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ginnyzero · 4 years

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My Fashion Connection

I’ve been trying to pin down lately why I love fashion and fashion design. Because I don’t love clothes and designing clothes and the choosing of fabrics because of the glitz and glam of high end runway shows and the glossy pages of Vogue magazine and adulation of famous design houses. Most of that I didn’t even know about until I went to school. I didn’t choose fashion because of any of those things. I really wanted to go into Computer Game Design because of games like Myst.

Growing up in a very small town in the middle of the southern tier of New York, fashion wasn’t anything that anyone in our town was interested in except the town pageant queen who had a ‘reputation.’ It’s dairy country. My town was and is much more interested in dirt bikes, hunting and fishing and kegger beer parties. There were a couple of families that were more well to do and worked at Cornell or IBM and thus wore nicer clothes but out of a town of say 50 to 100 people, there were more cows and farmers and retirees. It’s the type of town when two of the young people marry each other, the entire town becomes related.

My mother is a home sewer. I hate the term sewer in professional capacity because it has the connotations of a house wife sitting at home making amateur garments. My mother made a lot of my sister’s clothes growing up and when she started sending me to Christian schools with dress codes, she also made clothes for me. (Mostly jumpers.) Eventually she either got tired of sewing or felt that we needed to buy things to keep up appearances and she stopped. (This ended up with us shopping in budget discount overrun boutique shops. Yes. A thing. Family Dollar and Dollar General didn’t exist yet! And mother hadn’t discovered the “joys” of the Salvation Army and second hand or they simply weren’t close enough to shop at.)

In a tiny town, you have to drive almost an hour in every direction to get to anything that remotely resembles a fabric shop. Except, between our tiny town and the city of Ithaca we got lucky, because out in a nowhere more nowhere than our nowhere was a tiny fabric shop run by a petite old woman named Leona.

To get to Leona’s shop, you took this very twisty road over and through the hills and turned right when you finally hit another ‘major’ road. And then off to the left less than a mile was a huge stand of pine trees and in the middle of these pines was a dirt drive. You’d drive up the hill between these tall pines the rocks in the dirt crunching under your tires that opened onto a clearing on top of a hill that held a farm. Leona ran her shop out of her home, a one story mixture of a red roofed, white trailer with an add on to make it an L shape. The barn hadn’t been kept up and the red stain was fading and the barn was falling apart. You parked on the edge of the drive, hoped it hadn’t rained lately and it wasn’t pure mud so you could get back out. (If you got stuck, there was always the local farmer with a tractor and chains to pull you out.) You had to park on the edge because despite the fact the farm wasn’t an active farm, she rented out the land and your cars needed to be out of the way for the tractors to get through.

She had the shop in the add on built on the back of the trailer. Firewood piled up next to the screen door and cats lounged everywhere. Leona liked hoarding things so the walkway had gnomes, garden statues and benches and wheelbarrows and yes, there was a tiny garden windmill in the middle of the circular drive. If it was winter, salt crunched under your boots and you had to walk carefully across the ice covered mud slush. If it was spring or summer, there were flowers peeping up among the grass.

And once you crossed the threshold, warmth, Leona smiling with her curly short white hair and the measuring tape around her neck behind the measuring counter. Bolts and bolts of colorful and textured fabrics lined the walls and the blank spaces of walls over tables were old fashioned wall paper in dark red with ducks or cream and pink rose prints and warm golden colored wood panels. Painted sawblades provided decoration. The clock might have been a novelty item, a cow or a cat or even something with shears for the hands. I can’t remember. (There might have been all three.) It smelled mostly of sawdust, dust and in the winter, the sharp smell of a burning fire from the potbelly stoves. Leona’s help were also middle aged or older ladies like her and they weren’t quite as friendly, but they were helpful.

Leona stocked her shop by going down to NYC and buying overruns from the warehouses. (Overruns are fabrics that designers don't end up using and fabrics manufacturers make too much of because they predict more sales than they make. Most fabric retail stores are stocked by overruns.) She mostly had colorful cotton prints and upholstery fabric. There was a little fashion fabric and by the time I hit high school, she had things like stretch velvet. She mostly sold to quilters and people like my mother. Cornell doesn’t have a fashion design program, only a science textiles program, but she’d occasionally get students. Her hours were irregular. I don’t know if she ever turned a profit. She encouraged touching the fabric. (Though she didn’t like children taking bolts out of the shelves for good reason.) She didn’t mind that I wandered about away from my mother. She always remembered me no matter how much time had passed.

