Hades actually counts it this time, carving out the days and weeks like an inventory: tallymarks on the iron wall, carved into his ledger with a pearl-handled knife, and he abides to the exact letter of his arrangement. He can feel the earth warming above, waking up and coming alive to his wife's presence, while the underworld turns colder and darker and grimmer for her absence.
He pours himself into projects to keep himself busy. A new factory. A new expansion to the mines. Renovations to the speakeasy; his guise of benign negligence is gone, no longer pretending doesn't know about it. The girl is surprisingly good as a manager, or perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised: she's a spendthrift, good with resources, balancing the books, and not taking on more than she can handle. She manages a tight ship of employees. She sings at night, and the king sometimes takes a seat at the back of the smoky room, at a cordoned-off table in the VIP section, and he listens to her.
It's not the same voice as the lady of the underground, but it's good. It lifts the workers' spirits; brightens them after a long hard day in the mines, and it's like a little bit of sunshine down here after all.
Six months.
When the day comes, Hades decides to show that he can be patient, compared to the disaster which was his impatience last autumn. So he lets the train go up by itself to fetch her, and knows she's handling her goodbyes above. He stays underground at the lonely station instead, waiting for that metal beast to descend, watching for its headlight down the single railroad track, trusting in her to come home even when he's not there to drag her back.
It's not fixed. Their relationship can't all be fixed that instantaneously — not after years, centuries of bitterness and anger and their squabbles, a rift in the world torn open by their marital disagreements. Not when he occasionally catches sight of the girl looking distant, a distracted songbird, staring off down the railroad track to the road she can no longer walk.
But it's a start. It's an attempt. It's progress. He stands on the platform waiting for the train to arrive and to greet his wife, sunglasses tucked into his pocket, an armful of asphodels in his hands.
Six months had always felt like nothing when she was up top with the sunshine in her face. It had felt like a whisper, that reprieve, small and as fleeting as the dandelion wine as it fizzes on her tongue. Now, with this six months, the Lady could feel everyone of them. Spring came as it was supposeda, things slowly drawing from the frozen earth as green first appeared, the warmth coming in slow rather than the hot beating down of what summer would be. Maybe it'd come slow cause it too was waiting, just as Persephone herself had held her breath when the boy had come walking into sunlight, but the girl hadn't. It weren't just the boy's pain that had expanded in her chest, the disappointment and the mourning sorrow that radiated from the boy after he'd hugged her tight and cried on the blackness of her sleeve until the dark of the color had washed away to bright green. Persephone had believed the boy would make it, and Hades' test would be passed but it wasn't.
Persephone had cried with Orpheus, holding onto him like he was a lost little chick, and her tears had mingled with his. After all, she'd been married to her husband since the world had begun turning and even with all of the bad things that have been between them for so long, she knew that her husband had been hoping that this boy might have passed the test that the God himself could not. She'd held her breath and the boy, and then the flowers had spread slowly, uncertain as the Goddess herself was. But eventually the boy was gone in the night. Now, Our Lady of Ways and Means weren't the sort to allow ghosts around them, but the boy carried the song of the Songbird with him, and with the changing of the wind, she weren't surprised to see him gone.
In Hermes' bar, she'd mourned the loss of the boy and his song even when the wine and fruit and flowers were striving. While Persephone still pours out drinks for the mortals from the round silver flask that she'd stolen from her Daddy so long ago that it's too many greats for the humans to understand, she herself drinks lightly. Oh, she doesn't stop drinking entirely, but slowly the need to keep drinking wears off of her, and she can feel the things that she'd been numbing for so long start to come through. As the summer hits it's height, Persephone had stopped listening for the whistle, and she'd breathed. She'd thought that it'd be relieving, not thinking about that call back down home, it ain't, and some of the things that Persephone had been numbing had been the way that she'd missed that man of hers.
