Entry tags:

hades, hecate

if I close my eyes forever
Who: Obed [Hades] and Kate [Hecate]
What: Hades and Hecate meet Kate’s grandfather. Obed and Kate meet up on the Finnish floor.
Where: Underworld, then the 7th floor of Pax
When: Monday, April 17 night, then Tuesday, April 18 morning



Hecate stirred as if from a deep reverie. The ever-burning flames of her torches still glowed, but she didn’t know how much time had passed while she sat there in one of the rooms of the Underworld’s palace. A presence had disturbed her, and she looked around idly to see what it was.

A little man, clearly elderly when he had died, was standing a few feet from her, looking around curiously. His gaze seemed to focus on objects for only a moment before unfocusing again and moving on to something else. He looked at her. “Kate?” he asked, eyes scrunching, and then his attention roamed elsewhere.

Hecate’s interest piqued, and she sat up straighter in her chair, but before she could respond or do anything, she sensed another presence enter the room behind her. It drew closer, until at last it loomed over her, casting a shadow that covered her seat and the cold floor beyond.

"Why does he call you this?" Hades asked. "He speaks as if he is familiar with you. It is inappropriate."

For a long moment the goddess watched the old man, who was examining the ivy around one of the stone bricks in the wall. “I know him,” she finally replied, slowly, images and memories not her own filling her head. “Or, rather, my host knows him. He is her grandfather.” She continued to study the man, not fighting the feelings of warmth and love that enveloped her.

Hades did not appear impressed. "And what is that to you?" He studied her face, his eyes like chips of ice set in pale marble. "I trust you will treat him no differently than any other." Concern smoothed his features into a veritable mask. "Our hosts are ours to manipulate, not the other way 'round. Be careful, Hecate, that you do not get attached to her loved ones."

Hecate turned to face the god of death, a smolder forming in her eyes where there had not been a moment ago. The torches on the walls flared. “You care too little for mortals,” she said harshly. “And give me too little credit. We will achieve our goals, Hades, but we need not destroy in the process.”

The movement of the fire startled the old man. He looked around, saw Hecate, and smiled broadly. “There you are, ciasteczka. Wait right there, I have a surprise for you.” He held his hands out toward her, fingers splayed, in a “stay put” gesture before leaving the room.

Hecate watched him go, detachedly amused, wondering what this spirit meant to do when he came back, if he did not forget and wander back to the Elysian fields. The spark in her eyes dimmed as if she had never gotten angry, her mind, at least, moving on from Hades’ critical words. “The veil is thin now. I do not…” she waved a hand over her face, “...do not know how much time has passed. The waiting is like a dream.”

"Perhaps for the best," Hades said. "Eternity can be maddening when one is too aware of its passage." He turned his gaze from the wandering spirit, whose progress he could still follow through the depths of his realm. He looked instead to Hecate, studying her calmed expression. "Is his recognition of your host a function of that thinning?" He moved closer to her, a shadow in the dark hall, so deep he seemed to swallow up the light of the torches around them. "Can we expect to see more of this, from others?"

“I know no more than you do.” She watched him move closer, the darkness creeping forward, and suddenly she felt trapped, as she had never felt in all her long existence. She wanted out of this place, to feel the open air around her, to see the stars of her family across the night sky. Now she knew the frustrated longing of the being Fenrir she had encountered so long ago. She wanted to see him again, to free herself from this stasis that felt like the deaths of the mortal souls around her.

“The time must be getting closer,” she continued, “for us to come forth and be as we once were. It is too long since I have wandered among mortals. Too long since they have forgotten my name.” Hecate thought of her host, this Kate, who would soon know the goddess inside her, a transformation that filled Hecate both with power and with pity for the tiny human’s futile struggle against it.

"They remember," Hades said. "Somewhere deep down they remember. And we will ensure those memories come to the fore."

Hecate was nodding in response when the old man returned, bearing something in his hands. He was beaming proudly as he walked over to the goddess and placed the round object, cradled in a dish towel, on the table in front of her. “Your favorite,” he said, and with a flourish removed the tinfoil covering. “Apple and honey crumble pie.” He clearly waited for her response, still grinning as he examined her expression.

There was no harm in playing along, in bringing this soul some peace. She smiled back. “Thank you, dziadzi,” she said, recalling the word from Kate’s childhood. The old man clapped his hands in delight and, mission accomplished, wandered back out.

---

Kate woke in a sweat, heart pounding. She looked around her bedroom, the familiar walls and furniture, Scilla and Carrie next to her, all illuminated by the morning sunlight shining around the curtain’s edges. The dream had seemed so real, and despite the dark walls and cold atmosphere, her grandfather had been there, looking whole and healthy and baking again, for her, like he always did. She looked around her room again, as if expecting to see him standing at the foot of her bed, but he wasn’t. Tears ran down her cheeks as she re-experienced the grief of his loss from all those years ago.

On shaky limbs she finally got out of bed and got dressed. Breakfast, shower, the dog’s walk, and all else could wait. She had to shake off the horrible darkness that had settled over her like a second skin. She didn’t want to think about the people in her dream, or what they had said. Or what it meant.

She grabbed her keys and left her apartment. The hallway was still covered in palm trees, the crocodile still at the elevator when she passed to the staircase. She wandered downstairs, past the 10th floor where she usually took the dogs for a bathroom walk (and kept clear of the shriveled heads). She picked a door at random and stepped through.

