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Letting you all know!!! This is a Very Long Weekend & I am trying to keep my social life up   so I will be out Tonight, Saturday night & MAYBE Sunday? If not Sunday, I will absolutely be on then weekday evenings for threads. Thank you all for your continued patience with me!! Having callbacks & classes & work has been a scheduling disaster.

  The King of the Underworld      does not make surface calls these days. Does not tread upon the ground up above    where the mortals walked,       where his wife brought life, where she brought joy.  It was sacred ground, now-- a place of reverence    where only she was allowed-- it felt all too old,   all too disrespectful to flatten the earth beneath his shoes     & allow old habits to threaten at the edge of his mind. It was early this year, he knows. Far too early-- still the leaves are green,    still the flowers bloom, still does wine flow from cup to cup, the richest in the vineyard,         a plenty for the living. He shouldn’t be here ‘til fall. He shouldn’t have come-- (& yet, hadn’t he been invited? Persephone herself had urged him up above.      A party, perhaps, or someone to meet,            or maybe, even, she wished to spend a day or two like they had    before their union. Alone, in the garden, a man & a woman,             nothing more.) He does not know. He dare not guess. The train behind him lets out a hiss of steam,    & eyes dark as judgement day fall upon a familiar sight,    upon something that nearly knocks the breath clean out of him. A bar. Feet move automatically, dragging him away from his meeting spot,     until he stands just outside, with his hands hung by his sides,     & his breath a quiver upon his lips. The boy. Was he in there?   The boy.... what would he say? (& Hades finds himself unable to walk away.) Fate, perhaps, glued him to the earth.          Or perhaps the Fates themselves, who filled his head with familiar doubts    & agonizing fears.   (It seemed he was in the wrong place at just the wrong time.)

more threads tomorrow-- got a pretty icky tummy ache & it’s throwin me off my game tonight.  <3 <3

Word traveled fast in the underworld, rumors spread like disease-- though these days Hades tried not to think of it that way--  (He was trying, at least,       trying to be a   b e t t e r  m a n. ) He didn’t always succeed.  & yet, yet,    still there where whispers  of a life that had bloomed in the pit of death.    A glass is tipped back, its amber contents drained,     the cup set back down by (strong), callused hands-- (Dark bricks line the god’s left arm,      climbing up, up, up, until they vanished beneath his rolled sleeve--)  He expected no visitors today. Was told of no special arrivals--   But it was the train that changed that.    It was the whistle that took his gaze away from his papers,      it was the screaming of the engine & the shaking of the walls  that made him stand, that had the king of the underworld walking     with an urgency that rushed his step & turned his features to worry-- (He’d wondered for years when the boy would arrive--)     When he would join his lover down below-  & he almost expected him. Expected that tall, awkward singer step off the train,    holding his guitar, holding a flower,     asking where his wife had gone. Or perhaps the king simply hoped it was Persephone, deciding to return early     of her own accord. He did not expect the girl. He did not expect the unfading flower.    The king stands, then, before the train,    as she disembarks,           & stares with eyes wide & confused,     & a hint of anger, urged by the ambrosia on his breath.               “Who the   h e l l   are you?”

A train whistle sounds from somewhere far away-- a distant, echoing scream that signals,      above all else, that the underworld has lost its queen once more.        (Another springtime upon the surface)  The workers are silent in the midst of the moment,      like a head-bowing prayer for safe travel       & safer return.   There’s the heavy chugga-chugga of the train,      & then nothing-- Six months.  Hades inhales, exhales,  leans against the banister with heavy hands & a heavier heart,    & eyes blurry with tears. & then the sound of work.    The sound of thousands  (tearing down a wall.) It’s like a clock, counting down. Six months.    Six months. (How long? How long? How long...?) Over his workers does the  k i n g  man  look,    & upon the songbird does his gaze fall-- & within him, a deep, irrepressible ache.  (He knows what he must do.) Down the stairway with heavy steps does he go,    down the twisted path, until he has come to   h e r,  with his hands clasped before him,      & a look of  grief  upon his brow. “-- Little Songbird--” His voice is weak. Nothing like the man he used to be.  (Hades clears his throat. He averts his gaze. He keeps his head low.) “... Seph’s gone for the spring-- won’t be back ‘til fall.      Been wonderin’--...   Well... I’ve been wonderin if you’re gettin’ along alright.       If... if the changes have helped. If you’re not workin’ so hard these days.”

hokay, now that those are done-- STARTERS WILL BE POSTED THIS AFTERNOON after my ballroom class; I know I will actually be home for extended periods then instead of interrupting it. See you in a few hours!