But every time I go into a fabric shop, there is still that bit of magic from going to Leona’s. When I returned from college, I wanted to go and show Leona some of my projects. She died before I got the chance and I still regret that.

Professional shops like Mood, Britex, B&J’s and to an extent the discount fabric warehouse that I used during college in San Francisco make me shake my head because the workers don’t always feel helpful. They don’t make you feel like every customer is important. They aren’t like Leona, as frail as she was, with her sunny smiles and slightly raspy voice, glasses, and cheerful attitude and love of textiles.

I also had Barbie. I’ve talked about Barbie and my love of Barbie. I would play with Barbie rather than with baby dolls. (My baby dolls took lots of naps according to my mother.) And I loved the clothing packs. I loved dressing and undressing her and trying new outfits out of the outfits I had. Barbie was a safe present to buy for me when I was growing up, because a) that meant my group of Barbie’s got new clothes and b) if this Barbie had different color hair or skin then I got more variety in my Barbies. (My favorite was the long red headed mermaid with the teal outfit. This was back when the tail was a “Skirt” you could take on and off.) I had maybe one Ken and I inherited a lot of clothes from my older sister who grew out of Barbie about the time I started getting interested. Some of them were homemade but I couldn’t get my mother to make more and she wouldn’t teach me how to sew to make them myself. (In fact, she said it was too hard and downright discouraged it. Guess who doesn’t really like sewing? Me.)

Today, I love Monster High and Ever After High, but if they’d existed when I was a child, I wouldn’t have gotten them because of my parents’ extreme dislike of anything related to monsters, ghosts or Halloween. (I am a November child people. This is ridiculous. Come on, I share a birthday with Bram Stoker. OKAY.)

And somewhere in that time, (1992 apparently, man, I was younger than I thought) when I was getting a pittance of an allowance and had saved money from Christmas, I had enough money to buy a new Barbie or a Crayola Fashion Design stencil/tracing kit. This was before Project Runway. This was before the idea that these Fashion Drawing kits were thought to be remotely popular. No one thought that little girls might like drawing clothes! (Go figure.) The Easy Bake Oven was still the biggest and most innovative thing for a girl’s toy. But Crayola came out with a stencil kit with a bunch of papers that had design outlines, and pattern rubbing plates and a light box. Everything in the kit was meant to fit in the light box. The light box was plastic, pink and ran on D batteries (not included bummer.) And I had just enough money to buy it or a new Barbie. (I think my only other difficult choice that compares to this was the Star Craft Battle Chest and something else and I chose the Battle Chest.)

(I can't believe I found a picture of that, someone is selling one on ebay.) Because, I mean, a new Barbie would only give me one set of new clothes, with this fashion design kit I could draw clothes, lots and lots and lots of clothes. I had always been an artistic child. I liked drawing. This had never really been encouraged except in the “here, have another set of colored pencils, pastels, watercolors, no lessons included.” So, here was Barbie in paper form! I didn’t have to take the clothes on and off. I could just trace what they had on the sheets or try to come up with stuff myself.

Pages of my Fashion Design Kit Now

I’m not going to say I was very good at it. The point was, I had fun, this was something to do that didn’t involve playing a game on the computer or reading a book or practicing my piano and I hadn’t gotten into writing at this age. So, from using this stencil, I started with encouragement of one of my friends, to try and make it more real life proportion and draw the figures myself (once again without any sort of drawing classes. The art classes at my school were a joke.) I bought sketchbooks and took them to school with me. I started writing because of this same friend.

It was frankly an escape. My allowance never grew bigger. So, it went towards buying new books to read, sketchbooks and replenishing my Crayola colored pencils. (Though Imperial ones were better but I only got those out of the colored pencil color by number kits.) I didn’t buy fashion magazines. The idea of fashion as a career wasn’t on my radar. I didn’t have a career on my radar. College was one of those, “I’ll think about it later,” things.

The girls at my school who were cheerleaders and liked fashion weren’t precisely my friends and felt like complete foreigners and strangers to me. I didn’t ‘get’ them. We had our groups and we stuck to them. Having arrived to this school after the groups were formed, I fit nowhere and living so far away from everyone else, there was no way that I could feasibly see to hang out with them after school in order to get to know them well enough to fit into one of the groups at all.