When Persephone missed her man, she'd left behind the swarm of people who were also slowly starting to trust in their gods and their return to how things were supposed to be. Her wandering steps had been slow, her boots off as she walked across the moss that still lingered in the clearing. Here, away from the mortals and their needs, the flowers that bloomed in her wake definitely weren't what they would have wanted, and definitely weren't what they needed. No, these weren't flowers of the Earth in their pure form. Instead she was ringed by asphodel, the white stars leaving the center clear of the moss and the deep black earth that was where the magic of she and her husband met. With her fingers dug through the dirt so much that it coated the inside of the nails and down the beds of them impossibly deep, Persephone cried and yelled and wailed, releasing the pain into the Earth were it belonged. Every few weeks she'd come to that clearing that humans avoided, and she lay on the Earth and remembered, and she missed him.
As she missed him, the flowers color creeped over it like a blush, shifting the asphodel into the crimson shades that a song had birthed.
Cooler air was slower, and mortals added more clothing after they'd brought in the first good and bountiful harvest that they'd had since she couldn't remember when. The Lady answered prayers that she would have numbed herself away from before, blessing those who wished it as the leaves started to shift. Persephone had packed, but this time the things that she'd stashed in the never ending bag of hers weren't intended to help keep her out of her mind this winter. Instead, they were the things that she knew the shades needed, trying to bring them back to themselves still. Of course that question had lingered: how much had changed down in Hadestown? The shades that had followed the boy had been sent back when the girl was, and it's all a god can do is to hope that her husband not coming meaning the changes are gonna stick around this time--at least for a little while.
When Persephone had woken in the little cottage near where her mama's lands had been when she'd been alive, sitting up with a jolt as the shrill sound of the whistle had cut through the first really cold night of fall. The goddess' stomach shifted, flipflopping and rolling in ways that it ain't done in years and it makes her feel ions just melt away from her. Had she been numbing this too? This excitement that Persephone remembers all too well and fondly from the days when she'd fling her tiny form from the top step of the train and into his arms trusting that the massive form of her husband would catch her. Gods above and below she's probably too old for that now, but it sure don't stop the consideration for it from being there.
But her husband ain't on the train, and Persephone needs to steady her hands from reaching for that flask. Fighting ages of memories, the goddess does everything she can not to let the little seed of bitterness take root inside of her chest. Instead she lets it be coated with the nervousness that was from a time when she and the world were younger, and Persephone had worried that somehow during her six months above her husband had forgotten her. Sitting in the car that had so often born the brewing storm of resentment between them, Persephone is restless, and she does something that he normally does when he comes to bring her home to the Underworld. It's time for fall, and things dying to live again and the green of her dress darkens to black once more as Persephone gathers her wild mass of curls into the more settled netting of The Queen of the Underworld, Persephone the Destroyer.
Holding her breath when the train pulls into the station, Persephone can't stop herself from springing up to the door of the car to see the lone mountain of man who is her husband waiting there like he promised. Her smile is soft and warm and bright, and Persephone leaves the car faster than she has in centuries. For a second when she reaches him, she stills. Things ain't entirely fixed, and there's an awkwardness there that the Goddess don't like in herself at all. But then as a mirror of the times that he'd reached to touch her cheek when she'd come down below the wall, Persephone's callused hand cups his the side of his face, her thumb brushing against his cheekbone as she stands on her tiptoes. The warmth of the sun is there in her hand, almost like an offering. Her voice is soft, and the loving note is in there again, awe and pleasure when she speaks: "It's time for fall, Hades. And I've come home."
It's been a delicate line to walk: being attentive but not possessive, lavishing her with attention but not obsession, when his personality inherently runs to the latter. He hadn't managed that balance well in recent centuries; Hades' attention had become cloying, treating his wife like a treasured possession rather than a person in her own right. He had come earlier and earlier, like a moody master trying to yank a dog back to heel.
The harder he clutched at her, the more she seemed to slip out of his grasp (like wrestling Proteus, that bastard). Seizing her jaw and trying to turn her and force her to look at him only made her gaze more flinty, made her look into the distance over his shoulder rather than meet his eye. Thus, the paradox: to love something, you had to let it go.
