Hell Is An Empty Body (Book Two of The Triple Moon's Chronicles)

07 | Dancing On Elusive Pattern

Moon and stars twinkled above the dark passing clouds. The night was bright. The night was young in the suspended jungle of Rhea and yet within a trice; it was already wrapped under a thick coat of black velvet.

Her sight flickered back and forth from death to life. She had lost count of time and could only see glimpses of colourful spots. Sometimes they were torches from the tent where she was, sometimes they came with muffled voices that made her remembered those surrounding her.

There was her mother, Rhea, behind her whose laps were used as a birthing reclining seat, then there was her sister Hestia, who held on tight to her left hand. Opposite to her was the kind Attis who kept on wiping her forehead with a cold damped cloth. She was there as a nurse to Artemis, who had taken charge of the delivery as the head midwife.

Finally, there was Persephone, who clenched and unclenched her jaw in the shadow of a corner.

In the contrary to her firstborn, Demeter's second child had to come into the world at night. The kind of evening where peace and poetry had merged, the moment that heart and soul had chanted in perfect unison, the warm lulling night in which Demeter felt stabbed by the escalating pains of each contraction.

Her body had pushed as much as she could. The surrounding voices had screamed with excitement at the first sight of a blond hair shred; except for herself.

She suddenly melted into tears. She couldn't take the agony anymore and in a spur of madness, she shouted her desertion out loud.

"I can't do it!"

Demeter's face slacked, pushing away anyone around her. No one could soothe her mind apart from her own daughter. Persephone came forward to her mother and laid by her side. She stroked the rounded tummy of the breathless Demeter and between their locked eyes to their joined hands; she gave the last strength her mother needed to get her newborn out into the frightening world.

Loud cries resounded all over the quiet jungle while Demeter fainted from exhaustion.

Attis quickly went out to call Poseidon in while Artemis handed to Rhea a burning red dagger. Rhea laid the head of the poorly Demeter on the ground to sever the umbilical cord linking the mother to her child. A baby girl that she then handed to the care of Persephone.

The latter sat up and held on tight to her sister, who gripped on her finger.

Tilting her body towards Persephone, Artemis asked, "Do you have a name for her, Lady Demeter?"

"Daeira," she gasped out through her shut eyes. "Daeira, the Knowing One," she repeated in tiredness before Poseidon stormed under the tent. He snatched the child from Persephone's arms, leaving her there.

Persephone planted herself there, growing roots while watching with an empty stare the newly happy family of Demeter and Poseidon coming together.

If only Demeter had returned the gaze of Persephone in that moment, she would have noticed the puffy eyes, the drooped shoulders, and the cross of arms. The insecurities that roiled on Persephone's stomach as she was not Daeria, but an unwanted child conceived from a rape.

Maybe if she did, Persephone would have been there today with them. It was on that thought that Demeter stroked the space next to her, the inability to fill her lungs entirely consuming her.

Persephone should have been with her and Daeira in the carriage of Triton.

If Ascalaphus was now Hades' harbinger of doom, while Hermes was Zeus' herald of hope, Poseidon appointed his son as his messenger.