Persephone Incarnate [Wattpad Prize 2014] | ✔️

{24} Sophie

The walk to Eleusis was long and relatively silent. No one wanted to break the delicate silence of the night, and anytime one of us spoke, it seemed far too loud.

We trekked through forests and meadows, over rocky terrain and sandy beaches, accompanied only by crickets, the sound of the sea, and the moon. It seemed like a lonely way to travel, but we had each other, and there was always so much to see.

I couldn’t help but wonder many times what all of this wilderness looked like now, in my time, in the future – was it home to a towering city or just a small town of low-ceiling one to two story buildings? Were there cars puttering around new roads and cruise liners drifting off to sea from ocean ports built here and there? Was this forest gone, chopped down one by one, then a few hundred at a time, gone to be used by a school or a home somewhere?

I wasn’t sure whether to feel sad or guilty or just far apart from all of it, since I was technically in a time before all of that, but I was very much a part of that consumer culture.

“Persephone, are you coming?” Cyane hissed at me.

I hurried up and matched her pace – I had fallen back behind the group without meaning to.

“Do you know if we’re almost there yet?” I asked her, easily matching her long strides.

Cyane sighed and looked like she wanted to get away from me as fast as possible. “It’ll take a few more hours by foot, last I heard,”

“Good,” I nodded and distanced myself from her. Cyane didn’t have any lost love for me, that was for sure. If I wanted conversation, I was going to have to find it somewhere else.

I fell back behind the Oceanids again, liking where I’d been. I really wasn’t in a talkative mood right now – my head felt a little fuzzy and hazy and I couldn’t seem to think clearly.  It was like waking up with a skull filled with cotton balls, and trying to think through them was nearly impossible. It wasn’t that it hurt to do so – it just wasn’t possible.

I really want to sleep. The thought flickered into my mind without any actual…well, thought behind it, but it seemed to make a lot of sense to me right now. It was the middle of the night, and instead of being somewhere warm and cozy, under my covers, I was travelling through a countryside, on foot, no less, and it was kind of chilly and my head didn’t feel right and my eyelids were getting heavy…

I tripped forward. My eyes jerked open and pain shot up and over and all around my body. Ow. That really hurt!

My mind was suddenly racing with thoughts of where I’d landed and how much it hurt to land there. My nerve endings were on fire, and the skin around my hands, which I had pressed into the ground as a reflex, were red as a rash. It stung the moment I lifted it off the ground to take a look at it, and I winced at the imprints of rock and gravel and an actual pebble that had embedded itself into my skin. It wasn’t very deep, but I was disgusted and in pain, and I couldn’t look at it without feeling all of those emotions coming back.

I set my hand back carefully on the ground and tried to sit up, but my palm screamed in agony as I pressed it into the ground for leverage. I bit my lip at the spasm of pain that shot up my elbow and tried to stop my eyes from watering. This isn’t even my body, so it’s okay. This is the body of a goddess, you’ll be fine. Just need to get some nectar and ambrosia from Admete.

With the help of my other, (thankfully) uninjured hand, I was able to pull myself up into a sitting position. It revealed cuts and rashes and oozing ichor all over my legs. They burned and stung and dug into me – my legs were on fire. But still I refused to cry. I’d already made up my mind earlier to face these kinds of situations with a new mindset, a stronger mindset, so that meant I had to pull myself together.