Work Text:
***
I see the sun shine through your hair, splitting into rays divine
Cast across a dusk at dawn, in the distance receding storm clouds approach
We are beckoned by a moonless tide ebbing to its highest point
In this place where all life’s directions converge
For us, it is almost time
I know your many names, and titles
Come this way, Hades, take my hand, follow
As I laugh at fate’s sense of humor
In life I refused the call to keep the underworld, in favor of keeping you
The duty I always had
I understand now this is what it was meant to be
I accept it with jubilation, let me lead you, come with me
Let us walk along the shore
Where the land meats the sea, the line between
Waves washing over our feet, our footprints sink, fill in, disappear
Stolen back as if we had never passed through that space and time at all
But on we go, arm in arm, step by step
This rhythm is familiar to us, though it has not been played in years beyond counting
You lift your head to catch the wind, and remark
How it tastes not of salt but aether spray on our tongues, how it carries no scent of palms and their sweet fruit
Nothing can grow here
Only flow
In and out, up and down
You keep pace with me
Telling me of your joys and triumphs, just as you used to in our home together
But also your despairs disappointments devastations desolations, the wreckage, falling through your limbs spilling through your arms like so much brackish water, uncarryable
I help you tie them to a stone
And drop them into the depths one by one
To their eternal rest neath these dark waters, respects paid, laid in their proper grave
It’s getting harder to hold on, the time draws near
Everlasting golden hour, it glints in your eyes, ah was there ever anything else but this?
I bask in your glow
Oh just a little longer
Play with me
Splash and skip, kick the waves, hear your laughter, offer it up in death in ways you could not in life, I join you in this splendid chorus
Now
I take your hand and pull, I feel your moment’s hesitation
I will not turn away from my duty, this honor
Believe, and walk in faith with me, step from the boundless horizon
Further in we press, gentle undertow, bend our limbs, swirling up up up and around, wandering tendrils, to coax memories of caresses
Till our last footing is lost and it lifts us off and carries us, like a doting parent, to our needed rest
And so we curl around each other, let the mantle pull over
And look down in wonder upon a starry sky
It was our special knowledge, to hold for our people, to know what comes next:
The layers of the self, from outermost to inner, must float free. We need not think, only let it be
Garments, fashioned from gift of creature’s aether, unravel again, completing nature’s exchange
And we return to the bare state of our birth
As recollections deeper within come untethered and mingle
We remember being born, beginnings fusing into ends, meeting, loving, friends, suffering
Holding each other, one the other’s cradle
You {call out} soundlessly to me and this time your voice joins the flow and is whisked away, another layer dissolved
[Hold tight to me]
We give up another part of ourselves, and another, and another, making sacred offering of our aether
[I shall not be afraid]
To the star which keeps us
[Hold on]
And weave together what is yet left, more closely than our forgotten bodies once could imagine
It was always one whole
[Hold tight]
[Hold no-breath]
To go under
All that is left, the concept of {your hand}, entwined in the [idea of mine]
One thought, one feeling, one word, {yours} and [mine]
{[Our name]}
[I am not afraid]
[The lips I do not have begin to tremble]
{[We are not afraid]}
{[We know our name]}{[we need only feel it]}
{[Love]}
{[Love]}
{[Love]}
{[Unto the end]}