Lady of Life and Death: A Persephone Novel (On Hold)

iv. (part b)

My mother had always been of the overprotective sort. With good reason, I supposed. I had grown up with tales of Zeus's exploits, tales of women taken by force, tales of Antiope, of Callisto, of Thalia.

I had known what could happen to pretty girls left alone, but never imagined it happening to me. It was the nativity of youth, I supposed. When you're young, you can't imagine anything other than the petty issues right in front of you.

That day, stories of women wronged in the worst of ways were far from my mind. I was nearing my second decade and obsessed with matters of courtship, as most teenagers were.

My mother did not approve, of course. She would have preferred if I had remained a virginal Goddess, like Artemis or Hestia. Maybe I would have agreed if I had known what being a lover goddess was like. The whispers that followed your every move. The awful words said behind your back. The shame that reeked from your body.

But, as I said, I was young and stupid.

There was a village near my mother's sacred fields, where we lived. I was forbidden to go to the village—to go anywhere unsupervised. Still, I had snuck to the outskirts of the village and laid in the long grasses to watch mortals at work. Pure curiosity, really.

It was there that a girl had stumbled upon me. She wasn't really a girl—she was the same age I had been. On the cusp of womanhood. There was no real word for that thing that was too innocent to be a woman, yet who faced the stares of men that said she was no longer a child.

The girl—I didn't remember her name—had thought me a nymph. I let her believe it; me revealing my true identity would only make her more nervous. She wasn't too alarmed when she found me, but was slightly warry. That wariness had faded as we conversed through the day. I had been fascinated with her world, and her with mine. Was it really true that dryads slept in trees? Did men actually bleed the color of fire?

We conversed until Apollo's chariot dipped below the horizon, until the girl flew up to her feet, remembering that her mother had sent her out to pick apples. She looked so distressed as she told me she had no time to get them now and that she would surely receive a beating.

Then she looked at me with beautiful wonder as I had grown a basketful of apples, as well as nuts and cherries to last her at least a moon. She had grinned at me as she leaned in and pecked me on the cheek before running off.

I had felt my face turn the same color as those apples as I watched her return home.

I returned the next day. And the next. As the hours passed I had grown unequivocally and ardently in love with her.

It was the naivety of youth, the passion of loneliness, sure, but it was still love. She was still my first love.

And I couldn't even remember her name.

That day.

That day I had gone to the meadow had been for her. I had wanted to pick flowers to make a crown for my beloved, to declare her queen of my heart and kiss her under the stars. I could have grown them for her, but she got freaked out when I used my powers. I wished to show her that I could do things the way mortals did.

There was a field on the edge of my mother's lands that had the best flowers. Dawn red dianthus, pale pink lilies, bright yellow daffodils. It was something even the most masterful artist would fail to imagine, the flowers so colorful, so vast. I had heard that the reason why the flowers were so magnificent was that the blood of a Titian had spilled in that very spot during the great Titanomachy.

Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn't. I only cared that the meadow's flowers were the best in the land.

I had gone alone, of course. Any nymph or minor god I could have brought along with me would immediately report back to my mother, who would punish me in turn. Her punishments were never harsh, but if I had to spend another month sitting at the loom, working on a dreadfully plain weaving with no one but a mute nymph for company, I would lose it.

And that was only for being on my own. I shuddered to imagine what she would do if she caught me alone with a mortal.

It wasn't so bad, being on my own. The murmur of the flowers brushing against each other was far more relaxing than the forrest of gossiping dryads who always seemed to follow me. The gentle heat of the sun beat against my back as I searched for the best flowers for my budding love.

I had leaned down to examine a pale blue bellflower when I had heard a rumbling. At first, it was a faint tremor, like someone approaching on horseback—but it grew and grew, stronger than thunder that came at the end of a searingly hot day. I looked around, trying to find the source of the chaos—but there was none. I wondered if this was an earthquake—waves of earth that clashed and receded at Poseidon's will.

Then the ground opened up.

And my future husband came with it. 

Notice:

This chapter is not complete. The rest of the chapter will be posted when I have time. 

- A. M.