Note: If you like my writing, you might be interested in checking out my original fiction on KickStarter (the project name is Veracity: The Lies Unravel).
Prompts:
1. nyo!prucan (can be het or both nyo 6v6) where prussia is a princess who is not very good at being a princess. she runs away when her parents tell her she's to be married to a prince from another kingdom (idk who it dOES NOT MATTEr). On her journey she happens upon a bard/muse who takes her in and! kawaii cliches abound! how this ends is up to you because i am bad at endings wowie
2. prucan version of Persephone and Hades ** idk how this would work but gosh
3. it's their anniversary (friendship, relationship, marriage idk that's up to you) and one of them has set up a bunch of clues and sends the other on a wild goose chase all over town *v* what ensues is for you to decide
Summary: Fem!PruCan. Julchen is Persephone, and the princess status is a poor fit. What she really wants is an adventure.
Julchen watched her mother with distaste. Fruit ripened in her mother's wake as she walked through the orchard, leaving a reddened trail of unblemished apples. The people loved her—of course they did. She was the Goddess of the Harvest. But Julchen? It was always, "Go pick flowers, sweetheart," or, "Go look for four-leaf clovers, darling," and other inane tasks that weren't tasks at all. She wanted an adventure, not some f*cking posies!
"I've had it," Julchen muttered, crossing her arms as her mother touched a wilting flower and set radiant color shooting through the blossom. "This is boring as sh*t, and if I hear one more person tell me to go pull weeds—"
Her mother turned around, and Julchen broke off.
"It's not pulling weeds if you hack at them with a sword," her mother said, narrowing her eyes. "If you don't uproot them, you're just wasting your time."
Julchen said nothing, and her mother turned back around. This time, Julchen vanished before her mother could look back again.
Moss and mud clung to her bare feet, spattering her torn dress up to her knees. Long, winding grass that had never been cut curled and tickled around her ankles. The forest rattled with the pulsing song of uncountable bugs, loud enough to make her ears ring. She stank like sweat and maybe a little manure.
It was roughly thirty thousand times better than picking flowers.
She wasn't on a path—at least, not a path that anyone had marked in the last few centuries. But she heard faint music wafting over the bugs' cacophony. She turned toward the sound automatically, pushing past thorny bushes and vines as she pursued it. The closer she got, the softer the bugs became; a hush had fallen over the forest wherever the mysterious music played. When she finally pushed aside the last branch blocking her path, she saw a young man in mourning clothes plucking at a lyre as he wandered through the woods.
Julchen opened her mouth to ask who he was, but then he began to sing. It was a song of love and loss and determination to recover what had been stolen from him. Tears pricked Julchen's eyes unbidden, and she scrubbed them away immediately. As she did, she let go of the branch she'd been holding, which snapped back to smack her nose so sharply that her eyes watered. At her yelp, the man spun around, halting his song.
"What are you looking at?" Julchen demanded. She rubbed her nose gingerly. "You're the weirdo playing music to a bunch of wild animals."
The young man hesitated, then smiled. "I suppose that you're right," he said. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Orpheus, and my task is to beseech the Goddess of Death to return my beloved wife to me."
"Goddess of Death?" Julchen repeated. She'd met a number of the gods and goddesses who worked with her mother, but the Goddess of Death lived in a palace far beneath the ground and seldom visited the land of the living. "Sounds like an adventure. I'm in."
Orpheus was okay, as far as humans went. He wouldn't shut up about his wife, who'd had her pretty little ankle bit by a snake, but he had a d*mn fine singing voice and knew a couple of songs so randy that they made Julchen choke on laughter. It was fun to challenge him to make up increasingly implausible songs, like the one he'd thrown together about the tea cups and the belladonna going water skiing.
They passed the time pretty easily on their way to the Underworld—a menacing cave at the edge of the forest, where the brambles ran thicker than the trees and every plant had a pallor to its leaves. Julchen hesitated for only a moment as the cave seemed to breathe through craggy teeth, releasing hot, moist air in Julchen's face. But Orpheus didn't hesitate, so Julchen squared her jaw and plunged forward. Orpheus sang to the boatman and got him to ferry them both across the River Styx.
If Julchen were honest with herself, Cerberus was just a big puppy who needed a little more attention—or maybe he just knew a goddess when he smelled one, even if she was muddy to her elbows. Likewise, the dead were much like the living, just with a little bit more fairness in their circumstances. The sheer genius of the punishments for the evildoers made Julchen nod approvingly. The punishments, so far as she could see, never failed to fit the crime.