If we have not interacted together    but you’d like to thread, GIVE THIS POST A LIKE   so I can toss you a bone small starter. (This post is for those that would like to interact with Hades afresh <3 )

 If we have a thread together     that I have not responded to yet-- GIVE THIS POST A LIKE   & I will go ahead & get it going again.  (For anyone who would like to continue their thread with me--    if we have multiple, feel free to DM me & specify which you’d like.      This absolutely can be all of them, no worries <3)

Hey guys-- I know it’s been a   h o t   m i n u t e,   but I think I am at a place where I can begin to write again. Will be making a return back to this blog-- & a couple posts to get started back up.  Thanks for your neverending patience-- you guys are saints <3

okay actually replies are gonna have to wait until tomorrow after rehearsal because these studies are taking longer than I anticipated & I need to focus BUT!! Hades muse is definitely back, so~ I’m excited to be here again! See you all then!

Yeah yeah!! So, mutuals just means that you follow me & I follow you right back.If I’m not following you currently, I’m sorry! However, you’re free to DM me (I think I have that open to everyone??) & just chat with me in general, bc I’d love to get to know you~ & sometimes getting to know people helps me warm up to following blogs for muses I’m not familiar with, etc? If that makes sense ;;Also, my askbox is always open to non-mutuals, I believe, so always feel free to send in memes & just random prompts, even if I don’t follow! I love mail

 Great tears fall like heavy raindrops,  sliding along creases & wrinkles worn into the king’s flesh     by century after century, decade after decade,  ( year after year of the same old grief, of the same old doubts. ) They splash off his chin, upon the paperwork below,     upon his dress shirt, & the cuffs of his sleeves,    ( & when Persephone’s fingers entwine with his own & tug his hands away from his eyes )    they splatter upon her skin, too,   the warm & unending & bitter tears of a broken king.   Against the silence between them, the Underworld seems to moan,     & groan, wailing & crying, itself.   Bending against the weight of grief   of once more losing its queen for yet another agonizing season--   It was not only the king that found himself yearning so strongly for Persephone when she was away,      but the whole of Hadestown seemed, too, to desire her return more than any,    for it was Persephone who stood beside the workers & called them brother,      & had spared them the wrath of Hades for so many years. It was she who could hold the king’s hand & still call the laborers equal.  (& though the workers no longer built the wall, it was still much work to tear it down,)  & the foundries were a greater stress to destroy than they had been to build,   though was that not how it was to destroy old ways, too?    For Hades could feel it inside him-- the old habits, the old thoughts, being torn down,   ripped away from him in long, aching strips, crumbling with little grace inside of him. Brick by brick, it was the two of them that worked to send the wall around his heart tumbling down.   He hears her, then.  He hears her words, & feels her lips against his knuckles,   & suddenly the King feels, too, his own guilt.   A great, heavy blanket of regret    for all the things he has done & the things he has made her withstand. For what a wicked man he was, & what a horrid husband he must be, to have wanted Persephone to cry with him ( for he had, hadn’t he? ),    for wanting her to feel the same pain he had felt all those years.    But it was not fair-- it was not fair on her, to have her sunlight stripped away from her. It was not fair to scream & yell & cry for selfishness’ sake,     in the hopes she would abandon all that made her who she was       for    h i m.   Oh, how easily Hades forgot she was not only the Queen of the Underworld,      but a goddess of spring, of rebirth, all the same.    & the earth deserved her love as much as Hades supposed he did, too. It is her song that drags his gaze back up to meet her,    to see how her own face creases in grief,   & suddenly a great pain finds Hades’ heart & opens his eyes,   & makes him realize that   o h --- it must have been these arguments,     so long & wearying, that have left such audacious marks across her gleaming, sun-kissed skin,     & suddenly Hades wants nothing more than for all this grief to   e n d.    “Persephone,”  Her name finds his lips,   a whispered reverence on his tongue,     not all too different from a mortal worshiping at her shrine,  “My sun, my stars-- You--         I cannot let you do such...           s  u c  h    a    t h i n g ......” From her hold does he pull one hand away, reaching out to cup her cheek within his palm,    ( & oh his heart seems to swell to feel her skin, so soft & warm & welcoming, ) & oh it seems to break all at once to know the choice he must make, the yearly sacrifice that must come,           not for the world above. But for her.  Always for her-- anything for her.     “My darling, my love,” His voice is barely a whisper,    something inaudible to any who care not hear,  as his thumb strokes against her cheek     & quakes under the weight of grief & love all mixed into one,  “My queen-- my dearest Persephone--        My... my heart  b r e a k s  t’see you go, but...   but it would shatter to see you yearn for the surface.    I could not steal that from you, not.....-- not after all we’ve been through & said,              not after our....    our   p r o m i s e.    The sun & the skies & the freedom they bring?               My love, they are yours-- do not desert them for   m e.  I only beg that you not forget your lover down below          when you bring the mortals their spring--”  A simple plea is all it is.     & Yet, how sad. What a cursed lot these two had drawn.