Magazines were a luxury in our house. Vogue never made it into the house ever. It took until after 7th grade and a major fight that we even got the newspaper. So by the time I hit eleventh and twelfth grade and college was ‘mandatory’ and I had a list of requirements for what college I could go to, I had to look through what the colleges offered versus what I was interested in and thought I could be good at. (Let me say that writing wasn’t considered because my mother was very anxious about me being able to have a ‘real job.’) And the practice test for the ACT in 10th grade came with this odd employment aptitude test thing to help you find the job that would be the right fit. (Goodness knows if it was remotely accurate.) Fashion design was in my “right fit” category. And between all the majors, there was a tiny college in Ohio that happened to have a Fashion Design degree under their Health and Human Services Major. And since the only computer graphics and gaming major I could find was at a Calvinist college in Michigan, I thought the Mennonite College in Ohio was probably a better idea.

I didn’t read fashion magazines. I didn’t know really how to sew. (Sewing lessons with my mother were a complete disaster.) I couldn’t make a pattern. I had absolutely no portfolio. There were three things I liked, writing, computer games and drawing clothes. And let’s be clear, I wasn’t that great at drawing clothes and my designs at the time probably weren’t that innovative. I had to make a choice and what very little information I could glean from the Ithaca Public Library (seriously, you’d think having Ithaca College and Cornell, the library would be better,) fashion seemed the way to go. It was a massive industry. It had to have work available after I attained my degree.

Oh to be that young and naïve again. Probably sheltered is the better term.

I was over a year and a half into my fashion degree at this tiny college when someone finally thought to clue me in that “to get a design degree you have to have an art minor.” Realizing that this was utterly ridiculous and that making patterns in ¼ of the size wasn’t really going to get me anywhere after trying to talk with one of the other students about whether or not we could really get work after going to this school, (I’m sorry, sweetie, I hope you realized I was trying to convince myself as well as you,) I transferred out and into the Academy of Art. (And this took another large fight.)

Where, I had a lot of credits but I essentially had to start from the beginning. So, having those credits wasn’t actually to my advantage because the numbers of credit hours earned made it appear that I had more experience than I did. This got me more scrutiny and really a worse college experience.

Let’s understand something, I grew up in New York. The Fashion Institute of Technology is part of the SUNY system of colleges. I was a New York resident. It would have been fairly cheap for me to go to FIT. My parents didn’t want me in NYC or at a secular school. Parsons was always out of the question because it’s as costly as Cornell and I understood that. FIT would have been an extremely LOGICAL CHOICE.

Oh well, I loved San Francisco. I loved the big city/small town feel of it and the ability to walk most places and the public transit. If it wasn’t so expensive to live there, I might still be there.

So, schooling wore away at me, but it didn’t dim my love of creating clothes. My love of creating clothes was never founded or predicated upon the idea that success was a runway show and a big fancy store and my name in lights. I didn’t want to be the next Coco Chanel. I didn’t know who she was and at the time I started drawing clothes, I frankly didn’t care. My going into fashion was me going “here is something I love and enjoy doing, can I make a job out of it? Yes. Yes. I can.”

No one can take that from me. I might get bored or tired, but you can’t take the love of creating away from me.

And by the way, I still don’t read Vogue. It’s out of date before it’s printed and 75% advertisements. I also still don’t care about a runway show or seeing my name in lights as a “name” of a brand. That’s not the fashion price point I do or understand. And that’s okay, despite the push by fashion schools to design for that price point and that should be your goal, there is a lot more to fashion than ready to wear. Maybe that gives me an advantage, maybe it doesn't. That's not my connection to fashion. Magical fabric shops, Barbie, Crayola, the joy of creating, those are my fashion connections. And those are a lot more tangible than a runway or a name in lights by my account.

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pbandjesse · 5 years

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My back is hurting me all of a sudden. Today's been really lazy day but I think half I'm stressed about going back to work tomorrow and have I didn't have enough water today or yesterday. I'm going to try to go to sleep soon though. Hopefully my sick feelings will pass.

