It’s a powerful recognition of their marriage, one that not all gods were willing to give. 

Cassie is friend to her fair share of nymphs though and she had laughed heartily at the story of one intent on climbing down into the Underworld and claiming a god for herself.

The medallion is a symbol of that respect. The site on the front is one of her most treasured places to rest after a hunt, one that no man has ever seen and that every visitor has taken the location of to their death. It’s no small thing to put that secret place to image, even if Hades, dealer of the dead's secrets, may well already know it. It’s a whole nother thing entirely to offer a place there to Hades’s new wife.

Should she ever want it.

The arch of his brow tells Victoria that he got the intent behind Cassie’s message loud and clear, and her palms grow damp at the thought. 

If the front is risky, the back is there to soothe any raised nerves. A symbol of Artemis, given to the new bride and groom, as a promise of safe childbirth, should they ever grow interested in something like that.

All in all, it’s a grand gift certainly belonging to such a grand couple.

“It’s beautiful.” The freshly crowned Queen of the Underworld beams with no poker face to speak of. Somehow that honesty is more jarring than the cool professionalism of Hades. Her fingers trace the lines of the medallion, even as her eyes linger on the seeds with excitement.

Victoria’s surprise at her reaction quickly falls second to the softening of Hades’s own features at her pleasure.

“Yes?” Hades asks, a shockingly warm smile pulling at his lips. "It's acceptable, my love?"

“It's perfect.” Melitodes affirms as the soft scent of flowers, familiar from the river passage although Victoria doesn't know their name, fills the air for a moment.

Hades lifts their joined hands to kiss her knuckles, smitten down to his core.

The moment lingers and Victoria is tempted to clear her throat to remind them that she’s still standing here, shifting her weight awkwardly between her feet. Maybe this was the real reason Cassie had no interest in delivering her gift herself. Their actions are too smooth to be anything but a common occurrence. She almost pities the dead who have to see it.

Melitodes seems to remember that they have a guest first, turning back to Victoria with a nod of her head. “Please pass our thanks onto Artemis the next time you see her.”

Victoria straightens. “Of course.”

Hades gives her a lazy smirk from his seat. “I suppose that will be a rather quick delivery then.”

Victoria fights to keep her expression flat, even as her sandals respond to her rising heart rate with an obvious flutter of their wings. Rude.

“You have safe passage back through my lands.” Hades says smoothly, not mentioning into what must have been a rather obvious reaction. She decides to take that for rare mercy. “We thank you for your delivery.”

Victoria bows to each of them, careful not to offend, even their attention fall away into one another with a consuming glow. She leaves the room with quick feet, eager to escape the Underworld with a job well done. Still the happy warmth between the couple echoes in her mind. It's nice that they seem so pleased with each other. This certainly seems like a place that requires people to bring their own happiness.

If Victoria is feeling bold on her escape, she might even steal away a few of those white blossoms from the river on her way out. She’s the goddess of victory after all, perhaps it will make a good gift for Cassie.

A little piece of someone else’s bravery.