The sound of quiet, oddly soothing chanting greeted her, beginning to calm the adrenaline still pumping through her veins. She wiped at her eyes and focused on exploring this new landscape. Some parts of the ground were thick and dark, and she skirted them, walking instead among small brush and pink flowers. She wondered if Isobel had been here yet; her friend would probably rattle off various facts about these plants, and that reassuring thought brought a brief smile to Kate’s tear-streaked face.

Pitted stones dotted the edge between scrub and the uninviting thick areas. Kate bent down to examine one and had so absorbed herself in this distraction that she didn’t hear the newcomer’s arrival.

Obed had not deliberately quieted his steps, though in times such as these, rapt in his own thoughts as was the floor's other guest, it happened of its own accord. Another thing he supposed he had in common with the man he had seen in his dreams. He had begun to get accustomed to that being's presence; what took him aback now was the baseless kinship he felt with the floor's other guest. There was a lingering sensation of knowing her deeply, in a way that belied the simple connection of neighbor and occasional dinner guest.

"It's calming here," he said, "isn't it? Sort of a shame most of our other neighbors appear to disagree."

As he drew nearer, casting a long shadow over her and the offering stones before her, he belatedly noticed the tear-tracks on her face. "Kate… are you all right?"

Kate jumped at the sound of his voice and nearly fell into the bog before she righted herself and stood. She wiped her face in her sleeve quickly. “Yes, I’m okay,” she replied, trying to give a reassuring smile and no doubt failing. “I just...had a bad dream.” She took a deep breath, and whether because she felt the need to open up to anyone after such a rough night, or because of some connection she felt with Obed, she confessed, “All right, a terrible dream. I had to get out of the apartment.” Looking more closely at him, she continued, “I think you were in it.” In her normal state of mind she would have acknowledged the weirdness of her statement (if she had made it at all), but given the circumstances of the last two days it didn’t seem weird at all.

Recognition flashed briefly over Obed's face. A slight furrow marred his brow; he moved closer, his head canting curiously as he looked at her with fresh curiosity. His teeth worried at the tip of his tongue. Agreement lingered there, but it was difficult to give into. The truth was as strange as the changes to their floor, and Obed wondered if they shared the same origin.

"I think I did, too," he said. He smirked. "Dreamed you, I mean. The dream didn't seem so terrible to me." His wry smile faded. "This is going to sound absurd, but… was your grandfather in the dream? You called him dziadzi, I believe…"

Kate stared at Obed for a long moment, jaw slack, and then a bark-like laugh escaped her. “Of course,” she muttered, bringing her hands to her head. Because this week wouldn’t make sense without sharing dreams with her neighbors. “Maybe this is the dream,” she said, more to herself than to her companion, and a tiny hope flared up at the idea. “None of this makes sense.”

"It certainly doesn't." The corner of his mouth pulled downward. He knew dreams too well to suspect this was one. Even the crocodile on D3, ludicrous and unlikely though it was, had been real enough to pose a sincere threat to Obed and his tiny canine companion. "I hope it isn't something we'll have to deal with for long," he said, "but I do think this is real. Something we have to cope with, at least for now. This place is very strange, and denying that won't help any of us."

Kate was silent a moment, then nodded at the wisdom of his words. “You seem to be handling it well.” She looked around again, the chanting still weaving through her bloodstream. “And when you get over the impossibility, I suppose this area is all right.”

Obed shrugged. "I think so." He smiled softly. The late hour seemed to make him more honest, too. "I've had too many nightmares to be particularly bothered by this," he admitted. "At least this one has more familiar surroundings."

Kate was nodding in response when she felt a shift behind her, like a thickening in the air she could feel with some sixth sense she didn’t know she had. She turned, curious, and the relaxation she had reached during her conversation with Obed melted away. For there, at the edge of the bog, rustled a bulldog, the markings on her tail and the exact angle of her head tilt with her tongue panting out instinctively familiar even after years of being apart. “Maddie?” she whispered. She blinked, and the dog disappeared.

“Did you see that?” she asked, raising her voice so Obed could hear but not turning from the spot where her beloved pet--for it must have been her--had stood.

Obed frowned; a furrow knit his brow. "I saw something," he admitted. He took a step closer to the place their gaze had been drawn. There was nothing there, but he had a sense of something lingering, something just beneath his notice. After a moment or two of intense staring, Obed at last gave up. He shrugged. "There's always something here to see," he said. "This place is… odd, to say the least."

That statement seemed to be the theme of the entire week. Suddenly bone weary, Kate turned away from where the apparition had been. “Well, at least it’s not just a figment of my imagination,” she said, trying to sound more lighthearted than she felt. “I think I need to get a decent night’s sleep to process all this. If that’s even possible.” As she spoke, looking at Obed, that familiarity came again, the feeling that, though strange and impossible as the world had turned, standing before her was someone who would navigate it with the same understanding she did. She was grateful, in that moment, for his quiet presence, perhaps even more so than she would have been for Isobel’s cheery brightness there on the floor of ghosts in the middle of the night.

“Thanks for the company,” she said as she made her way toward the stairwell. “And for...making me think I’m not just crazy.”

He did not smile, exactly, but his frown faded to a thin line, subtly upturned at one corner. He nodded, slipping his hands into his pockets. "Any time," he said. "In a place like this we've all got to keep each other grounded, don't we."

Kate nodded once more back to him before heading upstairs to the comfort of the dog pile she knew would form around her as soon as she lay in bed.