I keep forgetting that new years was last night. I didn't make the joke once today that I remember 2018 like it was yesterday. Which is terrible. We finish up the party and it was a lot of fun. I got to kiss James at midnight. We didn't do a countdown which I thought was funny. But we did fire the cannon exactly at midnight and the whole thing was very fun. I made Paul, the Taney curator, laugh because I was telling people to get off the ship at 1 exactly. Just tell then all to throw their alcohol away and that the party was over. The fireworks had been nice and I had danced a little bit. And I'm still in a very cheery mood but I knew that if I stop moving I would lose that and I would start falling asleep.

I spend a lot of time at the bottom of the gangway saying goodbye to people. Making sure no one was falling off the steps. One very drunk Irish man fell but he caught himself. And then he flirted with me for the next couple minutes before giving me his wine. I had a good time even though I missed being with Jess. I got to be with all my other friends.

After cleaning up for a bit I went to go relieve Chris, our big boss, down at the desk. Which was nice because I need to sit down for a bit. I ended up talking to these three very drunk girls from Georgia. And they were very nice and they told me their whole life story. Eventually though I went upstairs and helped clean up and put things away. It didn't take that long because there was a lot of us. Including some people that weren't even working just staff that came to the party. It was a really really fun night and I'm glad that I got to work it.

Me and James liked home. We did the first footing. And we both get ready for bed. But we were a little wired after biking so we were up for a bit. Both my packages came with four new Furbys. The 3 2012 models and one very tiny box that contained my baby sheep Furby! It was a baby and I'm so excited. I didn't put batteries in them I was just excited to see them.

We got in bed and we we're just laying there when all of a sudden I tell James that the months of July to November spell the name Jason. And he could not get over it like you so baffled and we ended up looking at the entomology of it hand reading series. Every word laughing it was very silly. It was also after 3 a.m. really need to go to bed. I put on a scary story and was able to fall asleep soon after that.

We woke up around 10. Sweet Pea was very chatty. He wanted to be fed. So I got up and went to get dressed while James packed up his bag. Fed the cat and headed over to James's apartment. To have breakfast. But really it was basically lunch time. So I had packed stuff to make a cheese plate as well.

Today was mostly a boring quiet day for me. I laid in bed while James made us biscuits. I have snacks and watched videos. Eventually we bike down to Whole Foods to get my package and pick up a few things. I got myself a salad. James got stuff for the pizza he would make us. And then we biked home.

It was very windy out so that was slow going. I was always about a block behind him. And then once we got to the prison we walked up the hill. There was no way I was going to be able to bike up that without hyperventilating.

We got back to his place though. I was a little overheated but it was fine. He spent the next couple hours making pizza dough and then all the ingredients for the pizzas. He wanted to make a French onion soup pizza for himself which is something he's done before. I don't love on you in so I do not have any of that. But he made both a mozzarella and red sauce pizza and a white pizza with spinach. They were both very good. But they did take him about 3 hours to complete and I always get annoyed when I think we're going to be eating food soon and then it takes two more hours. But it was fine I had my salad. And I wasn't actually hungry I was just bored. I have been in bed basically all day. At least I got to be in the same space as him.

I did spend some time taking pictures of my baby Furby who we named Pascal Lambert. He is just the cutest little guy. I have not put batteries in him yet. But I'll probably do that tomorrow. I don't think the baby Furbys move much besides their eyes and mouths. I don't even know if their ears move. I just know they don't rock. So if I keep batteries in is yet to be seen. But he's just so cute and I'm so excited about it.

I left James's apartment around 7. I didn't want to leave but I want to be able to get some stuff done in the morning and sometimes it's nice to be alone for a bit. I don't have to be embarrassed about things I want to do or worry about him being in the space. I don't think once you move in together it will be a problem but right now it's nice to have a little bit of space to ourselves.

I got back here and made sort of a list of things I wanted to accomplish. First I fed sweet pea and then I went and checked the mail. I unpack my backpack. And put some stuff away. I took the heater downstairs that I had in the living room so that I can work in the basement tomorrow morning. I cleaned up a little bit. And then I spent some time with my Furbys. Which is something I said I was going to do in the new year.

First I moved everyone over to the Bookshelf just so I could see everybody. Then I decided to unbox the spring Furby. Because I'm going to be keeping that when I think. Once I open her I realize she's so soft and she smells like soap. So I'm definitely for the time. Keeping that one. I named her Lil John because of the number she is. It's not the exact number from the song but it was close enough to make me laugh. Once I took some pictures of her with Pongo and Pascal I decided to open up battery packs on the 3 2012 Furbys I also receive last night.

