Title: Rock Concert
Fandom: Ovid's Metamorphoses
Length: 200
Content notes: brief mention of canonical violence
Rating: G
Characters: Sisyphus, Orpheus, mentions of others
Author note: Based on Metamorphoses Book X and other myths involving Sisyphus
Synopsis: Sisyphus thinks Ovid is an unreliable narrator.




The way Ovid tells it, afterwards, it's the music that does it. Stopped in his tracks like the rest of them: the bloodless ghosts weeping, Tantalus forgetting his thirst, Ixion's wheel stalled, the vultures raising their beaks from Tityus's liver, the Danaides ignoring their sieves. And you, Sisyphus, sat down on your rock! Weak at the knees for a lyre-player's song. Like hell.

It's the sort of guff a poet would come up with. Bloody artists, think the world revolves around them. Look, you're talking about a man who put Death himself in chains (Thanatos or Hades, take your pick) till the earth groaned with those who could not die. A man who blagged his way back to the upper world by claiming his wife hadn't given him a proper burial and he needed to tear her off a strip. (Stupid woman, his wife, but at least she could follow orders.)

So when Orpheus crashes into the Underworld caterwauling about his wife, pleading with Hades to give her back to him or take him as well, because life is meaningless without Eurydice, well, naturally Sisyphus wants a ringside seat to see how this one's going to play out. Wouldn't you?