The Goddess of Death's palace lay ahead; Julchen grinned as she surveyed its spires, giddy with anticipation.
"Hello?" Julchen called. Orpheus plucked nervously at his lyre, but Julchen just stomped the graveyard dirt from her legs and peered into the entryway. "We've got a question for the lady of the house!"
"Just a moment!" a voice called back.
Julchen was startled to hear the youthfulness of the voice—she'd expected an old woman, not someone her own age. Immortality didn't mean unaging; some gods and goddesses were born old. But when the figure appeared on the steps, she had a round face and golden pigtails, and she hopped nimbly down the steps. She had purple eyes and wore a mix blood red, fall red—a deathly red. The red of life drawing to a close.
It suited her. Julchen wanted to place a reddened maple leaf in her hair.
"Sorry," the goddess said, smiling awkwardly at the pair of them. "I so seldom have guests, eh? Please come in."
Orpheus seemed a little shell-shocked and remained frozen on the doorway, but Julchen stamped her feet once more and stepped inside. Turning in a slow circle to examine the hallway, she let out a long, low whistle.
"Awesome place that you've got, here," Julchen said. "Really like the décor."
"Oh, thank you," the goddess replied, smiling. "I figured that they weren't using their skulls any more, so I ought to put them to some kind of use, eh? Not many appreciate the aesthetic."
"It's bad*ss," Julchen said. She grinned back at the goddess. "Why haven't we met before?"
"Demeter's daughter, right?" the goddess asked. "We butt heads a bit, I'm afraid. Famines and all that. Hardly my doing, but it's not difficult to see why she might not approve."
"You seem all right to me," Julchen replied. She frowned—the goddess was smoking hot. Maybe Aphrodite had been in one of her fits of jealous pique; no one wanted to get under her claws when she was in one of those moods. Hiding in a cave was about the smartest option for anyone sexier than the goddess of love. Julchen opened her mouth to speak again, but Orpheus spoke first.
"I've come to ask you to return my wife to me!" Orpheus blurted out. "I've a song for you, if you'll lend me your ear."
"He's always got a f*cking song." Julchen snorted. "His wife got bit by a snake, and he misses her a lot. Cut him some slack?"
The goddess surveyed Julchen with pursed lips before nodding.
"I'll hear him out, at least."
As Orpheus left with his newly restored wife, the goddess looked at Julchen.
"What's your name, anyway?" Julchen asked. "Mom never told me."
"It's not pronounced by a living tongue," the goddess admitted. "But mostly I go by Maddie."
"Maddie, huh? That's a cute nickname."
Maddie smiled, turning a bit pink as she looked away.
"I know what brought Orpheus to meet with me," Maddie said. "What brings you here?"
"I'm so f*cking sick of being in Mom's shadow," Julchen said, dropping her eyes to look down at the whitened bone floor. "I suck at being a princess. It's always, 'Go gather flowers, sugarcube,' and, 'Why not just sunbathe with some ambrosia, flower?' and sh*t like that." Julchen grimaced. "It's stupid. I want to do something. Not be their pretty f*cking flower."
Maddie laughed suddenly. Julchen spun, ready to defend her case, but Maddie's fond smile caught her off guard.
"You're welcome to stay here if you like," Maddie said. "Always plenty to do. There's a plague budding up there, too; I could do with some help."
A slow smile spread across Julchen's face. Taking a chance living in a totally different world from the one she'd known? With someone as amiable as Maddie?
"Got a spare room for me?"
Time passed differently under the earth. Seasons came and went on Maddie's whims; the sun never rose and never set, and no moon spun overhead to let Julchen mark the months. There certainly was work to do—a famine and plague tore through the countryside above them. Julchen's task was to get the dead settled in their afterlives. Fortunately, Maddie sent her to take care of the warriors, who wanted nothing more than a few fights to prove to themselves that they'd finally been claimed by death.
Immortal as she was, Julchen was more than happy to oblige. They were opponents who wanted only the glory of battle—warriors who had already died and couldn't be killed with even the worst mortal blow. Their romps could last a fortnight, leaving them all riddled with spear holes and striped with sword swipes.
After they'd tired of fighting, Maddie sometimes clucked her tongue, but she always smiled as she patched Julchen up. To Julchen's unending delight, she even ooh-ed and ahh-ed in all the right places as she recounted her battle stories.
