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

19 | Grieving Had To Be Luminous

    White was the colour of mourning. Grieving had to be luminous, like funerary vessels, the marble stelae, and their tombs. They were to match the bright hopes, for the dead would have to find themselves through the dark, uncertain path they had to travel.

"I went down to the earth to forget you, my mother, and everybody else, but this, I can't take it. I can't take the sight of you with anybody else but me—the one you should have been with."
Persephone

She was one of them—a lost, divine soul within a world of mortals.

Being a woman for whom only beauty could distinguish her from the rest, Persephone had many trials to live among her new peers—the mortals. Under each new disguise, they made her a princess or claimed her to be the daughter of a goddess until she set her heart on the title of a 'Priestess of Aphrodite.' To further conceal her identity, Persephone isolated herself in the tower of Sestus on the European side of Hellespont, one of the narrowest and most treacherous navigation straits.

Yet day by day, solitude grew bitter in her mouth; it haunted her with memories of her childhood on Demeter's island while the inhabitants of the nearby village held another celebration to indulge themselves in food and merriness. Persephone envied them, and with nothing holding her back, she escaped from her lofty tower, blending among them.

In the middle of their festivities, Persephone met the familiar type of men who had crossed paths with her in so many ways. They were the young princes who had left home for the first time; they were the warriors in the prime of their lives, and what was a man of their time if they weren't after women?

Lost in her thoughts, she didn't see him coming, and he hit her on the left shoulder. He made her get out of her way, like a shockwave rippling through her body and casting a spell on her heart to suddenly beat again. When Persephone looked back, she saw a man behind her, resting against a tree. He was tall and handsome, and yet there was something mysterious about him.

From the height of her fortress of solitude, Persephone had built a world within the cage of her mind. Her eyes, who had seen everything, played out images for her to daze upon; they were the fold of legends, the gorges of fantasies squeezed into her wide imagination, and this man would just be another target to fulfil her failed life.

Through a flock of new couples created on that evening under the excuse of an umpteenth Aphrodite's festival, Persephone made her way to that man who had captured her senses. She was adamant about her quest; she would make him that one she dreamed of every night since he had abandoned her at Mount Olympus. When small talk died, she breathed life into his heart with the lock of their eyes, and word after word, he shaped himself into another ghost of Hades to her.

His awkwardness made her laugh with tears in her eyes, reminding her of that never-ending chess game she had with him once. They truly knew each other back then, but everything wasn't in place for them to be together. Everything sounded wrong back then. Everything was still wrong now, and yet the moment was too tempting not to fix this mistake of her past.

"What is the point of being alive if you have a heart to hide it away under armour?"

The question that escaped through Persephone's lips left her with a grin of sadness, and in this moment, the disarmed man just kissed her. His name was Leander, and from this night on, their bodies and minds joined together.

He explained to her that, because of his duty, he couldn't allow himself to get attached to anyone unless he was willing to lose them. With this, Persephone, who went by the name of Hero, weaved even bigger falsehoods to feed his curiosity, claiming that her parents wouldn't tolerate her having any relationship of any sort with any man.