And so he'd let her go. His bird flew away and this time, she came home. Persephone scurries off that train like the young girl she hasn't been in eons, and she flies right to his side: her hand reaching out to his face, and he tilts his grizzled bearded jaw into her hand and he exhales into the touch. He feels his tight shoulders shedding a weight and a tension he's been carrying for these six full months, the half of the year when all his foremen and managers and assistants know to give the king a wide berth, avoiding his snappish moods and shorter temper and stormy silences.
But she's back, and she brings daylight with her, and the station already seems the brighter for it. Hades, too, seems to brighten with a near-boyish smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling.
"Welcome home, Persephone," he says, calling her by name rather than wife, and he leans forward and crushes his mouth against hers.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
we'll try again next fall.
Hades actually counts it this time, carving out the days and weeks like an inventory: tallymarks on the iron wall, carved into his ledger with a pearl-handled knife, and he abides to the exact letter of his arrangement. He can feel the earth warming above, waking up and coming alive to his wife's presence, while the underworld turns colder and darker and grimmer for her absence.
He pours himself into projects to keep himself busy. A new factory. A new expansion to the mines. Renovations to the speakeasy; his guise of benign negligence is gone, no longer pretending doesn't know about it. The girl is surprisingly good as a manager, or perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised: she's a spendthrift, good with resources, balancing the books, and not taking on more than she can handle. She manages a tight ship of employees. She sings at night, and the king sometimes takes a seat at the back of the smoky room, at a cordoned-off table in the VIP section, and he listens to her.
It's not the same voice as the lady of the underground, but it's good. It lifts the workers' spirits; brightens them after a long hard day in the mines, and it's like a little bit of sunshine down here after all.
Six months.
When the day comes, Hades decides to show that he can be patient, compared to the disaster which was his impatience last autumn. So he lets the train go up by itself to fetch her, and knows she's handling her goodbyes above. He stays underground at the lonely station instead, waiting for that metal beast to descend, watching for its headlight down the single railroad track, trusting in her to come home even when he's not there to drag her back.
It's not fixed. Their relationship can't all be fixed that instantaneously — not after years, centuries of bitterness and anger and their squabbles, a rift in the world torn open by their marital disagreements. Not when he occasionally catches sight of the girl looking distant, a distracted songbird, staring off down the railroad track to the road she can no longer walk.
But it's a start. It's an attempt. It's progress. He stands on the platform waiting for the train to arrive and to greet his wife, sunglasses tucked into his pocket, an armful of asphodels in his hands.
no subject
Persephone had cried with Orpheus, holding onto him like he was a lost little chick, and her tears had mingled with his. After all, she'd been married to her husband since the world had begun turning and even with all of the bad things that have been between them for so long, she knew that her husband had been hoping that this boy might have passed the test that the God himself could not. She'd held her breath and the boy, and then the flowers had spread slowly, uncertain as the Goddess herself was. But eventually the boy was gone in the night. Now, Our Lady of Ways and Means weren't the sort to allow ghosts around them, but the boy carried the song of the Songbird with him, and with the changing of the wind, she weren't surprised to see him gone.
In Hermes' bar, she'd mourned the loss of the boy and his song even when the wine and fruit and flowers were striving. While Persephone still pours out drinks for the mortals from the round silver flask that she'd stolen from her Daddy so long ago that it's too many greats for the humans to understand, she herself drinks lightly. Oh, she doesn't stop drinking entirely, but slowly the need to keep drinking wears off of her, and she can feel the things that she'd been numbing for so long start to come through. As the summer hits it's height, Persephone had stopped listening for the whistle, and she'd breathed. She'd thought that it'd be relieving, not thinking about that call back down home, it ain't, and some of the things that Persephone had been numbing had been the way that she'd missed that man of hers.
When Persephone missed her man, she'd left behind the swarm of people who were also slowly starting to trust in their gods and their return to how things were supposed to be. Her wandering steps had been slow, her boots off as she walked across the moss that still lingered in the clearing. Here, away from the mortals and their needs, the flowers that bloomed in her wake definitely weren't what they would have wanted, and definitely weren't what they needed. No, these weren't flowers of the Earth in their pure form. Instead she was ringed by asphodel, the white stars leaving the center clear of the moss and the deep black earth that was where the magic of she and her husband met. With her fingers dug through the dirt so much that it coated the inside of the nails and down the beds of them impossibly deep, Persephone cried and yelled and wailed, releasing the pain into the Earth were it belonged. Every few weeks she'd come to that clearing that humans avoided, and she lay on the Earth and remembered, and she missed him.
