Live, Love, and Hate – by Orpheus
Week 36 (43) – Charon’s Folly
(10/17/04) He hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. Orpheus had backed away from the gates into the Labyrinth at the last minute. Eurydice’s siren song had fallen silent at the last minute. With his hand on the gates, ready to swing them open, he’d suddenly come to his senses and turned back, he fully expected to hear her voice telling him to turn around and go back, but she hadn’t.
And so, hear he sat in Charon’s Folly, the bar built on a small, artificially crafted island over the whirlpool where Charon had dove headfirst to protect Stygia from Gorloo. Of course, wraiths couldn’t really drink, they had to consume bottled Pathos of various emotions. The glass sitting in front of Orpheus (which was actually made from the soul of a Solicitor and not glass) held distilled Pathos of love. He took one sip of the thing that would have been a liquid on the other side of the Shroud and then knocked the cup to the ground. It had gone flat.
“Give me another,” he sighed, “but this time, mix it with a twist of obsession and make it unrequited this time.”
“We’re out of obsession and unrequited,” the barkeep answered, cleaning out a goblet made of Stygian Steel with a towel that he’d personally recovered from the Skinlands on one of the rare times that he’d closed the Folly for long enough to even get a Cycle’s worth of Slumber. “All we’ve got is the regular, fizzy stuff.”
“Another one of those then, I guess,” Orpheus answered sorrowfully. The distilled Pathos that he downed was actually one of his favorites, but he’d been hoping to try the other again. He hadn’t had it for a long time now, and rather hoped that it wouldn’t leave quite such a bitter aftertaste in his mouth this time. Lust was another good flavor, but only to be enjoyed on occasion, as it always left the drinker cloyed. Then, he whispered, more to himself than anyone else, but what he said was lost to the din of a battle raging outside on the Sea of Sorrows.
Signing out for 36 (43).