starrycrown:

you don’t need a hammer to kill them.

I Arrive at Ancient Greece

forever-scoutingforfood:

“Man with hands tied by Cupid” Max Eichner

I love it when musicians just keep getting more awesome. What a great album. Check it out if you have any interest in blues or American Folk music.

          —“When she is allowed? You do not allow her to do anything–no one, not even Zeus, allows her to do anything.” Demeter is a force of nature, she is Life, and she is ever-present, ever-constant. Persephone has grown so much already in her short time here, and her voice is no longer petal-soft and yielding. 

If she needs, she can dig her heels into the earth as deep as roots–she has always been stubborn. This will be no exception; she refuses to waver, will not change so quickly her mother could not recognize her tomorrow. 

“My birthright is the earth and all that grows in it.” It is springtime and new growth, saplings sprouting up in the damp soil, grass between her toes. “It is not a pitiful cavern in the belly of the ground, full of useless rocks and governed by a useless king.” 

She doesn’t mean it. She knows, she knows Life cannot be without Death, knows just how much use he has, this place has. But she cannot help the reflex inside of her mind that tells her it is not where she belongs. 

And her gut? Perhaps it’s telling a different story, but she won’t listen. 

See how he does not fill his mouth with stones to spit at her bones? His words blossom like her flowers, almost sweetly spoken despite his being irritated enough to want to give them thorns.

“Since you are not eating,” he says softly and he stands, expecting her to do the same. Servants, shades with hands like ash and mouths made mute (some lack tongues, some are too scared to speak in his presence, or maybe... too scared to speak in HERS.) begin to remove the feast before them.

“Come with me. I want to show you something your mother knows is here. I don’t think she would like you to see it, either.”

He does not argue about who can or can not defy Zeus. There is no more fight in him for such a thing, not at the moment anyway.

           Bones ache , & they ache, sediment rested between each of them, carrying the weight of the past , & each action that’d marked stone , marked time , constant miserable reminders of a history they cannot escape . She supposes, Olympians a YOUNGER breed , birthed from maw & not thought , something more tactile, tangible , attached to their physicality ,

       She reaches for him again , spider webs between his fingers broken ; open to the warmth of spring. 

 “ That death & decay are not the only ways our bodies & souls can find freedom. ” 

         “ Breathe in fruit that blooms elsewhere, for a time. It will make hers all the sweeter when it’s season comes .”

But what if he doesn’t want to taste another mouthful of honeysuckle? A different flavor of blossom and fruit? He once held mint under his tongue and she burnt too much and Persephone drove a heel into the belly of that forbidden thing. It was nothing, it was nothing.

Still, these days are different. He does not seek the taste of something else but he watches for it, the way one notices the change of hummingbirds that arrive to a sweet-water feeder. Sometimes they come whether it is filled or not, as if hoping and expecting they will be fed the way the others have been.

Hades pulls from her sharply, as if stung by her words.

“I’m not sure I am so capable of that, Amora.”

He is hungry and his smile fades but you can see the emptiness between his bones, the way his body wants and wants and wants.

chalcopyrite

          ‘…right. i’ll find a better name then.’ this was much more AWKWARD than how she had always imagined meeting her real father would be when she was YOUNGER, not that she thought she ever would. he wasn’t dark and scary or surrounded in SKULLS like she thought he would.

           she had grown QUIET without realizing it, her eyes staying focused on the ground. ‘i’m glad you aren’t some scary skeleton guy. i was a little WORRIED about it.’

“oh, well--” he hesitated because maybe this wasn’t the best time to say he could very well be. “it just sort of DEPENDS. theatrics, and all that.”

sure, that’s the best way to explain how to sometimes come to people steeped in black cloaks over pale bones, not a single iota of flesh to be seen, teeth clacking and bones singing hollow and ancient. hmmm, what about telling her she might be able to do that too, if she wanted to learn?

“the thing is... i was never really supposed to be able to HAVE children, you see,” this was not helping. “the DEAD are dead, but i guess life finds a way. if you tell anyone i just quoted jeff goldblum from jurassic park i’ll have to disown you.”

A preview from The Musketeers 3x08 Prisoners of War. Lucien Grimaud is getting more and more badass.

rebirth | b.r. 31 of 52 writings            

That is exactly what he expected to hear from someone like Hades. Some sort of ‘if you ask me nicely I might just do it.’ with the sort of air that teemed with warning bells, screams of don’t. Mal had met his fair share people in various positions of power, and he knew better than to make deals with them. Sure, not everyone was the Devil, or as evil as he was purported to be, but that didn’t mean Mal trusted them.