As she missed him, the flowers color creeped over it like a blush, shifting the asphodel into the crimson shades that a song had birthed.
Cooler air was slower, and mortals added more clothing after they'd brought in the first good and bountiful harvest that they'd had since she couldn't remember when. The Lady answered prayers that she would have numbed herself away from before, blessing those who wished it as the leaves started to shift. Persephone had packed, but this time the things that she'd stashed in the never ending bag of hers weren't intended to help keep her out of her mind this winter. Instead, they were the things that she knew the shades needed, trying to bring them back to themselves still. Of course that question had lingered: how much had changed down in Hadestown? The shades that had followed the boy had been sent back when the girl was, and it's all a god can do is to hope that her husband not coming meaning the changes are gonna stick around this time--at least for a little while.
When Persephone had woken in the little cottage near where her mama's lands had been when she'd been alive, sitting up with a jolt as the shrill sound of the whistle had cut through the first really cold night of fall. The goddess' stomach shifted, flipflopping and rolling in ways that it ain't done in years and it makes her feel ions just melt away from her. Had she been numbing this too? This excitement that Persephone remembers all too well and fondly from the days when she'd fling her tiny form from the top step of the train and into his arms trusting that the massive form of her husband would catch her. Gods above and below she's probably too old for that now, but it sure don't stop the consideration for it from being there.
But her husband ain't on the train, and Persephone needs to steady her hands from reaching for that flask. Fighting ages of memories, the goddess does everything she can not to let the little seed of bitterness take root inside of her chest. Instead she lets it be coated with the nervousness that was from a time when she and the world were younger, and Persephone had worried that somehow during her six months above her husband had forgotten her. Sitting in the car that had so often born the brewing storm of resentment between them, Persephone is restless, and she does something that he normally does when he comes to bring her home to the Underworld. It's time for fall, and things dying to live again and the green of her dress darkens to black once more as Persephone gathers her wild mass of curls into the more settled netting of The Queen of the Underworld, Persephone the Destroyer.
Holding her breath when the train pulls into the station, Persephone can't stop herself from springing up to the door of the car to see the lone mountain of man who is her husband waiting there like he promised. Her smile is soft and warm and bright, and Persephone leaves the car faster than she has in centuries. For a second when she reaches him, she stills. Things ain't entirely fixed, and there's an awkwardness there that the Goddess don't like in herself at all. But then as a mirror of the times that he'd reached to touch her cheek when she'd come down below the wall, Persephone's callused hand cups his the side of his face, her thumb brushing against his cheekbone as she stands on her tiptoes. The warmth of the sun is there in her hand, almost like an offering. Her voice is soft, and the loving note is in there again, awe and pleasure when she speaks: "It's time for fall, Hades. And I've come home."
no subject
The harder he clutched at her, the more she seemed to slip out of his grasp (like wrestling Proteus, that bastard). Seizing her jaw and trying to turn her and force her to look at him only made her gaze more flinty, made her look into the distance over his shoulder rather than meet his eye. Thus, the paradox: to love something, you had to let it go.
And so he'd let her go. His bird flew away and this time, she came home. Persephone scurries off that train like the young girl she hasn't been in eons, and she flies right to his side: her hand reaching out to his face, and he tilts his grizzled bearded jaw into her hand and he exhales into the touch. He feels his tight shoulders shedding a weight and a tension he's been carrying for these six full months, the half of the year when all his foremen and managers and assistants know to give the king a wide berth, avoiding his snappish moods and shorter temper and stormy silences.
But she's back, and she brings daylight with her, and the station already seems the brighter for it. Hades, too, seems to brighten with a near-boyish smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling.
"Welcome home, Persephone," he says, calling her by name rather than wife, and he leans forward and crushes his mouth against hers.