Orfeo

seiya234:

hey hi hello my name is seiya and i love child ballads and very self wanky au-au’s inspired by child ballads.

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Once there were a pair of twins to a mortal woman born.

(Does this sound familiar? Perhaps this is in a place that is a distorted mirror to your own, only a hop skip and dimensional jump away. Or this is a bedtime story, told by a wizard to his recently found daughter. Or by a harried new father, or a sleepy uncle.

Perhaps you should keep reading regardless.)

The midwife rolled the bones, went through the ashes and the entrails, and then when that show was done for the parents, got her actual answer in a bowl of soup. One was fated to live and die, live and die, live and die a hundred thousand lives over and over again as we all are fated to do. The other however, would live until every star in the sky went out, and every other living thing died, and only then would he pass on to what was next.

Naturally, the couple didn’t take it well. Luckily, they had his uncle, an old man in the woods they could offload the b-

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the witch told them.

“How…how did you know?” the mother asked, a tremor in her voice.

The witch raised her eyebrow, and let them think it was magic and not forty years experience of the human condition and more specifically having to deal with unwanted children.

“You can keep both, or give both away,” the witch went on, “but you must keep them together or else.”

“Or else?” the father demanded.

The witch smelt fire in her nose, felt her skin crackle under the force of unnatural energies, and sighed. “Just fucking do it or I’ll curse you both with warts.”

Ten minutes later she had carefully bundled the babies and some goat milk into a basket, and was headed to the Old Fox. He was the trickster of all tricksters, a crank and a crook and not as good in bed as he thought he was, but the witch knew there was no better place for these babies to be than with him.

(you may be wondering where the beast with one eye is in this story. the answer is that he’s a big stinky jerk and will not be appearing tonight.)

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