Page 34 of Song of Memories

"Eurydice?" An excited voice called out from the melee of bodies. "I didn't think you would join us this evening!" Telodice appeared as naked as the day she was born, her golden hair tastefully arranged over her breasts. She looked like liquid in motion in the fire light, her body shining with fragranced oil that smelled like lilies.

"My friend," Eurydice practically breathed in relief, "I couldn't do it anymore." Eurydice started talking faster and faster. "I couldn't stay with Orpheus for one more second. That vile house, so far removed from the woods..."

"Whoa, Eurydice!" Telodice grabbed Eurydice's arm and pulled her towards the edge of the clearing, where it was only marginally quieter. "What are you talking about? Are you leaving Orpheus? That man loves you. I'm sure you can work it out. Whatever it is."

"He's not like us, Telodice," Eurydice grabbed her friend's shoulders and shook her gently. Eurydice's eyes were wild; her expression was crazed as her heart beat rapidly in her chest. "Do you understand? Can you try to understand? He wants to keep me like some garden flower, but he doesn't realize flowers are alive..."

Telodice looked startled, suddenly very worried about her friend. She said nothing as Eurydice went on, waxing lyric about the call of the wild and her need for freedom. Luckily, Telodice was a nymph, too, and at the end of the day, she would always understand the importance of being connected to nature.

"Stop now, Eurydice. Breathe." Telodice finally placed her finger gently over Eurydice's mouth to get her to stop talking. She smirked playfully, nodding towards the party that was descending further and further into Dionysian debauchery behind them. She grabbed Eurydice's hand and tugged her towards the beautiful chaos.

"Don't worry about that right now. You know what they say—party by moonlight, make decisions by sunlight." Telodice winked and ran right back towards a group of dryads on the edge of the clearing, sliding into one's lap without a second thought. Eurydice breathed a sigh of relief. This was the kind of wildness she craved.

Her heart faltered for a brief moment when the realization settled in that Pan was indeed not in the Underworld; he had chosen somewhere in Greece to spend the full moon. Eurydice walked towards the banquet table and poured herself a goblet of wine. She downed the entire glass without taking a breath and helped herself to a second. She let the wine trail down her chin and drip onto her short tunic, staining her skin and the fabric. Eurydice's head fell back, and she laughed again, pouring a third glass.

This was so much better than any of the dinner parties that Perseus or Orpheus would ever throw. Here, there was no one who would criticize her for spilling wine all down her body; Eurydice embraced it.

She waited until the wine started to pulse through her veins, making her pleasantly buzzed but with her wits about her. There was one way that she knew to channel Pan, to call out to him. He was a deity, after all, and every god had a way for worshippers to contact their gods.

Eurydice walked towards the edge of the clearing and began rummaging around in the grass. It only took her a few minutes to salvage what she needed—a dandelion, two mushrooms, and the bones of a hare. As she turned around and headed towards the fire, her tunic snagged on a low tree branch and ripped a tear through the fine fabric. Eurydice barely noticed, letting the tunic hang haphazardly from her shoulder.

She squeezed in between two dryads making out at the banquet table and grabbed an amphora. The wine never ran out, which was a benefit for all the creatures of the forest who were blessed by Dionysus and Pan. Eurydice carefully approached the fire, closing her eyes as she dug her feet into the sandy soil that surrounded the blaze.

Eurydice started chanting, a low, rhythmic sound that could hardly be heard above the raucous party happening all around her. She tuned it out, focusing all her senses on the heavy smoke of the incense and the beat of the drums. It was a steady cadence that mimicked her racing heart, making Eurydice feel like the drums were keeping her alive. She started to sweat from her close proximity to the fire, the cloying scent and wine mixing in her veins until she wasn't sure what was reality anymore. As soon as she crossed that threshold into the unknown, when her mind began to slip, she tossed everything she was holding into the fire.

The small bones crackled instantly from the heat as the dandelions and mushrooms charred; the wine caused the flames to stretch even higher in the night sky as they burned off the alcohol. As the wilderness accepted her offering, Eurydice's voice became clearer.

"Pan, god of the wilderness, purveyor of the forests, father of the trees. Pan Aegocerus, Pan Lyterius, Pan Maenalius..." Eurydice started to sway back and forth as she called out each of his epithets.

