@brazenlass ♥ for a starter
Hades rarely visits the surface. Usually, it’s to make deals, or check the mortals, or do his rounds of the tracks. The road to hell had to have an upkeep, didn’t it?-- or, more commonly than any other excuse, it was to retrieve his wife. Wherever the h e l l she was now. The irritation is plain in the king’s voice as he whispers to the engineer of his train, the ferry to his realm, as he paces away from the hidden, distant tracks that run deep into the earth, & pushes his way through the boundary of life & death to the mortal world. The roads were paved here, not altogether unlike his own kingdom, the walkways busy with people about their business, enjoying the nice day (while it lasted). After all, nice days didn’t seem to last very long any more, what with the summers growing shorter, the winters longer. Even the keenest of living were picking up on how the climate had shifted so recently, how the cold places were warming up, the warm places freezing over like perhaps even hell itself might, someday. The quarrels of the gods were spilling over like a rolling thunderstorm. A single pale hand dips into coat, dark tattoos flashing from his cuff, & out from his pocket does the god fish a single, pristine cigarette. (He lights it, & in the business of the people around him, he assumes no one sees it isn’t from an ordinary lighter, but from a match that springs to life out of the thin air & goes out without so much as a single scorch mark. The cigarette raises to his mouth, & as he takes a long drag, the match is returned to its place.) Alone on this paved street, Hades stands out like a sore thumb, dressed all in black, dark glasses obscuring his eyes, a cigarette at his lips-- He stands in the middle of the walkway, forces people to move around him to continue on their way, & from where he stands he looks. Looks for a woman in green who had decided to bring the harvest here, of all places.
