Fiction
3 min
Eurydice & Orpheus
Isabella Fuertes
Eurydice:
It is quiet in my tree.
I am alive, though I am dormant to the world.
And then I hear a sound. And the Earth is suddenly cold and lonely, and the sun seems farther away. I emerged as a human, weeping at this noise, to find this new heartbeat that rings out against the world.
That source of life is but one thing: a man, with a harp in his hands, my heart in the other.
I stared at him, in that forest, singing in a grove.
He sits with his legs crossed; his white toga draped on the grass, soaking up the richness of the Earth, his auburn hair shining in youthful waves.
My love for him is the two steps I take in his direction.
He is silent.
I reach around and cup his cheek.
I sing:
Oh, soft presence. From where have you come?
Oh, soft presence, would you sing for me?
He smiles and sings along.
Our words are weightless as they silently rise and crash with the skies above. Thunder rumbles, rain falls, and we rush to a cave. As we sit, huddled, I feel his warmth now. I hum into his chest as the rain falls, and he tucks his chin in my neck. At some point, we had fallen in love.
At some point, we had forever been in love.
Orpheus:
A wonderful aura lives beside me.
I had been wandering for so long, singing in a world without song; not even the siren's voice could I hear above my own.
But when I hear her heartbeat, I find my music.
I strum and softly hum until my chest feels it is being lifted to the skies.
My heart is beating powerfully in my chest.
I can hardly breathe, like there is a crater in my heart, like a quicksand in my soul is sucking the life out of me.
The woman awakes slowly; I was no longer humming, and so she was no longer sleeping.
I feel on the verge of breaking; then she grabs me by the waist, embracing me, and the two sides of earth that had split seal together as quickly as they came apart.
The clouds disappear; I return to Earth, grounded by the roots she grew in my heart, tethering me to her.
Slowly my heart beat returns to normal.
She smiles quietly, and we go pick berries for breakfast.
The Wedding Day:
The girl and boy run hand in hand through the woods. The girl jumps into a tree, and the boy giggles as she disappears from sight. She reappears, leaping for the next tree, but this time the boy catches her, and they tumble together in the grass. They laugh, and they hum to each other as they lay, and before long the chase is on again.
They reach a river, where the girl scoops up two yellow stones. They wander down the stream, all the while talking quietly about things only they could listen to, and they become not just friends but lovers by the time they reach the spring that fills the stream and the pond beyond, which leads to another lake, then another, then another, and finally an ocean worlds away.
At this water spring, they kiss.
And the heartbeat of the girl and boy jolts to the skies.
But while it flutters for the girl, the boy's heart hits his chest and back so hard, he dies.
Hades:
On a perch on a high branch sat a beautiful creature who sang with a lyre in his hand.
I heard a beautiful noise that filled my heart.
And for the first time in eternity, I slept.
Then, I awoke.
The precious creature was now sitting in the fields of green and lush grass of Elysium, weeping.
I went over and asked, "Child, why do you weep?"
He said, in a voice to break morale, "I weep for the love I left behind".
I promise he could return to the over world someday.
At this, he sings.
Persephone:
I saw my shadow sleeping yesterday.
This morning he tucked a flower in my hair before he left. Everything seemed right in the world, in thanks to whatever wrong righted him.
Then, I heard a knock on the door of our castle.
A mortal appeared before me.
"Mortal, for how do you tread this surface of the afterlife?"
"I walked, I suppose".
I let the curious thing inside.
The curious thing wanted to find her loved one.
And then I heard something odd.
Weeping, so beautiful it could be mistaken as raindrops on the wet Earth, the wind rustling the petals of every blossom of Aphrilis.
The girl walked away into the gloom.
Everything:
The shifting enigma warned the boy.
The wonderful aura sang for him.
The lost soul called for her shadow
The soft presence played his lyre.
The wonderful aura and the soft presence walked home.
The shifting enigma shook in fear, in desperation, in longing.
The lost soul called after her shadow as it disappeared.
The field was empty; the world was silent.
The girl led the way,
The boy sang a tune.
The man walked in vain.
The woman lost her way.
Eurydice saw a light ahead.
Orpheus's chest filled in dread
Hades's appendage reached
Persephone was never seen again.
And emerging from the surface
Eurydice reached back for her lover
To find but empty space between her and the cave floors. And somewhere above, the sun came out. And beneath her feet, the Earth began to hum. And with nowhere to go and no emotion to weep, the girl became a tree.
And below, a shadow gripped the tail of a dove. And crying, he let it leave its dark nest.
And now sits this dove on a tree in a meadow, singing a song of love, tragedy, and death below.
This was an entry for a writing contest held in conjunction with Center for Fiction and The Decameron Project
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