He just looked at Hades for a moment, trying to figure out a way to word what he wanted to say that wouldn’t offend the god of the underworld. He was smart enough to know that was about the worst thing he could do.

“Eh,” he began. Great start, lots of confidence. “Gods sure can pass judgement, that, I think, is what worries me most about that whole idea. Weren’t th’Greeks some’ve th’most dramatic, two-timin’ gods in all’ve history?”

Perfect, no way he could get offended at that.

“weren’t they just?”

always sinking into war ankle deep, blood like oceans and souls wretched and wailing as if they could still feel the ache of battle on their backs. who is he to disagree when he LIVED the truth. compare them to the others, to the rise and fall of kingdoms covered in just as much blood and petty back-stabbing.

you’ll stop noticing differences unless you squint at the language, at the faces, at the heart that beats under the ribs of the beast.

“i suppose you ought to question whether they still are, but to make such a judgement on the whole of a single nation is somewhat foolish, if not completely BIGOTED,” he huffs.

             —She has cultivated a careful persona of the queen she should be, but it all falls away so easily in his hands. There is no kingdom, no sovereignty–particularly here & now, so far into the distant future she had never been able to imagine as a young goddess. 

“I don’t know,” she says, speaks the words with relief. “I’ve never really had a functional example, have I? But I’m happy with not knowing how it’s meant to work.” Because they work how they work, so damn how the rest of the world thinks they should. They are symbiotic rather than parasitic–she thinks it’s no wonder so many marriages work like parasites feeding off one another, if they hang mistletoe in their doorways and kiss under it.

She lowers her eyes to stare at his hands, pulling one into her lap and tracing the lines with delicate fingers. She’s sown this soil already, planted seeds of herself, watched a garden grow. ( Perhaps, though, she’s just changed. Sees a garden where before she could only see emptiness and death.

“Neither of us have.”

If he is very briefly looking upward it is to sight the lightning before it strikes. Not that he thinks Zeus would do such a thing but Hera? Divorced or not...

Hades lets his hand open under the careful pattern she writes invisible against his palm. Do you see how blossoms under your touch? Even death feels his heart rattling against his bones restless when life touches him so sweetly.

“Would you like me to take a different tone? I can fight it if you wish. I don’t mind calling your mother a hag if it’ll make you scream and throw things at me. It’ll be exciting and then I’ll have to do something to make you quiet, hmm...”

A LONG BLACK SPLIT OPENED IN THE EARTH,                                 REVEALING THE ROAD TO HELL.

                                                                           selective  H A D E S  of mythology

           —“In his defense, he did miraculously do a fantastic job raising my husband.” Perhaps Jarilo is who is in spite of Veles, or perhaps he isn’t as good as she wants him to be. His interest waxes and wanes as much as their lives do, after all. 

“This is the best mood I’ll be in all year.” She sighs, running a hand through her hair. As much as she wants to say she has more important things to be doing–she knows that even when summer ends she will have next spring, and the summers after that. The cycle should tire her by now, wear her down to bones, but when she is born anew– “It doesn’t matter if I feel inconvenienced, because I can assure you, you don’t want to deal with me in a couple of months. And you’ll be busy, yourself.” 

She knows, she knows, she knows what will happen but it’s still fresh every year. 

“And your husband is not PEOPLE. He is...” so many things that even Hades’ mouth seems to run dry at the prospect of putting it into words. How do you explain that this son of the dragon, guardian of the cattle of the dead, is more than just spring.

Jarilo’s realm is filled with birds like jewels that sing to you when you reach the gates of the dead. You can swim to see him, if you like, and he will lay there on the beach like a sun drying shell, glinting and gleaming sweetly as a tease to those very birds. He will grow thorns and prick his wife until she draws his blood in return. Sometimes his thorns have names of other women. Sometimes they are hard to see, invisible to every person except the crone desperately searching for them because she knows, she knows, they are there and they will get her because they always do and then what will she do?

Build a home from his bones and live in the cave of his hollowed out heart and wait until it shrinks around her, wait until she is small again and sweet again and ready to find him again.

Jarilo is not people. Marzanna is not people. They are born of a storm and one is raised by a dragon who hordes what he can not have and Hades cannot SAY all of this so he sighs and says, “nevermind, nevermind.”

Sometimes he comes to these other places, to these other shores of death’s pastures, and wonders why the cosmos decided to make his story so much more easier? What did Marzanna ever do to deserve such a cruel fate?

“I need to borrow something from your Uncle. I am not even sure he would allow it, as it were.”