Persephone Incarnate [Wattpad Prize 2014] | ✔️

{16} Sophie

It was beautiful.

Olympus was beautiful and wonderful and I couldn’t have imagined it no matter how hard I tried.

White clouds, tinged with pink swirled and bumped and moved all around. Cherubs sat next to their granite counterparts and giggled as they mimicked them. White-robed figures walked, flew, skipped, ran, all around the…kingdom – that was the only way to describe it – turning bends she couldn’t see around and going down staircases she would probably never walk.

An entire city spread out in front of me as I walked through the doorway – cobblestone streets with grand marble and granite buildings, a few smaller shacks and stores and homes sat next to them, tacky by comparison. There was no obvious organization to anything – a fountain was right in front of a ruined house, flowers and ivy wound their way up a staircase, a few staircases went sideways, upside down, and even curved in a loop before righting itself and continuing upward. Red eyed pigeons and horses with wings – pegasi, all of different colors roamed through the streets, mingling with the chaos of people, centaurs, nymphs, demigods, gods, goddesses – every living creature under, on, and above the Earth seemed to be here.

But it was still beautiful. Though everything was unorganized and wild, and I could barely hear my own thoughts, the place was obviously loved. Someone had put a lot of thought into the architecture, into how the stairs looked, into making sure the cobblestones were nice and even and without cracks. And despite all the clamoring and yelling in the crowds, there were smiles on every face and laughter was apparent, above all the screaming.

I voiced my thoughts breathlessly.

Admete scoffed. “This is even worse than last time, Persephone.”

Cyane apparently decided there would be an uneasy truce between us, and agreed. “You obviously haven’t been home in a while.”

“But it’s all so…” I struggled to find a word to describe it. I had already told them it was beautiful, but they didn’t see the beauty in it. I wanted to sum up what I really felt about it, beyond its outer appearance. And then the perfect word came to me. “Alive. The city. It’s alive!”

Rhodeia smiled. “That’s better. Yes, you could definitely say that.” She looked out at the city, with pride. “Olympus – the fire of the Greek civilization. You could say that if Athens was the capitol of Greece, then Olympus is Greece itself. More specifically, the embodiment of Greek culture.”

“Well,” Admete said, irritated, “Greece is being especially annoying right now. It’s in our way. We’ll never get to Demeter in time.”

“Why? Is she going somewhere?”

She sighed, exasperated. “She’s got tea with Zeus or something, I don’t know.”

Ianthe unsteadily took a few steps forward, and Leuccipe immediately lurched after her, just in case she fell.

“I’m alright, Leucippe,” she said, and waved off the hovering nymph.

She took a few more steps, stopped, took a deep breath, and started singing. It was a quiet sound, and if it weren’t for the fact that I was standing just a few feet away from her, I wouldn’t have heard it at all. I unconsciously stepped forward, wanting to hear what she was singing. It was unintelligible to me, but when I looked at the Oceanids around me, they smiled and murmured at each other.

“Is she singing in Greek?” I whispered to Rhodeia. I had now come to trust her to give me details about everything and inform me of what was going on. She didn’t look at me strangely, like I was an idiot, or like I should’ve known all this already.