Pan was not a god of temples and ceremony; he was a god of edifices and altars, the cruder the better. Pan was a wild thing, rustic and unpredictable, and while his devotion to Eurydice had never been questioned, she knew that a traditional prayer would never get the satyr's attention. The only way to do it was to toss offerings into a burning fire and call out his many names—the wilder the setting, the better. The offerings could be any number of things, but they always had to include wine, at the very least.

Eurydice was lost to the rhythm of the drums, which picked up their tempo. She didn't know if it was all in her head or if the drummers realized that she was moving to the beat, but she didn't care. She swayed more drastically, her shoulders moving back and forth while her hips shimmied in an alternating rhythm. As if she had no control over her body, Eurydice started to pick up her feet. Before she knew it, she started to dance.

Eurydice began moving in a circle, embracing the warmth and smell of the flames. She moved like wind and water over the earth, weaving her hands together and tossing them up towards the sky in offering to Selene. Her hair was as bright as bronze in the glow of the raging fire, whipping around her face as though it had a mind of its own. Eurydice picked up her pace to match the escalating drums, closing her eyes as she began to spin in circles while she kept moving around the fire. All of her senses started to blur together until her consciousness slipped further and further away, leaving her with only the mind of a nymph. She was only preoccupied with what was in front of her, dancing and offering herself up to the wilderness in tribute. There was nothing else that mattered to her in that moment, besides her rhythmic movements around the flames.

Eurydice didn't notice that she had garnered the attention of the entire party, which had all but completely turned into an orgy. Several other nymphs and dryads got up and began to dance around the flames, following Eurydice's every movement. She was a painfully beautiful creature when she danced, every twist of her body carefully crafted, simultaneously effortlessly and unbelievably technical in every way. Eurydice was the physical embodiment of everything that was beautiful and wild about nature, as if Gaia carved Eurydice from her own breast.

The screams and shouts of the party continued to get louder and louder, and the drumbeat had reached an impossibly fast tempo. Eurydice didn't stop. She spun and spun, beginning to howl to the moon, revealing the most feral parts of herself that had been locked away for far too long. Even before Orpheus had arrived in the Underworld, Eurydice had lost this part of herself. Her only cognizant thought as she danced was the realization that there were parts of her that had been chained up since she met Orpheus—not even since their reunion.

Eurydice's body came alive in another burst of movement, and the strength of it shocked her. She kept dancing as the wine in her veins turned to arousal. There was a steady pulse between her legs that Eurydice hadn't felt in a long time. She had assumed that infallible lust and animalistic craving to touch and fuck had long ebbed away from her. At one point, she assumed it might have been a factor of simply getting older, even if she was immortal.

But another surge of arousal warmed Eurydice's body all over, hotter than even the fire could manage, and her eyes flew open with a gasp.

There, standing in front her, in the middle of the chaos and the reckless party happening in the woods...was Pan.

Eurydice didn't think; she acted. Without a moment's hesitation, Eurydice leaned forward, grabbed Pan by the face, and kissed him.

18

Pan had heard many whispers and legends about the end of the world over the years. Every deity had their own way of telling the story or preventing their demise during the apocalypse. Pan had spent too much time in the Underworld to ever question the Fates or the strength of the titans in Tartarus, so he never thought about it too much. Until the moment that Eurydice kissed him.

In a matter of seconds, Pan realized that the world could end at any time and only now would he die happy. For an immortal and a god who was infamous for always being in a good mood, even if he was a bit of a trickster—although you could hardly blame him when you considered his parentage—Pan was suddenly obsessed with the concept of mortality.

All it took was the feel of Eurydice's mouth against his, her fingers combing through his beard, and Pan was consumed with how much time he had left. No matter when the world ended, it wouldn't be enough time, especially if Eurydice kept kissing him like that.

He reacted entirely on instinct, his more beastly side taking over. He wrapped his arms around Eurydice's waist, pulling her body flush against his. All the blood in Pan's brain rushed south so quickly, he was practically lightheaded. He tightened his hold on Eurydice’s body, feeling the warmth of her skin through her ripped tunic, hotter than the flames they were standing in front of.

She was as soft as rose petals, and Pan's desire flooded his veins until he thought he might collapse if she walked away from him. One of his hands slid up Eurydice's back and into her hair, gripping it tightly and pulling on it as Pan took dominance over the kiss. He poured a hundred of years of longing into the embrace, holding onto Eurydice as though she was his oxygen.

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