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It’s lonely down here. The world of the dead is a silent place, one where you have to make your own noise, where there aren’t many good conversationalists and absolutely no musicians—Eurydice has checked.
She’s looked for a lot of things in Asphodel, and most of her searches have been fruitless. Once upon a time, it was a field, or so she’s been told. A place that was dull, but that was enough. Those times are long gone, and now the whole damned area is covered in more danger than you can shake a stick at. The lava is bad enough, but on top of that most of the beings that inhabit the realm are creatures that only care about killing whoever they think might be an invader, and that leaves Eurydice with few options for making friends.
You’d think the eternity of the afterlife would be a chance for people to get together, give each other advice, maybe laugh a bit. Instead, anyone who still has their head screwed on in the right direction likes to keep to themselves.
(To avoid the monsters, she supposes. Fair enough.)
But Eurydice does what she can to make a place for herself even in the unwelcoming underworld, and she likes to think she’s done a pretty good job. So far she’s managed a small house, one that offers some degree of safety, with a bed (though she doesn’t need sleep, it’s good to have the option) and a kitchen.
She also doesn’t need to eat, now that she’s dead. The kitchen is still the most important part.
Asphodel doesn’t have days or nights, and there’s no need to worry about fire hazards because the whole damn place already is one, so she may as well be cooking something at all times. It fills the hours, and she has plenty of those now. She used to joke that if she could, she’d spend ever waking moment cooking, singing, or both at the same time.
Orpheus always found it funny when she said that. If only he could see her now.
She misses him, sometimes, when she adds ginger to the soup and laughs to herself, remembering his delicate tongue, or tries to doze off, distracted by memories of the way he used to hold her. Once upon a time he’d filled her days with laughter, her nights with comfort, and her whole life with glorious sounds.
Gods, she misses having someone to talk to.
Even he had thought it was odd, the first time she told him how much she enjoyed living among humans, how lively their lives were.
“I’m glad, but— isn’t that funny?” he (young, tan, joyous) had asked.
“What about it?”
“Most nymphs live in nature. You did, in the woods, until we met. Doesn’t it get too noisy for you?”
Eurydice had laughed. Orphy always made her laugh. Nothing about the woods was silent, and her people had lived among their own familiar song. The rabbits rusted in bushes; the leaves budded, grew, fell; the thunder rumbled from far away as the air began to smell of petrichor; and all had their own sort of music.
Her days then were spent wrapped in a different kind of music: his music. Their music. It was different, and it was lively, and it was just right.
It suited her to fall in love with a musician, it really did. Almost as hard as losing him—of being lost by him, truly—was no longer having a partner to duet with. Literally and figuratively both.
It takes a long time before anyone bothers to visit, and Eurydice welcomes Hades’ boy with open arms when he does start to visit. She likes him: he’s polite, cheerful, and his goals are nothing to sneeze at. Good kid. Too bad he can’t stick around for longer, but hey, she can’t exactly discourage someone from leaving the underworld.
She’ll find someone one day to sing along with her, no doubt. Until then, she does what she always has: create her own happiness, and make her own music. Nobody ever regretted turning their life into song, and she has a sneaking suspicion the same thing is true in the afterlife.
The next visitor doesn’t use the door. Fair enough; there isn’t one in the first place. But at least Zagreus politely enters doing that god-dash he does. This new visitor comes via air, spooking Eurydice more than she has been in quite some time.
One minute, she’s seated cross-legged on the floor, scribbling some lyric ideas onto a spare piece of parchment. Then there’s the flutter of wings above her, and when she turns to look she sees a svelte figure descending from above, seemingly shrouded in darkness even though the lighting here is just fine. It’s as if the visitor is bringing the dark with her as it narrowly misses dipping its feet into the pot of soup that cooks away on the hearth.
She’s not one to back away from a challenge, and so Eurydice scrambles to her feet and shakes out her branches in some attempt to make herself look bigger, much like a cornered cat is inclined to do. “Do you mind?” she asks, looking up at the visitor with crossed arms.
The intruder’s eyes meet hers, and in that instant Eurydice is tempted to flee, though she stands firm. It’s a woman, or else a she-beast of some sort: long hair, long nails, and some semblance of curves. But she’s neither human nor nymph, though her form is similar: she’s too thin, practically skin and bones. Her eyes are sunken in, cloaked in shadows darker than night. The whip she carries glows with a faint green, and she snaps it as she descends.
