Persephone's Promise

Tamara had always seen herself as Persephone.

Taken way too soon by a man from the arms of her family, straight to hell. And what a long hell it had been. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to stop those memories from rushing back in front of her eyes, as they had done countless times before – it was too painful.

Instead, she kept her eyes closed and breathed in deeply, taking in the heartening scent of the purple hyacinths she grew in the Noris garden. When she was taken from Russia, Tamara couldn't bring many things with her to France - a few changes of clothes, a ring from her mother and some seeds from her garden, which was neither as big nor as luxurious as the garden in which she found herself. Since then, her only shelter was to see her flowers growing, regardless of where she was, like the goddess of the underworld herself.

So if she was supposed to be Persephone, why, when she opened her eyes and looked up, meeting Hélène's lost gaze, did she feel like Hades himself?

Maybe Tamara had spent too much time in the underworld after all. Perhaps, with the death of the man who took her as his wife and the abandonment of the only woman she had ever loved before Hélène, she had taken her place on a cold and haughty throne, meticulously caring for every soul from her past that still swam in her river Styx.

And now, Rene Noris had also been brought by Charon, with golden coins in his eyes, just six months after their marriage.

Tamara almost wanted to snicker when she thought of the irony, but she didn't. Instead, she turned her eyes back to the flowers, letting her hands nourish the soil once more as her tears fell onto the purple petals.

There, she had built, like a sanctuary, her own garden of shadows and, like Hades, she knew that there she would remain until the end of time – she had nowhere else to go. Tamara was trapped, once again, in a golden cage, built by her own fear and greed.

Even so, she continued to plant and care for each new species of flora every day, knowing that, at night, other feet walked the large land.

It's almost like a curse, Tamara reflected.

Since Rene's passing, Hélène no longer left her room during the day, avoiding any contact with her first and only lover, restricting herself to looking down at her through her bedroom window in an unsettling silence. She couldn't remember the last time she heard the girl's sweet voice.

But Tamara could hear her sobs and desolate cries at night, as the brunette sat beneath the punica granatum that had only recently begun to bloom. Only then, from the privacy of her own room, the roles were reversed and she spent hours on end watching her little Persephone, swallowed by the darkness of the underworld to which she had been kidnapped.

That day, however, she herself had fallen asleep under the same tree, selfishly wanting to feel any trace of Hélène's presence once more.

So when her eyes opened again, heavy and blurry, she thought for a moment she was in a dream. Not infrequently she used to see her angel in her purest dreams and most sordid nightmares, only to wake up in her bed, which was always as empty as her soul.

But this time, the ethereal figure remained standing right in front of her, looking at her with uncertainty in her bright brown eyes, like the fertile soil that carries the secrets of a blossoming forest. Without needing to take her gaze off the girl, she immediately knew that it was a full moon night, by how strongly her night-dark eyes and hair reflected the white starlight, a vision of earth's rebirth in human form.

"I just came to get..." Hélène hesitated, looking around.

"To get...?" Her voice was hoarse, but gentler than ever, like someone approaching a skittish little animal.