Persephone Incarnate [Wattpad Prize 2014] | ✔️

{4} Sophie

Sophie! Sophie! Wake up, for goodness sakes! You sleep so heavily!

I groaned as I heard a voice. It was coming from above me…no…to my right…my tired mind gave up trying to pinpoint the location. Was it morning already? Why did I feel so tired then? I felt like I had just pulled an all-nighter, and had just woken up in the morning, only to find that I’d just taken a five minute snooze.

Sophie Claire!

“Whaaaa?” I mumbled, still half-asleep. There was a shining ocean in my head. And there was a palm tree on an island, and I was sitting on the shore staring at it for some reason and –

SOPHIE! GET UP.

I jerked up immediately. The voice was so loud that it was still resounding in my earlobes.

“Mom?” I said, sleepily. “Why is it so dark? I’m not supposed to wake up until 7.”

I flopped back into the covers again – except there were none. I was lying on a bed, but I didn’t have blankets covering me for some reason. And the bed felt too soft and too big to be mine. I felt around me, confused. I was definitely feeling more awake by now.

It took me a second to get my bearings, but I soon figured out that I was on a large canopy bed, in a room full of wine reds and midnight blacks.

“Where am I?”

Persephone answered immediately. The Underworld.

“What do you mean, the Underworld? I was just in my own room last night!” my voice was rising in pitch as I started to panic. What Underworld? How? What? My mind churned and flipped full 360s just trying to process what Persephone had said.

Sophie, calm down and stay quiet. This must be the Furies’ doing.

“The Furies? And could you explain what you’re saying to me better?” I tried to sound as calm as possible, though confusion and some panic were rolling around in my brain. I still hadn’t make a bridge in my mind between being in my own bed and suddenly being in the Underworld. The fact that I was in the Underworld was scary enough on its own. I’d seen the memories last night, and Persephone had filtered that, in a way, because she saw only what she wanted to see. But to be here in person – there was no filter. I had to enjoy the horrors of the Underworld with eyes wide open.

“Wait, I’m not dead, right?” The possibility suddenly occurred to me. Of all the reasons why I could be here, the one about being dead had not occurred to me yet. But it was very logical – because why else would I be here? I looked around and stared gloomily at the room, and it seemed to radiate sadness back to me. I got up and padded toward the walls – blank and empty of anything personal, of any photography or paintings. There weren’t even any windows, though that did make sense. The only color in the room belonged to my pajamas, bright blues among dark, masculine color.

No.

Wait.

I looked at my clothes, and had to rub my eyes several times. I wasn’t wearing my pajamas anymore, but instead, a long, white strapless empire-waist gown that fell in elegant ripples onto the ground. I swore I had been wearing blue pajamas just a moment ago.

As I examined the material of the dress, I couldn’t help but admire it. It wasn’t bad looking, it was really quite pretty. “But why give a gown to a dead girl?” I murmured.

Are you done now? Persephone’s voice was acerbic in my head.

Without waiting for a response, she continued to talk, hurriedly and sharply. You’re not dead, Sophie. The Furies’, probably under Hades command, brought you here. This is a trial, but also a last-ditch effort by Hades to keep you close to him. This is his last chance to persuade me to stay with him willingly, because after your lifetime, all of us that have reawakened will return back to our godly forms. But this time, history does not repeat – I don’t need to stay with him for seven months a year, because we no longer need to create an explanation for why winter exists. As long as we are not needed for the cause, the myth is useless and not binding to us – it will simply be a story that no one, not even the gods, believe anymore.