E X T R A : one more for the road.

[ It's not routine as such, routine would mean he did it consistently, and as with everything else about Elio, even now, hundreds of years later, his ways are a bit more chaotic than that. The only thing he does consistently is music.

Music and Lucifer, relatively, at least. It's been a summer now. Thousands of years in Hell.

This fall, though, like the fall three falls over, he's decided to go the extra mile. Before he left Hell, in one of Lucifer's and his quiet moments, it might have been post-orgasmic, too, he can't exactly recall any longer, seeing as he was on the verge of sleep either way and they do have a lot of sex, Lucifer had manifested one of those places to him from his past, things he missed about Earth, now that he never goes up any longer, except to bring Elio down. Elio doesn't think the Devil does these manifestations very consciously, it would be pretty unlike him, after all, but he pays attention even so, he'd remembered the structures, the desert, the hot gusts of wind like echoes against his skin.

Then, once on Earth, back in the world that is and isn't his, he'd looked the name up on the Web. Pasargadae. His father mentioned it sometimes in his moments of lecturing. Iran. Shiraz. Muslim territory, that would once have been more difficult for him to enter, but the world has changed and Islam has changed, too. So has Jewish beliefs. Interrelational affairs between the two. Jerusalem has become a beacon of co-existence. The wars in the area are long since over. What the Achaemenid Empire once was to the world, New Jerusalem is now.

Iran has opened up to the world, too. Elio found that he was a plane ticket away from Shiraz, a shorter ride by bus from the still active archaelogical site.

So, when everything that leads below had started singing to him, he'd made his preparations. One-way ticket to Iran. A hotel room in Shiraz for as long as he needed. He always travels light anyway.

The hotel he has picked has a piano in the lounge that he's been allowed to use at his own discretion, that's all Elio ever really asks.

It's his fourth day here. Every morning, he commutes to the site and goes for a long walk, it has expanded in the time that has passed, it's six times the size it was when Elio's father was alive to talk about it. Cyrus' tomb is still at its heart, the tomb once believed to belong to Salomon's mother. Things change. Things are always changing. Everything except Elio. Still early 30's, still wearing Lucifer's bracelet. Still longing to go home, half the time.

He stops in front of a row of huge columns that are reminiscent of the Greek style, except not completely. If he was his father or if he had been Oliver, he could probably tell the difference, but he is neither and all he can really gather from looking up and up and up, blinking against the sunlight, is that Earth hasn't changed much in thousands of years, except in the detail and who gets to live long enough to look that closely.

Except Lucifer. And him. ]