Two of the three Furbys had batteries in them. Both of those were corroded on the inside. One was battery acid one with regular corrosion. I was able to wipe off the one fairly simply and put batteries in it. The one that had never had batteries in obviously had no problem. And both of them turned on right away. The third one did not turn on. That one would need more work but in the meantime I play with the two new ones. And they were not happy.

They both had angry faces and were growling and we're very upset. I asked my Google Assistant to look up personality types for these types of Furbys and apparently if you are mean to them, feed them too much, leave them alone for too long, 4 shake them too much they get an angry personality. And I think that's what happened to your. I try turning on black bean to give them a more positive personality to talk to. But it didn't seem to do much. Then I tried Coco, the new tidal wave Furby I got last week, because she has a valley girl personality. She is very very pleasant. She also speaks way more English. She talked to them and they kept burping and throwing up and making awful sounds and she kept telling them who and that they were dirty birds. So finally I had to just give them both a hard reset. And then they were much nicer and I think we'll just work from there. They're part of the three that I'm probably going to be home so I don't want to rehome them if they're not pleasant to be around.

The third one I had to clean off the inside with white vinegar and that took a little while but was worth it because once I turn them on you had a very nice personality. They're also a valley girl and that was nice to discover.

I sat on the ground and play with them for a while. Don't talk to each other. I decided to leave everyone's battery packs off so that I can take batteries out and put batteries in depending on who I want going at any one time. So I'm not just going to have sleeping Furbys that can be awoken by sweet pea walking into them. And for now they're all living in the Alcove next to the stairs.

After I finished with that I worked on my calendar for the month. And then I went to get dressed to go to sleep. I couldn't believe it was already 9. I've basically just been laying in bed with sweetpea for a while now. He's got his face on my face right now and it's very cute.

I'm both looking forward to and dreading tomorrow. I'm hoping to wake up early and work on Art. Have a nice breakfast. And then I want to get to the school around noon. Start figuring out how we're going to hang the kids work. Tiffany emailed me about possible change in who's teaching what class. And I still don't know what we've been teaching this week. So I'm a little frustrated with the lack of understanding of what's happening. But I made a lesson plan so if no one else did at least we know that we're going to be watercolor painting. So I hope that goes well and it all works out. Hope you all sleep well tonight. Stay safe out there.

#ootd #day off #furby #safefurby #boy #good day #weirddog #cat #tuesday

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crimsxnflxwerz · 7 years

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Like The Dawn [ch.2]

Rating: Teen+ Summary: Sometimes it takes opening your eyes to find what you’re looking for.[ or Persephone gets reborn as a baby boy named Ryan, and Hades takes the human form Shane in a desperate attempt to find his love once again. ] Pairing: Ryan/Shane Tags: greek mythology, Hades and Persephone, reincarnation, oblivious Hades is oblivious, memory loss Author Note: This is both my own take on the classic Greek myth of Hades and Persephone and how reincarnation in Gods work and such. Original ideas stemming heavily from mythological texts.

ps. i changed Ryan to a transguy when i edited the story for a03, so that’s canon now! hope it doesn’t turn anyone off ;;v;;. also, Sara’s in the fic because she deserves to be in ever fic. happy thanksgiving!

Ryan was drowning.

Maybe drowning wasn’t the best word for it. He’d been walking along the dark shore of a vast, choppy river, bare feet walking delicately on thousands of small, round pebbles. The horizon was a white light that bled up into a black sky like a watercolor painting. There were no stars, no moon, no sounds but the waves lapping at the rocks. He’d been walking for miles, but he wasn’t tired. He’s been watching the water for hours, but the image hadn’t changed. The light stayed the same, the air remained chill, the darkness absolute.

And he had walked into the water like it was the most normal thing he could have been doing. As soon as his foot touched the water, it felt like he’d been bitten. Like a thousand teeth were piercing his skin. The water physically recoiled, moving as a single body, steam hissing upward.

He wasn’t drowning. Drowning would imply accident. This was no accident. He’d stepped into that black water to die, and that had been that. He could remember why he had done what he did, what he was escaping, but the pain in his chest outweighed the fear of the water. There was a voice in his ear.

