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FIC: Love Like Other Things
I decided to copy ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fulselden and try some prompts on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
31_days. What I really wanted to do was make myself write little short things every day so at least I'd be finishing things, but when I started writing this I realized I really want to write this as a novel, so this is probably bad for me.
Title: Love Like Other Things
Fandom: Hades/Persephone
Length: not quite 500
Rating: everyone
She outgrew love like other things: home and flowers blown, fruit fallen from the vine. Winter came and laid its blanket down. Six seeds within her pulled her underground, with stones.
Fingernails still grow after death, and her skin grew white within those walls. Tresses, lips and lashes grew black with fungus. Like decay, she grew into a queen, all her flowers gone.
Underneath, grain and home curled in sleep. They did not disturb her now, like other things.
She never grew to love him.
Spring came, like other things: fruit and flowers, cereal and chaff. That summer was the first time she heard Orpheus sing. His hair was as bright as a chariot; his mouth was red like fruit. His song sang of earlier days, before the fruit, before the fall.
Persephone looked away. On her knees, she had eaten the seeds, and now she knew. Above the ground was the tomb of childish things. There was no going there again, her belly ripe with rot. She was looking forward to the fall.
That winter, another girl got gone, her eyes gaping and gilded. Persephone professed disinterest (Eurydice was not the first to run away from home), until Orpheus followed to disinter her.
From the first meeting, her husband hated him. Orpheus’s hair and harp sang of spring and other things, when Persephone was bright and prospered still, a blossom. In his efforts to exhume his wife, Orpheus excavated her husband even farther down, dug him right down to the root when there had never been a flower. There there was the seed of a man—resentful, jealous and alone, sick for homes he never had. Orpheus’s eyes were the color of Hades’s brothers’ houses.
"He cast me out," said Hades. "Is this my kingdom? Is this my home?"
“That’s all behind us,” Persephone told her husband. “Now we are grown up.”
Hades never could deny her but one thing.
He let Orpheus go up with but one command, the thing that his wife had told him about going forward. Orpheus disobeyed, and the punishment was that he should grow up and forget her there, the green girl in a cave. She wore the price in her eyes that he paid with his heart.
Underground, Persephone reached from her throne to cup the young girl’s cheek. Her hand was thin and pale like bone, her nails sharp as briars. The girl’s cheek was petal-soft, warm with life and surface-thoughts. Her mouth—trembling, longing, lost—was as ripe as Orpheus’s, full before the rot. The flesh of fruit used to taste like home.
In the Underworld, compassion tasted like ash, distant and quite empty. “It will pass,” Persephone told the child. “We outgrow love, like other things.”
fulselden and try some prompts on 31_days. What I really wanted to do was make myself write little short things every day so at least I'd be finishing things, but when I started writing this I realized I really want to write this as a novel, so this is probably bad for me.Title: Love Like Other Things
Fandom: Hades/Persephone
Length: not quite 500
Rating: everyone
She outgrew love like other things: home and flowers blown, fruit fallen from the vine. Winter came and laid its blanket down. Six seeds within her pulled her underground, with stones.
Fingernails still grow after death, and her skin grew white within those walls. Tresses, lips and lashes grew black with fungus. Like decay, she grew into a queen, all her flowers gone.
Underneath, grain and home curled in sleep. They did not disturb her now, like other things.
She never grew to love him.
Spring came, like other things: fruit and flowers, cereal and chaff. That summer was the first time she heard Orpheus sing. His hair was as bright as a chariot; his mouth was red like fruit. His song sang of earlier days, before the fruit, before the fall.
Persephone looked away. On her knees, she had eaten the seeds, and now she knew. Above the ground was the tomb of childish things. There was no going there again, her belly ripe with rot. She was looking forward to the fall.
That winter, another girl got gone, her eyes gaping and gilded. Persephone professed disinterest (Eurydice was not the first to run away from home), until Orpheus followed to disinter her.
