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

11 | Chased His Evil Away

    Mild and sweet with a woody note was the invisible marjoram redolence crowning their heads; they were almighty in chests glistening with palm oil and arms coated in a cooling green mint scent. Walking chin up on their oregano-oiled feet and fresh thyme-scented knees, they were all odourless to Hades, who dashed his way into the mortal world. Only one perfume lingered in his nostrils, mind, and heart.

The cursed pomegranates of Persephone.

She was the delicious aroma that chased his evil away, and he wept in solitude from his unblinking eyes fixed on the road ahead. This fragrance would be forever buried with her, as he had made her his antidote, but her charm worked not only on Hades.

Hermes wasn't the only one to fall under her spell either—the perfume of Persephone didn't leave any of them unmoved.

By returning Hades' love, she had broken four hearts at once. Ares's volatile heart somehow found a place for the sweet Persephone. Hephaestus, the gods' blacksmith and sculptor at heart—the shy and ugly Olympians also had a soft spot for the caring Persephone.

However, the one who had the closest chance to reach her heart after Hermes was Apollo, the twin brother of Artemis.

He didn't talk to her much, but his attraction to her was obvious. Her sweet smell was love at first sight to him, which made him act on his feelings by doing the most decent thing of their time: showering Demeter with gifts, but she returned all of them back to him, thus rejecting his request with no given explanation.

Apollo didn't take the refusal badly, as his first choice wasn't Persephone but Hestia. The goddess of Hearth who created fire like she created a brief glow on his cheeks. The patroness of meals whom the beauty made him lick his tongue, hungry for another kind of taste. Hestia was melody from his harp, doodle in the air making Apollo spending hours at night in front of her temple, staring at the window of her chamber.

And once again, Apollo acted on his feelings and was about to approach her when he spotted in her chamber the disgusting creature named Priapus.

Aphrodite, his mother, fashioned him in all the obscenity of lust. The repulsive Priapus emerged from her wild fantasy to possess a son or more a pet with the biggest of all the divine phallus—her objectification of the patriarchal domination. Priapus caused fear and panic among all the female deities.

Wasting no time, Apollo rushed into the temple and wrestled Priapus to protect Hestia. However, when she awoke and saw them both at the feet of her bed, she lashed out the most piercing screams, rendering them both deaf with the only option of leaving her abode at once.

After his failed attempt on Hestia, love finally smiled upon the unlucky Apollo. He was being followed all around Mount Olympus, harassed deep into his own home—the Lost Mountains—by not just one but nine goddesses. They were the muse daughters of Zeus and the Titanides Mnemosyne. Each was more talented in art than the other, matching Apollo's domain of deity.

However, as Demeter would later rebuke him, Apollo couldn't live with nine sisters as concubines, and because he couldn't pick one of them to be his only bride, they all gave up on him.

If no goddess wanted to love him, maybe a nymph would, and Apollo fell in love with the beautiful Daphne. To the contrary of a goddess, Apollo wouldn't need to woo her, so he pursued her until she found nowhere to hide from him. She was so frightened by his powerful display of love that she begged Mother Gaia herself to turn her into a laurel tree so he would no longer desire her.

And Gaia granted her wish to the despair of Apollo.

His only choice left was now the lowest of all the lovers for a god, a mortal, and he picked at first a male lover for a change. His new venture was still unsuccessful, as he accidentally murdered Hyacinth with one stray throw of a discus, thus transforming him into a flower.

Since then, Apollo had many other mortal lovers and enjoyed their company a lot, even more than those at Mount Olympus, but one beautiful mortal princess had all the favours from his heart, and her name was Coronis.