It was late at night after a long shift.
A whole day of serving tables, stage performances, music and harvest celebrating, cheering the end of a lasting harsh winter, when Spring herself stormed in that little humble bar by the railroad track, propriety of the travelers and merchants' patron.
The exponential increasing number of costumers coming by due the seasons' recent switch made so that the poet boy's job was merely to entertain, to be on the stage alongside itinerant bards as circus to the cheering crowd. Meanwhile, it also gave room for a new spot for Eurydice as a temporary waitress.
Plus, the offer of staying by Orpheus' bed sure make her savings with tips grow heavy on her backpack, the only physical baggage a runaway girl was allowed to have. With not much to carry, would be easier for the next time the wind came up, next time she had to run case Lady Persephone were to disappear as quickly as she appeared.
The agreement of sharing a bed in exchange for a soft place to sleep was not something foreign to the girl. But Orpheus was different.
He's not like any man you've met, had warned Mr. Hermes.
For a poet with the way with words and rhymes and a high promising tune to bring the world back into time, the poor boy was the most forward person she ever met. Who opens up with "come home with me?"?
Orpheus would say things as quickly as they came up to his mind, like his pretty words and sentences were unable to be anything but the truth.
Which is ridiculous, she knew. After all, everybody lies. A bit or a lot, everybody has something to hide.
"Eurydice?" he asked, fighting a yawn and yet still making each syllable of her name to sound like a never heard before melody. His usually bright hazelnut eyes were fallen and his posture was slouched from the tiredness. "Are you okay?".
The question broke her thoughts a bit.
The shift had ended, they were going home. Well, they were going to bed, because Orpheus' home happened to simply be upstairs, above the bar, and Eurydice had no home to go back to.
"Yea, just tired" she said. "I'm fine".
On most nights since she got there, they had gone to sleep after hours of kissing and giggling. Sometimes unmatched since the boy had a important masterpiece to finish and Eurydice would take as many shifts as she possibly could.
They were equally young, a year or two as a difference at most. Orpheus was a poor boy… And Eurydice was a young girl, but she'd seen how the world is. And wherever Orpheus was originally from in all of Greece, she doubted he had seen much of it. He knew many stories about many gods and many travelers, he knew how to play many instruments and followed through with any music, but he was ignorant to how the capitalist hunger would tame cities in electricity, how children would born and die in mines and factories, how people would steal and lie to survive, how much a girl wouldn't do to fill her belly full of food.
Part of her believed that with so many travelers and stories, he knew how the world was, he just preferred to sing about how it could be in spite of what it is.
But with such a gift, with enchanted words and a miraculous voice, it surprised her how inexperienced the poet was to the ways of the flesh. It's not that he was bad nor that he was a slow learner, but how much he had not done before was obvious sometimes, the lack of arrogance and confidence, the trembling fingers and asking.
In the past, she had found this same characteristic to be annoying in other boys, like an extended part of her work, to have to teach. But she was drawn to Orpheus.
She liked his face of course, he had chocolate eyes, a smooth hair and a contagious smile. His figure was tall and lanky, not as if you could see his ribs through, as it once was possible on her very own self on a previous winter. His weight was light by nature, hers had been so out of hunger. And though she could imagine anyone easily swooning over that gods' gifted voice, for his songs sure sounded as if they could fix all of the world's problems for a while, the thing that most sparked on to her was his unforeseen straight-up honesty.
That's all she could think about when she questioned herself why. Why did she feel like melting whenever he sang, why did her chest squeeze whenever he left his paper-made flowers for her even when spring was at its peak around them. Why he made her laugh so easily and why, even in the mid of such fun of the season, part of her felt like running away.
Orpheus was a poor boy and he wears his heart out on his sleeve, though now it was as if he held hers, too.
The thought was terrifying, for when we fall, we grow stupid, we grow blind, and we might just as well drink poison as if it was the sweetest of wines. If pretty words and lovely songs made her forget to keep up her walls, if they made her unable to see the next upcoming storm, the wind might change and people would turn away and it would be so much harder to re learn how to hold her own.