“Once you do this, you cannot go back,” it said. “Unless he finds you, you may not return to what you once were.”

Ryan heard the words, but held his resolve. Eventually the water engulfed him, and he opened his mouth, letting it in. It felt heavy, and cold, but he couldn’t leave now. He’d made his choice, and that was to die.

The last thing he heard was a name, his name he thought, but it said, “Persephone.”

Ryan jolted awake. He looked around his bedroom, eyes scanning frantically for his clock. His eyes located it on the floor, probably knocked over at some point in the night. It’s neon blue digital numbers read 3:30 am. Sweat was covering his entire body, soaking through his pajama shirt and into his pillow. He threw the covers back away from his legs and sat up on the side of his bed.

Another dream about it. He stood shakily and went to turn his shower on. Another dream about drowning. He peeled his pajamas off and tossed them in his laundry basket as he waited for the water to warm up. What could the dreams mean, he thought, staring at himself in the mirror. He ran his fingertips along the thin surgery scars on his chest. They were pale enough by now to not be very noticeable. Maybe the dreams were from the shots. It didn’t make much sense, but he figured he might as well look it up later.

He hopped into the shower and washed all the sweat off his body, the hot water pouring down on his shoulders, loosening up his muscles. Despite having a general fear of water, he loved showers. He figured since you couldn’t drown in a shower, that it was relatively safe. They look less time, too. If he was feeling particularly timid about water one day, he could just get in and out and still feel clean.

Ryan had held a fear of water and drowning since he was a baby. His mother used to only fill the tub up an inch or else he would start screaming and crying. She had no idea why he would be afraid of the water, they both agreed that nothing had happened to him to justify the fear.

In middle school, Ryan’s friends liked to joke that he had died by drowning in a past life. Although he didn’t believe in that kind of thing, he always found himself feeling forlorn or lonely whenever the subject was brought up. And now, living on his own, the idea continued to haunt him, but this time through vivid nightmares.

Though he had a fear of water, it didn’t hinder his other loves. He loved exploring, writing, and filming. The first thing he did with his new laptop was set up his own Youtube channel. He only had his laptop camera, but he would talk for hours about conspiracy theories and things that he found on his many nature walks. He wasn’t very good at cutting his videos down, since he thought everything was pretty important, but he learned through trial and error. Then he got his first camcorder for his 16th birthday. It was small, but unlike his laptop camera, he could take it with him on his journeys. He documented everything he could, the videos gaining some more viewers now that the video wasn’t just of him.

He wasn’t bad looking, but it could get boring watching just someone’s face for almost an hour.

Today, he would be filming again before he went to work. Since graduating college, he hadn’t gotten any kinda job that really went along with his major. It was hard to find work in film, especially if the thing you wanted to film was myths, ghosts, and local legends. His job was to take calls and transfer information. Basically, a secretary. He wasn’t mad about it though. It wasn’t a hard job, it paid for his new recording gear, and it had good hours.

He got out of the shower and threw on some flannel, jeans, and boots. He wanted to go out in the woods today. He’d been researching fae and other mythical creatures that hung around wooded areas recently. In fact, he’d been kind of into reading mythology, too. It wasn’t that he thought the stories were real, they were too fantastic, too magic. Ryan did believe in some unexplainable things, but there had to be at least a little logic to it.

He was mostly interested in things like fairy rings. His mother had told him once that they were active spiritual zones, and they were caused by tiny spirits sleeping on the Earth. She said that she wasn’t sure if they were good or bad, they just were. He was hoping to find some of those today, maybe study them further.

As he walked from his apartment, he felt deep inside him that something about today was just—off. For lack of a better term. He wasn’t quite sure what was going to be off about it, maybe his gut was just fooling him or something. He held fast to his camera bag as he waited for the bus. He wasn’t in a bad part of town, but the bad feeling was making him a bit paranoid. He didn’t need to be in a bad part of town for something bad to happen, anyways. He sighed in relief when the bus pulled up and he paid with his bus pass.

The bus generally took him to work, so he felt a little out of place being so dressed down. At his job, he didn’t really need to wear a suit, but he did wear a button up and slacks, sometimes a tie. He looked around and saw that other people were wearing nicer things, carrying laptop bags and briefcases. He was glad that his stop wasn’t too far down the road.