From the first meeting, her husband hated him. Orpheus’s hair and harp sang of spring and other things, when Persephone was bright and prospered still, a blossom. In his efforts to exhume his wife, Orpheus excavated her husband even farther down, dug him right down to the root when there had never been a flower. There there was the seed of a man—resentful, jealous and alone, sick for homes he never had. Orpheus’s eyes were the color of Hades’s brothers’ houses.
"He cast me out," said Hades. "Is this my kingdom? Is this my home?"
“That’s all behind us,” Persephone told her husband. “Now we are grown up.”
Hades never could deny her but one thing.
He let Orpheus go up with but one command, the thing that his wife had told him about going forward. Orpheus disobeyed, and the punishment was that he should grow up and forget her there, the green girl in a cave. She wore the price in her eyes that he paid with his heart.
Underground, Persephone reached from her throne to cup the young girl’s cheek. Her hand was thin and pale like bone, her nails sharp as briars. The girl’s cheek was petal-soft, warm with life and surface-thoughts. Her mouth—trembling, longing, lost—was as ripe as Orpheus’s, full before the rot. The flesh of fruit used to taste like home.
In the Underworld, compassion tasted like ash, distant and quite empty. “It will pass,” Persephone told the child. “We outgrow love, like other things.”
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I love the almost time-lapse picture of Persephone growing into decay; the way she still feels it inside her while watching blue-eyed Orpheus in the sun, Euridice's gaping and gilded eyes.
And the bitter version of growing up - as opposed to ripening, her mother's area of expertise - invoked by Persephone. Not to mention the way that, as you frame it, it's Persephone who ends up with Euridice.
And your Hades, with his resentment and sickly indulgence, seems just right to me.
On her knees, she had eaten the seeds, and now she knew.
Worst. Uncle. Ever.
Though ... actually, he has quite some competition in Greek myth.
Anyway, spectacular and totally seasonal! *Has just sorted through vast load of field-picked mushrooms; feels familiar with rot.*
And I would read this as a novel like a shot! 31_days is useful for me as a training-wheels intro to this 'writing fiction' business, but I would love to see this spiral out into something non-prompt-constrained.
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Thank you!
I have this idea for a young adult novel about Persephone. I say young adult, because I generally think in those terms. Anyway, there's a story that takes place before recorded time, the old gods and goddesses type retelling. Then there's a Persephone stuck in, oh, let's make it 1850s England? And then there's a Persephone in modern-time America. It's always the same Hades--he just lives on and on--but Persephone is reincarnated versions of herself. And the Victorian story is about Persephone wanting escape and instead of being abducted she is seduced by A Dark Stranger, and the modern story is about Persephone wanting independence and going off with Mr. Bad as a fuck-you to her mom. And these three stories are interwoven, somehow, and by the end, history has learned something about Womanhood.
I looooove your 31_days products. I'm glad it exists because you write such gorgeous things.
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I have a rec for you: Dare to Bake a Peach. It's Labyrinth fic. Yep, that Labyrinth, the David Bowie one. It has a take on Persephone that I really love.
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And it would work wonderfully in a (very) vaguely Orlando-ish way about history and Womanhood - and also as a YA book, because Persephone herself is I guess an example, perhaps the example, of the cost of youth and spring.
[Though, sidenote - I always think we need a term that says more about this kind of book than 'young adult' does - I know I always found it rather mealy mouthed when I was in the right age range because I was very intent on being a teenager, not a mini adult. And now it makes me feel aged! Plus, so much exciting stuff is happening under the YA rubric, it seems a pity to have such a specific label attached? But it is useful and I do feel I know just what it means, so, hmm.]
BUT ANYWAY, I would very much love to read this book!
And, oh man, you enjoy my 31_days stuff? *__* Thank you so much! That means a lot coming from you.
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And you are even now giving me ideas! Thanks, I'm glad the idea works for you.
t would work wonderfully in a (very) vaguely Orlando-ish way about history and Womanhood
Again, glad you think so. I hadn't thought about Orlando in connection with it, but yes, that's what I'm going for.
