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Abbot was forever indebted to Lady Persephone and Lord Hades for all they had done for him. To tell the short story, they had brought him to the Greek underworld via a good bit of bargaining and technicalities - while he had technically served Shamash all his life, the goddess he was most loyal to, before any other, was Persephone herself. She was his first and last unrequited love. Every woman in between - Ciro's mother included - had just been filler, even if he hadn't realized it at the time.

He was gradually coming to understand the afterlife and all its eccentricities. You could find as many able musicians as you liked, but none of them for the death of them could recall the chords to Sweet Child of Mine, Abbot included. Trivia became slippery in the underworld - you recalled who you were, your family and your birthday and even the name of your second grade teacher, but specific aspects of the world you had fallen from all fell away. He had a guitar here, hardly the vintage collection of Fenders he'd collected in the City, but it was a start. He'd done some writing of his own. He had a band. They got together and jammed whenever the urge seized them.

And the nymphs. He loved the nymphs. He loved how they would gather around him if he sat in the meadow and strummed long enough. He loved their interest in his music. He loved their interest in him.

Sex in the afterlife felt strangely hollow after the first few rolls in the hay. The novelty wore off, and where were you? A semi-corporeal ghost sticking his pecker in a thousand-year-old goddess who looked sixteen. Not that Abbot was tired of sex, just that sex was tired of Abbot.

The world was large yet small. Today he was walking, guitar strapped to his back, across the wide, verdant plains of the Greek hereafter. He had things to do. People to see. Someone to find. The god in his head had not spoken to him since he'd arrived - there was something else pulling him across the meadows of forever.

Trees were an occasional oddity in the fields. There were other parts of the afterlife where they were more common, but here the trees that dotted the plains served as little more than temporary rest for weary travelers. One such tree was rising ahead of Abbot.

His magnetic sense of direction pushed him towards it. He pushed through a sea of grass as high as his waist, and then past a curtain of branches into the cool inner shadow of the tree, where he paused, illuminated in silhouette by the light behind him. He looked the figure before him over.

Ciro.

He had heard rumors, but death had a tendency to eliminate your sense of credibility. Abbot had a sense that, as a father, albeit an almost entirely absentee one, it was his duty to say something profound to the son he had only met once.

"How far the mighty have fallen," he said, a grim smile crossing his face.

Abbot did as he was told - he sat and pulled his guitar into his lap. For a moment, he was silent as he regarded Ciro. His son looked far older than when he'd last seen him, over a year ago. Older, more tired, more burnt out.

"They hit you with more of those miracle hormones?" he asked. Whatever sort of survivor's guilt Ciro was feeling, Abbot didn't seem to acknowledge what part, if any, his son had played in his death.

He considered his guitar and plucked a few careful chords on it. "I've had a lot of time to myself," he explained as he played. "I've been writing."

Sidewalk performances of Christmas Carols aside, Abbot was a talented musician.

"This place has been good to me," he shrugged, still playing.

"This place is both a heaven and a hell," explained Abbot, starting to get lost in the melody. He thought, maybe, that he had known a song about that once. But he couldn't remember now.

He leaned back against the tree and thought that the only thing to make this better would be a cigarette. But he didn't smoke anymore. There was no tobacco in the underworld, and he didn't crave it. But damn, if there was one way to make him more of a cliche, he just needed a cigarette between his fingers.

"The suits shot me when I wouldn't talk," he said, picking the strings. "Persy and Anubis, they set me up right. Good folks, them. Always looked out for me."

"Wish I coulda looked out for you," he shrugged, "But what's done is done."

If you were good at this 'being dead' thing, you didn't dwell on the past for too long.

Abbot didn't say anything in reply. He didn't think he needed to, and he wasn't about to get particular about that sort of thing. Instead, he just played. If anything, being dead could bring more life to your music than you were ever able to instill it with when you still breathed. More than any other woman, Abbot had loved Persy, and more than Persy, Abbot loved his music. Persy, he knew, would never return any of the feelings he professed for her - she had always been married to Des - to Hades, whether she wore a ring or not.

But music always loved him back.

After a long time, Abbot stopped and finally spoke again. "Everything taken into consideration," he said, "It's good to see you, and I daresay the world is better off for it."

"I wouldn't have been a very good player," he conceded. "I haven't got the temperament for it."

"Let it go," sighed Abbot as he launched into another set of chords. But he understood that his son would not let it rest easily. They were so different in temperament - sometimes he wondered where Ciro got it.

"Many have tried to escape the afterlife," he shrugged, "But even the ancient Greeks knew death was a permanent condition. The mortal plane is a foolish concern, anyway. You're beyond it now."

He knew that his words were a flimsy excuse for comfort, but he said them anyway. A year in the underworld had made him a bit wiser for the wear. He knew what he was talking about.