Stepping off the bus brought on a sigh of relief. Ryan looked ahead, across the street, to the state park he had chosen to explore today. Along with the bone-deep fear of water, Ryan also had an uncanny relationship with nature. Ever since he was a child, both animals and plants have had connections with him. He could nurse any house plant back to health. Deer would approach him on his walks in the woods. Dogs and cats acted calmer around him, as if he had some kind of aura that spoke their language, like he was telling them that they were safe now. All the better for his journey in learning more about the world around him. He remembered once, when he didn’t have his camera, he had been approached by a fox. It sniffed his hand and trotted along behind him through his walk that day. It had been so magical, if only he’d caught it on camera.

He dug his camera out of the bag and flicked it on as he crossed the street. He figured he’d just take the first trail he saw, and soon spotted one that was marked with stones. As he stepped into the woods, the feeling from earlier came back, but he brushed it off yet again. There was no need to worry, right?

Sara: Do you wanna hang out at your place today?

Shane squinted at the screen of his phone. He looked at the clock, but remembered that he’d actually unplugged it last night, so it wasn’t on. Judging by the light outside, he’d have to guess that it was around noon. He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips and let out a small groan.

Six months. Six months, he’d been a human without going back down, even once. He’d never been in the overworld for this long at once. It was exhausting, really. As a human, in his human body, he needed to do things, like eat, and sleep. In the underworld, he never needed to do these things. Drink nectar for pleasure, bathe to pass time, and lay in his bed covered in furs to see if they still smell like her.

Oh yes, he’d been in the overworld for six months, because he could have sworn he was getting close.

He wasn’t sure why he felt this way. There was no indication besides a tightness in his chest, an anxious feeling in his gut. His very soul reaching out, feeling hers reach back.

Shane: No, you know the rules. Corner café?

Since living in the overworld, Shane had discovered many things about humans. First of all, if you slip up and call yourself something like Hades, people don’t take you seriously. Shane did some searching on babynames.com to find an average kind of name for a male. Shane seemed like a pretty good name, and so that’s what he became. Eventually, it became natural to refer to himself as Shane, but in his slip up period, he hadn’t made any friends.

Well, he had made one friend.

Sara: okay fine… just so you know, your “rules” are dumb.

Sara was like a blessing. Shane had thought it was a good idea when he came up to the overworld to start his search via dating apps. Truthfully, he just didn’t know how or where to start searching, and he already had a curiosity about human dating, so he figured it wouldn’t hurt to try it out. He’d made a profile for himself, and the only person to actually respond and come through was Sara. They chatted online for hours at a time, and finally met up at a café.

Shane already knew that Sara wasn’t Persephone before they even physically met. He was sure that when he found her again, something in his chest would ignite. When he started messaging Sara, he’d been excited, but nothing seemed to click. They went on two dates before he told her this. Well, he told her that he didn’t think they were gonna work out, but followed it up with a friendship invitation, claiming he needed a friend because he was “new in town”. Sara had taken it really well, she almost seemed relieved when he asked if they could just be friends.

Shane: you know you like them ;) see you there.

Sara was interested in finding out more about him. She figured out quickly enough that he was looking for someone specific, not just anyone. Not someone he hadn’t met yet. Maybe it had been the faraway look in his eyes when his eyes happen to catch a bouquet of flowers. Maybe it was the desperate arch of his shoulders, always looking, head held up in search. Somehow, she knew, and she just wanted to help.

They were meeting today for coffee.

Shane threw on a flannel and sweater with jeans. Feeling comfortable, he grabbed his wallet and laptop bag. He discovered quite quickly that he couldn’t do much in the overworld without some form of currency, and apparently gold coins were a thing of the past, so he had to make due. He found a place that traded jewelry for cash, and happily traded some lesser crafts for enough money to live in the overworld. He left his apartment and walked down the street to the café to meet up with Sara. She lived closer to it, so she’d probably be there before him. He wondered if he should text her what he wanted, or just wait until he got there.

On his way to the café, he kept looking across the street at the state park. There was something about the park that was calling to him today. As he walked, the feeling grew stronger. He looked on curiously at the forest, wondering the world was trying to tell him something. If he did go into the park, what would he find there? The feeling was coming from an ancient part of him, one that has been searching for decades, for millennium, just to find her.

He managed to pull himself away for now, since he was nearly at the café, but it didn’t leave his mind.

