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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.”
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
*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.
no subject
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)