Rose and Asphodel

No Harm in Writing Letters

Demeter stuck Artemis' note to the wall with a pin and ignored it for as long as she possibly could. Persephone knew not to bother her about it. The last time they had argued about something major, like letting Persephone leave the house or think for herself, the consequences had not been pretty.

Persephone still remembered the feeling of the basement cement against her cheekbone. She'd slept for two months, away from the energy the sun provided. Her mother refused to talk to her for months afterward because Persephone had been giving her the silent treatment.

I was asleep! Persephone wanted to scream. It's not the silent treatment if you're the one who locked me in there without any sun!

That would never work with Demeter.

Demeter was a good person. That much Persephone knew for sure, down to the marrow of her bones. Her mother was a good person. The standards may have been low—after all, who wasn't a good person when compared with Zeus?—but Demeter protected her realm, provided for the nymphs, gave sanctuary to any roaming mortal who needed it, and made sure that the mortal world was running smoothly while the rest of the gods were off wreaking havoc.

She was a good person.

She just wasn't a good mother.

Persephone had realized that thanks to a note from Hades, who had mentioned it in passing. He had that habit, she'd realized over the years; Hades would say something profound as though it was a remark on the weather, and it would completely change the way Persephone looked at the world.

Hades said she did the same for him. Perhaps that was true, but Hades had seen more of the world. He had less to find out, less to correct in his own perception.

One day, Persephone would stand next to him, looking out over Olympus.

Hades would name every one of the innumerable faces and Persephone would name every one of the innumerable plants and together they would snicker together, swathed in each other's warmth.

She had never confided that dream to Hades. He wouldn't laugh at her for it, but there was something about it that seemed...juvenile.

Persephone kept that image in mind as she skirted around her mother for the next week. Her mother, golden-haired like Persephone, swept through the Southlands like a hurricane, collecting tithes and destroying crops and occasionally blessing farmers with a nice harvest of radishes.

When, the night before the beginning of the Solstice festival, Demeter texted Persephone: Will b home 4 dinner, Persephone startled in her seat.

One of the Oceanids the next table down glanced over with that look of chastising concern that Persephone hated so much. When Persephone waved her off, the girl tossed her hair, which rippled a fluid blue like the tide, and turned back to her work on a weaving project she and her sisters had started the week before.

"Demeter will be home for dinner," Persephone announced to nobody in particular. The hall flowed from a quiet hum of busywork to a great clattering rush of Oceanids tumbling over themselves and one another to get their work done as quickly as possible.

Demeter's rage at unfinished work was as endless as the fields beyond the hall's windows and as brutal as a blight.

Persephone slipped away from the wood-walled main hall as soon as she reasonably could, and headed for the library.

Fortunately, nobody tried to follow her down the corridor. The floor had been grass once, before Persephone was born (well, thought into existence; Demeter was her only parent). Then something had happened when she had first toddled down the hall, feet shuffling through the grass, and her mother had demanded that every plant be removed from the house.