She takes a step toward Eurydice, than another—shaky steps, as though she isn’t quite used to walking on solid ground. Her presence, her very being seems inhuman, or maybe beyond humanity.
There are places to run and hide, if Eurydice decides to try. But she does not; it feels like her feet are glued to the floor.
The visitor surveys the room, taking it in through her emotionless, hollow eyes. Eurydice doesn’t need approval from anyone but herself, but she can’t avoid wondering what the other woman might see through those eyes. To her, is this pace a comforting home, or is such a thing beyond her? She seems completely out of place in this cozy little room, and so the sight of her within its walls is more amusing than it is frightening.
“Murderrrr?” the woman asks. Her voice is warped, inhuman—and yet it somehow sounds at least twice as confused as Eurydice is. She frowns, slumps her shoulders. “Mrrrr...”
And at that, all Eurydice can do is burst out laughing. Of all the odd things that could happen in the underworld—and there are a lot of those—the one she never expected was to be visited by a mildly disappointed woman who looks like she could find a way to kill Eurydice again, but doesn’t particularly want to.
The woman is not amused. “Murderer!” She says, perhaps with some amount of accusation, but she sounds annoyed more annoyed than anything else.
“You have the wrong person, hon. Murderers are downstairs.”
“Rrrr... murderrr...”
Eurydice points over her shoulder at the pots on the stove, bubbling away as always. “Not even there. I’m a nymph, see? Couldn’t eat meat even if I wanted to, not with my sensitive stomach.”
With a deep sigh, the woman slumps her shoulders. She doesn’t quite drop her whip, but her grip on it seems to loosen, and her stance relaxes.
Now that she has a moment to think it over, there’s only one thing that the woman can be: a god. The underworld has more than its fair share of them running around, though most of them stay out of the dead’s business and none of them have seemed particularly interested in Eurydice. Mostly, they’re here to sort the dead or to punish the unfortunate souls in Tartarus, and the woman’s whip and her apparent fascination with murder suggest that she is concerned with the latter.
“Hope it’s not rude to ask, but are you one of the furies?” Eurydice asks.
“Mmmr.”
Eurydice takes it as a yes. Can this gal speak at all, other than in accusations?
She’s never been introduced to the furies formally, but she’s just about as familiar with them as anyone else is. Megaera, she knows, concentrates her wrath on oathbreakers, and Alecto on those with poor morals. Murder is the domain of...
Eurydice snaps her fingers. “Tisiphone, yeah?”
The fury perks up visibly at the sound of the name, which seems like adequate enough confirmation.
“You’re definitely in the wrong place, hon. I know it doesn’t look it right now, but we’re in Asphodel,” Eurydice continues, pointing in what she’s pretty sure is the direction out. “But just keep on walking, or flying, and you’ll get there eventually. How’d you get lost all the way out here?”
“Mmmm.... murderer,” Tisiphone responds.
“Huh. Not much to go on.”
Tisiphone shrugs, as if to say and what do you want me to do about it, lady? It’s an awkward way to communicate, to be sure, but Eurydice can work with it. She sure has enough spare time for it.
“Well, anyway! You can call me Eurydice if you can manage it, or whatever you want if you can’t. Maybe your boss man told you about me during a meeting or something? Married to a wily little musician who almost snuck me out of here, once upon a time.
“Mmmmrrr,” Tisiphone says, perhaps a faint sound of recognition.
“No hard feelings, I hope! This place isn’t half-bad once you get settled in, and the husband is long-gone. Long story, but—” Eurydice shrugs. “Separated, you know how it is. Nothing good lasts forever. If I spend the rest of my afterlife missing him that’ll be a whole long time to be lonely.”
Tisiphone nods, and Eurydice can’t help but wonder if she does know how it is.
“Hades’ kid has been talking to him, apparently,” Eurydice continues. “You know Zagreus?”
At the name, Tisiphone leaps up, spreading her one wing wide and knocking a bowl off of the counter. A sound somewhere between a scream and a hiss rumbles from deep in her throat. “Zzzz-zagreusss! Murderer!”
Eurydice dives in an attempt to catch the bowl, and glares at Tisiphone when it clatters to the ground and sends porridge flying. “Hey!” she scolds as streaks of pink decorate the floor. “Do that outside, I’m keeping a clean kitchen here.”