Re: YA. The main reason I resent that term for the reason you state about the exciting stuff happening in the name of YA. I feel like this is where all the stories went. There is some very good adult contemporary literature. But most of it is schlock. Even the stuff that's supposed to be all meaningful rarely has stories I can get into with characters I really care about. I feel that even though a bunch of YA is outrageously cracktastic at least the stories are really innovative and new.
When I was a young adult I was not even aware of the term young adult. I was aware of a genre of books that was about people in high school and their melodramas and problems and I was not interested. What I wanted was YA fantasy and sci fi, and the only YA fantasy I knew of was Lloyd Alexander, and I wanted less epic and more fairytale-ish in those days, anyway. (Well, I still want more fairytale, but epic is okay. Or Romance, selden :o)
But I feel like the genre of YA fantasy has really exploded since Harry Potter, and I also feel like YA fantasy is not a sub-genre of YA now' it's just . . . there. Most of YA seems to be fantasy these days, when I look at the bookshelves . . . I guess that was Twilight. But I'm seeing a lot less of the highschool-drama type stories. I mean, they're ALL highschool dramas, but they're hs dramas with high adventure and magic or time travel or some kind of supernatural/fantastic element.
But one thing that's cool with what's happening with YA, from what I can see (not knowing much about it) is that fantasy isn't this separate, no-good thing that gets shunted to a corner, as in contemporary lit (unless it's popular. Seriously, we're not going to put The Road in the sci-fi section because it's well-written and a best seller. WTF? And those whom you try to let know that it IS sci-fi and the speculative aspect is all sci fi is think you're crazy and that you need to get back to your space ships). Is this happening YA because YA shelves are just smaller? Or there's just more YA fantasy being written?
Which reminds me, there needs to be more YA sci fi. I've been meaning to write THE NEW GREAT YA SCI FI, but . . . things like Avatar happen to me and then I can't think straight.
But yeah. I do know what YA means. Kind of.
I adore all your writing. You'd make me jealous, except you are so completely removed from what I am able to do that I just kind of drool a lot. I have to read your stuff slow though because it makes my noggin go into hyper-drive with cross-connections and THOUGHTS. I sent my housemate, who is awesome, a link to your Little Mermaid poem. She liked it a lot.
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I feel like this is where all the stories went
Exactly – I mean, I love contemporary Literature-literature as well, deeply. But a lot of the people I like are often skating on the edge of writing essays or poetry or some combination of the two. Which is great, and its own thing. But it doesn’t give you a hit of story. And then there is all the stuff which is as you say schlock. (My personal bête noire: heart-wrenching family sagas with sepia photographs on the cover where everyone acts as though they’re stuck in a watercolour).
Or Romance, selden :o)
Ahahaha, oh man, you not only read my flaily meta but pointed out that my name is (pretentiously enough!) olde words. Heh! And, hm, thinking about it, I’m not sure that I ever entirely stopped reading YA stuff – I mean, nothing was ever going to stop me reading the next Diana Wynne Jones or Philip Pullman, even at my seventeen-year-old stroppiest. But I was put off a lot of good stuff that came out in the immediate wake of Harry Potter, I think. Although even back then I was very bullish about still reading children’s literature, so I’m not sure why the YA handle was such a hang-up for me!
But, yes, so much word when it comes to the way fantasy has just bled out across all of YA, to be randomly gory about things. I have an uneasy feeling that this has something to do, especially post-Twilight, with the idea that fantasy, or urban fantasy, is for girls (I mean, Steph Swainson writes fantasy and China Mieville writes SF? Really, publishing world??) and that YA is I imagine largely a girl’s market. But I can’t really bring myself to complain, because the queasiness when it comes to labelling Serious Authors as SF or fantasy is something that annoys me immensely. And as you say the fact that the shelves are just smaller probably has something to do with it!
I've been meaning to write THE NEW GREAT YA SCI FI
OH YES PLEASE. I mean, not to pressure you or anything, and I’m not sure I could choose that over Persephone, but yes, that is so very much needed and you would do it wonderfully.