More than that, though, Julchen could see the way Maddie took extra care with the innocent dead, the way she took a grim sort of pleasure from punishing those who had done horrific things in their lives, the way she held out her arms each morning to embrace the kingdom of the dead.
"I want to stay," Julchen told Maddie, who furrowed her brow and chewed on her lower lip.
"If you eat the fruit of the dead, there's no going back," Maddie explained. "I want you to keep your choices open. Don't burn all your bridges, Jules."
Julchen crossed her arms. She wanted to tell Maddie about how her most vicious grin and tender smile both set Julchen's heart racing—how she loved to wake up and find her staring out of a window, lit with the bloody glow of Tartarus or the heavenly gold of the Elysian Fields—how she just wanted to sweep Maddie off of her feet and kiss her until neither of them could breathe.
"For you?" Julchen said instead. "I'd burn the whole d*mn world."
The fruit of the dead was tart and sweet and ran like blood over Julchen's fingers. Half for herself and half for Maddie—split evenly down the center. It stained both of their lips, and, when Julchen kissed Maddie, it marked her cheeks, her neck, her shoulders with the same commitment. I'm staying, she promised, pressing the words into the soft, cool skin. You're everything I've ever wanted.
Maddie laughed, kissing Julchen between the eyes, on the back of her hand, on her ears.
"Mine to look at," she whispered. Her pupils dilated with desire. "Mine to touch. Mine to hear." She pressed a kiss against Julchen's collarbone. "Mine to love."
Julchen's skin crackled. Goddess of Life and Goddess of Death—a perfect combination her mother would have abhorred. Giddiness flooded her, and she swept Maddie off her feet, hauling her away for their honeymoon.
"What's this?" Maddie asked.
Julchen forced herself not to giggle as Maddie pulled open the letter; one sound, and she'd be spotted hiding in the rafters. It'd spoil the whole surprise.
"Happy anniversary," Maddie read aloud. "Where the old codger rolls, look for signs of moles." Maddie covered her eyes, and Julchen hoped she was thinking hard about the clue when Maddie burst into laughter so fierce that she dropped the letter. Julchen's face flushed, but she kept herself from giving away her position. "Jules, you are many things, but a poet sure isn't one of them. Sweet of you to try, though."
Julchen worried that Maddie wouldn't take the hint, but she left the castle as soon as she'd collected herself. She found Sisyphus' hill, where Julchen had spent several hours carving holes into the earth. Most had nothing but worms, but one of them had the next clue, along with a bouquet of white roses that Julchen had carefully dethorned.
"Shields bash and swords clash; look to the trees for the next stash," Maddie read. She ran a muddy thumb over a white petal and smiled to herself. "You always do love an adventure."
Maddie set off at such a good clip that Julchen could scarcely keep up while staying hidden. Maddie had already identified the tree with the next clue in the Elysian Fields and was shimmying up the branches by the time Julchen caught up.
Maddie set the crown of reddened maple leaves in her hair and grinned as she read the next clue.
"You know that I've always found these people boring," Maddie said, "but I admit that they're fun when they're out—Julchen!" Maddie covered her mouth. "You're not supposed to say that about dead people." Despite herself, she started giggling. "D*mn you, Jules. You're a bad influence."
The humdrum lives of common mortals in Hades remained much as they'd been above. They kept busy with the sorts of jobs they'd enjoyed during their lives. At a particularly lively brothel for the dead, Maddie sweet-talked a matron into handing over Julchen's next gift—a necklace she'd made herself. She petted it fondly and read the final clue.
"Hope you like my fancy dinner. I think that I picked a real winner. (You, not the dinner.)" Maddie snorted. "Meet me where we once saw that doe after the girls give you a proper show."
Julchen gave the signal that sent the dancers to work and took off at a sprint for the castle. The servants had set up the supplies she'd need, but she had insisted on cooking dinner herself. She worked frantically, ignoring the powdered sugar and flour that dusted her nose. She packed the goodies into a basket and ran to set up the picnic on the little atoll where they'd once met a doe and her baby.
Maddie was already waiting for her.
"Turns out that the Goddess of Death can be pretty intimidating when she demands to go see her wife." Maddie smiled.
"And it turns out you can't trust the dead to do their godd*mned jobs," Julchen huffed, out of breath from her run. She held out her basket. "Brought you dinner."
Maddie rested her hand over Julchen's.
"All I really wanted was you."