Eurydice was a hungry young girl, a runaway from every place she's ever been. But the only reason she started running, oh it wasn't the storms, it's how others ran first. People turn on you just like the wind, everybody is a fair-weather friend and, in the end, you're better off alone.
No matter what they share from their past or how long they stick around, people could leave in a heartbeat, nothing but you left behind. So, Eurydice chose to never let anyone else make that choice for her. She would be alone because it's easier, she would be strong enough for herself, she would turn her collar against the wind and jump from town to town, train to train.
"You don't look fine", he said.
They were in his room.
For the past full week, they first got here kissing till they lips were sore and their eyes were tired. The air was heavy and unfit for such activities.
She had no answer for his statement and the quiet was settling in, uninvited and unwelcomed.
Suddenly, she wanted to cry. She couldn't, of course, not simply because she had a cold-hearted reputation to maintain, but because she could not explain why. And so, she swallowed that cry and sat on the bed, avoiding his gaze.
"You're not fine" he stated and he was right, of course.
Eurydice could not explain what was wrong with her at the moment.
The money saving was the hell of a good excuse, but maybe Mr. Hermes could borrow her a separated bedroom tomorrow, she could keep a safe distance from the poor boy.
Still avoiding those hazelnut eyes, the cracking sound of the old bed and shift on the mattress pressure told her he sat next to her.
Betraying her like so many did before, her eyes grew watery and she pressed her lips so they wouldn't tremble.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, looking ahead and not at her.
"No", she whispered and it was true.
This was another of the times Orpheus is a unique person amongst all those who came and went. Because be it for a morbid curiosity over actual worry, most people pry on the sad ones not to help them, but to make them stop. Sadness is an inconvenience, after all. She took a big breath, thinking he'd ask again, but before she could expire the token air, she felt his arms around her.
Even sitting down, the boy was still a head taller than her, and he rested his chin on the top of her hair, fitting like a puzzle piece. You take me in your arms, and suddenly there's sunlight all around me...
Caught in her breathe, she blinked, even more stiff than before, for he held and hugged her deeply, not an embrace of long seen friends, not the tangled arms of a lover; he simply held her. And for a moment, blaming on how tired and oddly childish she felt on that time, she closed her eyes and held him back.
He moved and she thought he'd kiss her; he'd look at her face to capture the unfallen tears. The boy surprised her again and just laid their bodies on the bed, boots still in.
Eurydice took another deep breath, this time just to feel in his scent fill her in like a blanket warming her from a cold she forgot she ever felt.
Neither knew exactly when their bodies adapted to the new situation. The silent transformed, from thick and tense to soothing and caring, yet he managed to break it again "can I sing?" he didn't have to, he did that all day, but Eurydice didn't think her ears even had it in her to say no to just listening to his voice.
He sang his unfinished song's chorus, hummed low and slow. Adjusting her head to his thorax, she discovered the buzzing sound of his voice coming out of its source matched with the steady beat of his heart must be the most beautiful song, and nothing about the gods and those who ruled the world would sound better if it were to her, she would turn it into a vinyl disc and listen whenever she felt like it.
He felt safe. That screaming part of her telling her to watch out, to trust nobody and to be ready to flee had its voice muffled by his new song. Instead, she felt a different kind of desperation squeeze her heart. She wanted to tell him, wanted to scream, wanted to make it pretty like his own words:
Say that you'll hold me forever,
say that the wind won't change on us
Say that we'll stay with each other
and it will always be like this…
Looking up at him as he sang his monosyllabic lyrics, she thought his neck might be the most handsome part in his body and wanted to kiss it with a tenderness she knew to not possess. Instead, she was afraid. Frightened to end up breaking this glass-like moment. And decided summer was yet to come and end, there was time.
Cradled by her own sleep heaving her eyes and by his long fingers running on her hair, she felt her body relax. Like when you remember there's no reason to clench your jaw, she felt like a little bird who found a safe place to land.