[001] Your childhood home is just powder-white bones

[themuseabandonsyou]

WHO: Orpheus and others
WHERE: Blue Fish Park, the Zodiac apartment building's rooftop garden, the Library of Alexandria
WHEN: Early September
WHAT: You ever go walking the Earth so hard you wander to a different Earth entirely?
WARNINGS: Grief over the recent death of a loved one, parental abandonment issues

I. Arrival

It's near nightfall when a young man stumbles out of a rift in the air in Blue Fish Park, a guitar and a leather backpack slung over his shoulders. This is unremarkable - it's Kaisou, that stuff happens all the time - but as the rift closes behind him with a sound like heavy steel doors slamming shut, he looks straight ahead, trembling, and closes his eyes. Breathes in, breathes out. Listens carefully like he's waiting for something, an expression of desperate hope on his features.

But whatever he's waiting for doesn't happen. He's left standing there in silence for a long moment before he finally accepts it, and falls to his knees, doubling over until he's curled up in the manicured grass of the park, just a little ways off one of the paths. For one beautiful, terrifying, nerve-wracking instant, he'd believed this might have been a second chance. But he's here, and she's not.

Hugging his arms to himself, he starts to sob brokenly, ugly and graceless.

II. Zodiac Apartments (Rooftop Garden)

There's a red carnation bush, in the rooftop garden.

Orpheus stops dead when he sees it. He'd just been exploring the various public parts of the apartment building as he settled in, listlessly wandering from place to place as he tried to get his bearings. The garden is beautiful, and it does lift his spirits a little to see so much plant life thriving after the long winter, but... the carnations.

He thinks about the feeling of singing one into being, of it blooming in his hand out of nothing but love, of the way Eurydice's face lit up as he gave it to her. Before he knows it he's standing by the flower bed, fingertips tracing along the leaves as he hums an old, old melody.

It feels... wrong. Rings hollow in his chest, doesn't fill him with the same swell of power that singing normally does. He pauses, looking stricken, and tries again.

Same thing. Empty. Wrong. But a pair of little warblers flutter down from a nearby rooftop, perching on a nearby bush and looking at him with their beady little bird eyes, watching him intently. He blinks at them, owlishly, but when he doesn't start singing again they start to titter at him in a rough approximation of his song.

"Oh," he says, quietly. "You... want me to keep singing?" Again, the birds repeat the melody. Smiling, tight-lipped and watery-eyed but genuine, Orpheus nods.

"La, la la la la, la la"

III. The Library

He finds his mom. Sort of. Not really. She looks different than he remembers, but that's not unusual. Mister Hermes and Lady Persephone often wear different faces, when the mood strikes them, and he can still recognize them for who they are because he knows them. And he does know this woman. Calliope. The Muse of Epics, first among her sisters, who left their home fifteen years ago and never came back.

But she's not his mother. She explains as much, when she catches notice of him, watching her and trying not to burst into tears again. It's the multiverse, she says. She's Calliope, but not his Calliope. He's Orpheus, but not her Orpheus. The questions that he'd wanted to ask her, that he'd been saving up for over a dozen years now, die on his tongue, and he simply nods mutely as she pulls him into a hug. It's nice, at least, but when she pulls away he's too overwhelmed to handle it any longer and all but bolts from the room, finding himself a secluded reading nook and sitting down to just... think, for a moment.

He doesn't make much noise, but if someone else is looking for a place to read they may stumble across him sitting there with his head in his hands.

Comments

[laminae]

"A nymph?" Fern's totally taken aback by the question, but at least he understands what Orpheus is asking. There are nymphs back home, some water nymphs were even neighbours to the Tree Fort! They were always super cool and super nice, and frankly, he wishes he could say he was a plant nymph. That would make his life a lot simpler.

"Dog, it'd be cool if I was, but I'm not," he explains. "There might be some nymphs around here, I haven't seen any but who knows. I haven't been here for very long. But I'm not one, I'm just made outta grass."

[themuseabandonsyou]

"Oh," says Orpheus, brows furrowing. He hiccups a little, in the aftermath of all the tears, and rubs at his eyes before continuing. "Were you always?"

This is probably a rude question! But Orpheus is entirely innocent as he asks it, and it only occurs to him that maybe that's personal a solid three seconds after the words have left his mouth. He jolts a little, wincing apologetically.

"Um, you don't have to answer that, if you don't want to?"

[laminae]

Well, at least he's being given an out. He hesitates, trying to figure out what he wants to do here. Talking about his whole situation is difficult, especially with a total stranger.

"... No," he answers, shaking his head. "But it's just - really complicated, okay?"

[themuseabandonsyou]

"Okay. I'm sorry, for asking something I maybe shouldn't have."

He gives the boy a sympathetic look, a little concerned but effectively distracted from his own problems by having someone else's to worry about.

"I'm Orpheus. It's, um. It's nice to meet you? Even if I don't really understand what's going on."

[laminae]

"Fern," he replies stiffly. "I'm Fern."

He gives a little nod, at least knowing what it's like to show up here and be completely confused. "It's cool, man. You'll get used to it, eventually. This place is kinda weird but not that weird, and it's pretty easy to just settle in."

[themuseabandonsyou]

"Oh, um, okay," says Orpheus, frowning as he looks around. It all seems very weird to him, but maybe he shouldn't try to make that call right away. He worries his lip slightly, trying to think of how to start sorting through everything going on right now.

"What is this place, anyway? I'm not really sure how I got here? I was just - walking, and I don't think there were any big cities near where I was."

[laminae]

"It's a whole other universe than wherever you were before. And it's a whole big human city, if you don't got those back home," Fern explains. "Uh, if you haven't heard this before, your universe isn't the only one out there. There's tons and tons of 'em - an infinite number, probably, and the labyrinth you can through was like a whole wormhole deal. There's no way home either, so you're stuck here with the rest of us. Maybe forever."