“Zagreeeus!”
“You do know the kid, huh? Maybe not very well, though—he only murders things that are trying to kill him first, far as I can tell.”
“Mrrrmmmrrrduer...”
“Calm down!” Eurydice tosses her a damp rag. “And clean up.”
She’s half-expecting Tisiphone to throw it in her face and fly off to tell Hades to give her a special place in Tartarus. Instead, Tisiphone catches the rag and looks at it, tilting her head. Like she’s never been asked to clean before—which, to be fair, she probably hasn’t.
Eurydice ends up watching in amusement as Tisiphone does her best to wipe up what she’s spilled. She isn’t very good at it, and mostly just wipes the porridge around the stone floor, but the effort seems to be there. That counts for a lot.
It’s almost cute. Huh.
Cuter still is when Tisiphone, crouched on the floor, looks up at her with an expression that could almost be described as puppy-dog eyes.
Are all the furies like this around people they aren’t supposed to be torturing, or is this one special?
Tisiphone comes back.
It must have been a mistake the first time she landed in Asphodel, though she was never exactly able to explain to Eurydice what happened. There’s little chance that the second time is a coincidence—Asphodel is constantly shifting, like it has a will of its own, and you really have to be looking for a person to find them more than once.
Let alone thrice, four times, and beyond. But Tisiphone does, for some reason.
Most people would be terrified to see her at their door, with her sickly grey skin and her sunken eyes. But Eurydice managed to get used to humans and their squishy, delicate flesh, and Tisiphone isn’t really that much stranger. There’s something almost elegant about the fury, and the way she embodies the underworld with her very form. She is to death as Eurydice herself is to the trees.
Tisiphone isn’t much for conversation, so she doesn’t do a lot ot solve Eurydice’s whole too-quiet problem, technically, but she does what she can. She’s an enthusiastic eater, too, much to Eurydice’s surprise—gods can eat, she knows, but Tisiphone seemed at first like she might think she was above it. Not true: she’ll scarf down Eurydice’s cooking just about as fast as she can manage, and sometimes almost choke on it.
Tisiphone’s friends call her Tis, Eurydice has learned. She used the nickname herself once and got a genuine smile in response. The dry skin stretched over bone was quite a sight to behold, and she’d like to see it again.
Guess the life Eurydice lived must have been pretty satisfactory to the gods, if the furies like her.
“Your sisters ever come around here, or just you?”
Tisiphone makes a sound that’s not quite a hiss. It’s a good sound, Eurydice has learned; the bad ones are definitely hisses. Tis means “no”, but in a polite way.
“That’s too bad, tell them they’re welcome to swing by. It gets lonely here, you know? I guess they’re busy in Tartarus. Glad you find the time to come visit! You’re a nice girl, you know that, Tis?” Eurydice grins. “Although the whole torturing-souls-for-eternity is a bit of a turnoff, admittedly.”
“Murr... murderers!” Tisiphone objects.
“I get it, I do, but people change, yeah? Just think about it, that’s all I ask.”
“Murdereeeer...”
“There’s better things to do with your time. Here, let me put you to work and I’ll show you. You’ve eaten enough of my food, you clearly enjoy it, so why not learn a little bit about how to do it yourself?”
Allowing Tis a new weapon might seem like a case of poor judgment at best, but there’s enough of a rapport between them now that it’s probably safe, so Eurydice gestures to her cutting board, a freshly sharped knife and a few fruits sitting beside it.
Tisiphone looks at the board, then back at Eurydice. “Mmmm... murder?”
“Give it a try!”
Eurydice watches with some amusement as Tis approaches the counter, more steady on her feet than she once was now that she’s gotten used to navigating around the place without flying. The fury has turned out to be surprisingly obedient: she tries not to unfurl her wing in the house anymore, usually chews with her mouth closed, and even listens to Eurydice’s requests most of the time.
There’s something charming about the way Tis picks up the knife with such care and examines it. She turns it slowly in her hand, careful not to touch the blade, as though she needs to see it at every angle before she can make her first cut. Taking it all in, or admiring it? Eurydice isn’t sure.
Well, nothing’s going to get done standing around like this, so Eurydice grabs a pomegranate from the counter and places it on the cutting board with a thump. Tisiphone eyes it suspiciously.
“You’ve had these before, remember? In the porridge. And they’re just laying around here sometimes. Can’t say I know why.”