The café door jingled when he entered, and he saw a girl life her head. She had short, curly hair was had been dyed a deep purple. She immediately beamed at him, waving him over. Shane came over and saw that she had a number on her table.

“Order something already?” he asked.

“Oh, don’t worry, I got you something,” she grinned. “You like tea, right?”

He blushed at the thoughtfulness. “Y-yeah, I love tea.”

“Oh! I’m glad I remembered, haha,” she said. “I got you tea. I figured, since I was already here…”

“That’s very nice of you,” he scratched the back of his neck. “Oh, how are you?”

Sara shrugged one shoulder and absently picked at a peeling bit of paint on the table. “Eh, I’m okay, better now that I have company!”

Shane moved his chair a little closer to her, draping an arm over her shoulder. “Oh, what happened?”

“Just another date fell through,” she muttered. “It’s so hard to find someone these days.”

“Oh yeah, tell me about it,” he laughed. She smiled up at him. Their conversation was interrupted by a server coming over and asking them if this was their order, and set down a tray. The tray had a steaming cup of tea, a mug of coffee, a bagel, and a bowl of yogurt with oats and fruit. Sara nodded enthusiastically, and the server left them, taking the number on their table.

“Is that all yours?” Shane asked, but then she handed him the bagel and cup of tea.

“Oops, looks like I got more food than I can eat…” she muttered, trying not to grin. Shane blushed.

“You didn’t need to get this…” he said, but smiled about it anyways. After making friends with Sara, Shane had realized how lonely he’d been all by himself for so long. It was good to have a friend. In the underworld, he never had any friends. Well, he didn’t try and make any either, but still.

“Well, I needed to pay you back for all those things you’ve done for me!” she insisted. Her hand ghosted over the necklace she was currently wearing. It was a small diamond moonstone on a silver chain. The moonstone was one of his favorite gemstones, and he basically hoarded them in his palace. They always gave off a calming aura, or at least it seemed like it. It reminded him of the underworld, or at least the good parts of it. Like standing on the white shore of the great river Acheron. Unlike Styx, Acheron was peaceful and pleasant. The yang to Styx’s yin.

He’d given her that necklace the day after they decided to just be friends. He wanted to thank her for sticking around. There weren’t many people who did that for him.

“Oh, you don’t have to,” he smiled, before spreading some cream cheese on his bagel. “But this bagel will do just fine.”

They talked for a bit, sipping their drinks and simply enjoying each other’s company. Eventually, though, the pull from earlier came back. Like a magnet in his gut, being attracted to something in the woods across the street. He gazed out the window, feeling himself zone out. He imagined his beautiful wife, the night before she killed herself. She was wearing a gorgeous crimson sheer dress, roses and sticks of red berries woven into her hair. The last place he saw her was when he had left her lounging on their bed, neck red from kisses, blinking sleepily up at him.

He shouldn’t have left her that night. He hadn’t been that busy, it could’ve waited, whatever it was. That had been so long ago. He’d let so many memories go, but not that one. Her dark eyes, heavy lashes, the curve of her body, the softness in her voice. It was all so clear, and yet, he had overlooked all the signs.

She hadn’t really been happy with him. There was always something calling her away. She was like a caged bird, a chained animal. She sang and smiled and laid down to be touched, but it was all for show. She might have loved him, but he wasn’t enough. He had never been enough, and he never would be. He didn’t own her, because no one could ever own such a spirit.

“Earth to Shane,” he was brought back by a hand waving in front of his face. Sara looked at him quizzically.

“Something on your mind, buddy?” she asked. He felt his chest tighten when he looked away from the window. He brought out his wallet and plucked out a few dollars.

“Hey, I gotta go, here’s some money for the tip,” he said, hurriedly.

“Wait, you’re leaving already?” she asked, looking a bit disappointed. She rolled with it, however, and called after him as he left the café. “Well, text me later, I guess!”

He looked into the woods across the street as he waited for the light to change. The feeling inside of him grew stronger the longer he stared. The feeling told him that she was close. She was there, in the woods.

“I don’t know if you’re really out there,” he whispered to himself. “But I’ll find you, I promise.”

#buzzfeed unsolved #gods au #hades and persephone au #shyan #skeptic believer #my fic #hope you like!!!#happy thanksgiving guys!!!#alreadydone99

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