Speaking of which – I make you jealous?! Oh my goodness, I found your lj and have been flipping back through your fic and it is gorgeous: I love your Jossverse pieces so much. That Angel character study! The Buffy/ Connor! The devastating Connor/Angel! I feel so odd commenting on old entries, but, yes, THOUGHTS. And also delight, because gorgeous is the right word. Also, if your housemate is
ETA: aaaand,
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And--I don't know how you depressed me and made me smile, all at once with this fic, but you did. Love it.
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I'm glad you like the idea, too. I've been wanting to write it for a while. Hopefully one day I will!
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Wow.
Another great line.
And I like this.
What a grim little tale. I started to rail at the last line, and say, "No! No we don't! We hold onto passion until our dying breaths!" and then I went, "....oh, right."
Ash makes good fertilizer?
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...I can't believe you didn't take issue with the disinter line. It was a step too far, Joy, too far. But seeing comments I wonder whether I should've made the "price in her eyes" line a bit more obvious.
Thanks again for reading!
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You should write that novel.
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I may try it for NaNoWriMo.
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Awesome, awesome. If you have more, I will be so happy to read it.
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Winter came and laid its blanket down. Six seeds within her pulled her underground, with stones.
I think you might be the one. :D
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Persephone professed disinterest (Eurydice was not the first to run away from home), until Orpheus followed to disinter her.
That's one of the cleverest play on words I've read in ages.
Orpheus’s eyes were the color of Hades’s brothers’ houses.
Oh, very nice.
I always felt so sorry for Persephone - she seemed resigned to such a dreary fate. Lovely story.
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hahahaha. I think the word play in that sentence was WAY too much, but once I thought of it I couldn't kill my darling.
My favorite book of poetry ever is called Mother Love, by Rita Dove. All the poems are about the Persephone abduction story, and there's an interesting duality Dove brings to Persephone: sometimes she's an innocent, abducted and raped. Sometimes she is a girl trying to explore herself and make choices independently of her mother--seduced by the bad boys, yes, but also maneuvering herself into a position in which she will one day rule.
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By you.
On Persephone.
Dear, this just made up for all the times I wished you continued 'Another One...'. I'd be c/p'ing the whole thing if I wanted to quote my favorites, but I loved the 'outgrowing' theme through it all, and how could I have forgotten that the only reason Hades allowed Orpheus a chance to leave with his wife was because Persephone asked? I clearly need to brush up my myths!
THANK YOU.
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I think in some versions of the myth, both Hades and Persephone are charmed by Orpheus's music, but I think mostly it is Persephone and she asks Hades to let Eurydice go. Which . . . well. The foursome potential kind of BLOWS MY MIND. What if Hades is jealous of Orpheus? What if Persephone sorta has a crush on Orpheus? What if Persephone sees Eurydice as herself before, you know, things happened?
Anywho, thank you, and you're welcome.
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*wistful smile* A girl can hope. :)
The foursome potential kind of BLOWS MY MIND
It never crossed mine, but sweetie. Run with the idea. New versions of Greek mythology are always good, and if you're writing it I'm sure it'll be gorgeus. Myself, for some reason, I've always felt bad for Hades. Gods are always so rash and temperamental, of course he'd kidnap her. But once she eats the fruit, he's as stuck with her as she is stuck in his realm - and here's the rub, he still loves her through it all.
Yeah... I was loving the bad boys when I was seven. Probably wasn't the appropiate age to be reading Greek myths, either... but when would that be? Olympus is your regular XXX fiction work, tsk.
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I also like to think he'd didn't abduct Persephone because he was rash, but because he's a cold, selfish, calculating bastard who believes he deserves just one drop of sunshine in his dark and lonely world. But then when he finally has her, he thinks he doesn't deserve her . . . he's just too weak to give her up. I never saw him as stuck with her, though I suppose that depends on how the eating the seeds thing works.
But although I feel sorry for him, the general idea is that he rapes Persephone and keeps her prisoner while she starves herself to death, sooooo . . . I guess in the end I feel more sorry for her ;o)
Yeah, Olympus is fucking twisted. I mean, Hades is Persephone's uncle!
And thank you for your kind compliments :o)