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Death, like the seasons, is a balancing act, and Persephone has always been exceedingly good at knowing where and how to plant her feet.
She trails a green line behind her on her travels, seemingly unconscious of it. Here it is a vine to remember her mother by, there a river of frogs who don’t want anything to change, here the sickly glowworm pulse of a nightclub at the entrance to abyssal loneliness, and there the absinthe flare of a long-awaited moonbeam, but always it is green, green, green.
So much of this town is fueled by belief, no matter what her husband may say about electricity or the endless toil of innumerable souls. Hades has a fiercely powerful imagination so his factory town catches most of the dead. But if a person knows for their whole life what’s going to happen with an unshakable certainty, or if someone else simply gets to them before the train, then that’s what happens. Persephone can’t reach those ghosts to help or tempt them, but neither can Hades, so that’s a kind of balance too.
A book arrives in her lap. It is freezing to the touch, meaning it succumbed to fire and not water damage. She traces the gilt letters stamped onto the cover and reads the words that should mean she is able to open it about half the time. She is always either recently deceased or recently revived, depending on the season. Alternatively, she is never either one because The Abduction, as it is called, happened such a long time ago that she has become something wholly unclassifiable.
It would be so easy to bend the rules of the rulebook. It is made of paper meaning it is made of plants, so it is her mother’s domain and therefore hers. It is a weak argument, she knows, but just strong enough to tweak what needs tweaking. So she sits there with one thumb on the front cover and one on the back and makes the Underworld hold its breath for her to crack open the spine of it and suck its juices into herself.
She waits and makes all of Hades wait, one… two… and then she sets it down by her side. There is no flourish, no declaration, no bared teeth, just the quiet certain awareness that she doesn’t want to find her limits now, and she won’t find it out by cheating.
Persephone stands and holds the book with as few fingers as necessary to keep it from falling. She ties her hair in green and covers it with black before swaying her way to somewhere new.
“Hey there, Aunt Juno!” The roll of Persephone’s spine as she moves to lean her elbow on the front desk matches the curl of her smile: teasing, knowing, and more or less benign. “You’re looking good today.”
“Mm.” With a hydraulic puff the receptionist releases smoke from the hole in her throat. “Persephone. What are you trying to get here?"
“Me? Oh, nothing. Just returning a book to this side of the Netherworld.”
“Show me?” she grunts as she holds out a hand, and then she barely glances at the first couple pages before admitting, “Well it looks like everything is in order.”
Most people might have been fooled by Juno’s brusque manner, but not Persephone. This is the happiest her aunt has been since the divorce. Two millennia ago, finally tired of the cheating and the lies and the spells she kept working without knowing if it was to punish the girls for being chosen or to protect them from a god who could only stray, Hera finally told Zeus to shove it, changed her name, and dyed her hair.
“I’d wager your son is up there causing trouble,” Persephone says with a smirk.
“He’s probably trying to,” Juno scoffs, “but there’s only so much he can accomplish when most people fail to see him.”
“I don’t know, being noticed is also what he most desires. You’d be amazed what a body can accomplish when their weakness and their want line up so neatly.”
“Ah, now you’re giving him too much credit. Beetlejuice is a screwup and a very lonely man. He gets that from his father.” That would be Juno’s fourth husband, after the saint with an unfortunate tendency toward stigmata and before the aging cartographer who managed to map his way into her heart despite her best efforts. “But I thank you for the warning. I’ll keep an eye on things.”
“Juice.” says Persephone. “Come on, dude, give it up.”
“Don’t call me that,” he pouts, turning away with his arms crossed. “I hate it, it’s infantilizing.”
“Well, you’ll always be my baby cousin. If I can’t tease you, who else is there?” She sits on the slab of rock beside him but far enough that he can safely ignore her as he seems to want, and toys with the vine that’s sprouted up around her wrist.
“I don’t get it,” he mutters at last. “Haven’t I been good at scaring the living daylights out of people? Why did anything have to change?”
And Persephone melts — just a little, though; he’s still too much of a little shit to be completely pitiable. “Oh kid… Beetlejuice,” she corrects herself right away. “It’s true the earth must die, and so must everyone on it or below it. But even death only lasts so long, and even haunters have to fade away eventually.”
“You can’t say that sort of thing to me,” Beetlejuice grumbles. “You’ve never faded away from anything, you just move on to the next thing forever. Up Top or Hadestown, you’re always headed somewhere.”
“Oh, I see. You think that means I don’t know what it’s like to be out of place?” She pushes his chest lightly but only half-joking and he swats her hand away. “When you belong to two places all that means is that you’re always missing one of them."
“Sure, but you’re wanted. Or at least people are held in intimidated awe of you, and that’s all kinds of better.”
“I will never understand your goals,” she says flatly. “Listen, why don’t you come down to the speakeasy tonight? It’s one of the few places here that helps the dead remember how to feel, so you might stand a chance at scaring someone.”
“Hmm. It’s a far cry from a proper fright fest in the flesh, but it’s not nothing. I’ll give it a try. Maybe.”
“Then I’ll see you there.” Her mouth quirks. “Maybe.”