Persephone Incarnate [Wattpad Prize 2014] | ✔️

{14} Sophie

Theview from up high was amazing.

Green pastures and fields and meadows, full of flowers and trees and animals – they all stretched out before me like a large green blanket. I could see so much more than I could from the ground, and the grasslands didn’t end after a few miles. No, they continued on and on, till they hit the purple mountains, to east, and the sea, to the west. The only hint that there was a sea at all had been the small glimmer of light.

Eventually, the clouds began to drift in front of us and cover our view of the land below. It was just plumes of misty white stretching out in all directions, and the only things I could now see were the Oceanids, the sky, and the staircase. Everything seemed clearer, thinner, bluer, up here.

“We’re almost there,” Rhodeia said, a little breathless.

Surprisingly, I didn’t feel the slightest bit tired. I hadn’t bothered to count how many steps or flights we’d gone up yet, but I could estimate several hundred, even thousands, now. It amazed me – was this the effect of being in Persephone’s body? Were the gods this tireless? My calves didn’t feel sore, I wasn’t out of breath; my body felt in top condition. I relished the feeling, knowing that I most likely wouldn’t ever be at this kind of physical condition ever again.

“Let’s rest for a bit, then,” Admete suggested. The six Oceanids sat down, grateful for the rest. I sat on another stair too, not exactly because I needed the rest, but because it seemed like a good time to rest.

“Anybody have ambrosia?” wailed a thin voice belonging to Ianthe, who I hadn’t heard from yet this entire time.

I looked over, and she looked close to fainting, slumped against some kind of invisible guardrail. Admete looked over calmly. “How much do you need?”

“What…happened?” I whispered to Rhodeia.

“Ianthe gets weak very easily. Zeus cursed her with lightness of head and with very little energy. She needs to sleep often and eat often.”

“Why would Zeus do that?” Our whispers were hushed as we talked to each other while shooting glances at Ianthe.

She snorted derisively. “What other reason would he need?”

I just looked at her, waiting for her to continue. She sighed, and gave me a small smile. “Sometimes I don’t know whether you’re innocent and naïve, or you’re just pretending to be innocent.” She paused again. “But, you know how fickle Zeus is.”

I thought back to Gavin. No, I don’t think I do, I thought with a half smirk, half wince. It was almost impossible to imagine Gavin ever being – I struggled for a word, but I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t derogatory in the slightest. Fine, player it is, was the final decision.

“I guess,” I muttered hesitantly.

She looked at as if she couldn’t believe what she was saying. “Persephone, you should know, better than anyone else. Zeus was once your suitor.”

I made a face. “He wasn’t a very good one,” and a memory immediately accompanied the sentence.

A snake, ten – no, maybe even longer, twenty feet, with a wide chest – much like the King Cobra – that eventually tapered down to the rest of its bulging, scaly body. I shivered at the image, though I tried to stop it, not wanting Rhodeia to figure out something was off. She was still talking about Zeus.

Obsidian with silver and gold stripes – that was the only way to describe it. Simple black and gray and yellow would not do – the snake was just too reptilian and too grand to give it’s coloring such plain names. Its intelligent amber eyes stared at her, and they looked too – too kind to belong to such a reptilian predator. It slithered closer in the grass, and her fist clenched tightly around the bundle of flowers she had in her hand. A thistle pushed into the palm of her hand, and she winced at the pain. A lukewarm liquid began to fill her hand, and she knew her ichor had started to flow.