“Mmmmr,” Tisiphone confirms. Maybe she knows why, though she won’t be able to explain it.
“It’s kind of a process to cut them, but it’s worth learning. Food tastes good, but accomplishment tastes even bett— hey, no!”
Tisiphone has already put the knife down and is experimentally licking the surface of the fruit. Eurydice can’t help but think of Hades’ kid and his own peculiar taste in food when she does. Does gods not needing to eat mean that they all just... put things in their mouths without thinking?
“Back on the cutting board, Tis.”
She complies.
“All right, now pick up the knife. You only want to cut through the skin and try not to break the seeds, so try a light touch, and go harder if you need to. Start with the top of it, and cut a circle around the part that sticks out.”
Tisiphone tries her best: she lies the pomegranate on the side, and holds the knife above it, then chops down. But it’s clear that she barely understands how the tool works, much less how to use it well, and all she ends up doing is lodging the pointy end into the fruit.
“Well,” says Eurydice, “Orphy wasn’t much different when we first met. I’ve taught one person to cook, I’m sure I can manage a second one.”
“Rrrr... mrr,” Tisiphone replies.
She could show Tis by example, and have her copy, but... maybe there’s a better way. Orpheus certainly preferred a different technique, the one that left him beet-red all the way to his ears while she pretended she didn’t know why.
How Tisiphone would react to that one is unclear. It’s worth a try.
So she stands behind Tisiphone, her chest against Tis’ back, her arms wrapped around the fury.
Eurydice finds herself wondering if chthonic gods can blush, if Tis will also lose control of her hands and the beating of her heart as Eurydice guides her hands. Or do gods, seduced, act differently from humans?
The fury makes a small “ah!” sound as together, they take the knife in hand. That one’s new. Maybe this will be easier than expected.
“Cute...” Eurydice mumbles.
“Mmmmrr.”
It’s a bit awkward of a process from there, but as long as they stay pressed close, it’s doable, and soon Eurydice has guided Tisiphone’s hands enough to make the appropriate cuts into the skin of the pomegranate. The whole thing ends up being messier than Eurydice normally is, and sticky juice covers both of their hands, but it’s a job done well enough.
“Now we just need to get all these seeds into a bowl,” Eurydice says, pleased. She could pull away from Tisiphone, and make it easier. She doesn’t want to. “Tis, can you grab that one?”
Tisiphone does not speak, and though she sets the knife down she makes no move to get the bowl.
“Tis?”
“Mmm.”
Now it’s Tisiphone that guides Eurydice’s hands, and she moves them to encircle her waist. “Eurrrr... dice,” she says, and the nymph just about faints from the shock of it.
“Have you been practicing that?” Eurydice says; whispers, really, since they’re so close to each other.
“Mmmmrrr.”
The dead aren’t warm, and neither are the gods of the underworld, apparently, but something tender spreads in Eurydice’s chest as she holds Tisiphone close. There was something else that happened when she taught Orphy this, after the fruit was chopped to satisfaction.
Tisiphone, Eurydice thinks, would enjoy that part, too.
When their lips meet, her next thought is gods, it’s been so long.
Tis relaxes into her arms, and for as odd of a situation as this really is, a dead nymph and a fury embracing, it feels so right. Her lips against Eurydice’s are rough and chapped, but the strange sensation of skin stretched across bone is sunsual in its own way. It’s all too easy to imagine drinking Tis in for hours on end, and the greatest thrill of it is that she can, that Tisiphone always has time for Eurydice and never finds excuses to leave. That’s a rare find, around here.
But the position is awkward, and soon enough Tis has to pull away, sighing against Eurydice’s lips when they part. Tis shifts her body so that they’re face to face, her sunken eyes haunting and empty but hungry.
Eurydice’s mind races with the possibilities of how Tis might make love. Would she be shy, like how she was when they cut the now-forgotten fruit? Or would she find a dark fire burning within Tisiphone, and see the same passion she uses to punish instead used for lovemaking?
Tisiphone takes one long, bony finger, still sticky with juice, and meets Eurydice’s lips with it. It tastes like a familiar sweetness and an unknown darkness all at once. It’s a lot like dying again, like the feeling of almost escaping death itself until your wonderful, foolish love makes a single foolish mistake.
The fury hisses, and Eurydice gasps with delight.
Well, she’s never had conventional taste in lovers.