The Taste Of Divinity

Δ Ε Κ Α Π Ε Ν Τ Ε

The first eight nights, she used her nails to scratch the skin his warm, blunt fingertips had touched, leaving red marks in her wake, a tattoo that would fade when the stars in his underground sky were finally put to rest.

Those nights, when madness conquered her, when she was delirious and did not recognise the flesh she wore, she'd go to the mirror by the ruby encrusted bed and watch as her reflection slowly changed, as her wheat coloured hair grew darker and darker until it lay in dark strands over her bare breasts.

She'd curse him for stealing her those nights. Naked and shaking, she'd curse. And she screamed and yelled until the shadows held their breaths in their lungs and slid back to the security of the darkness, desperate to avoid the wrath of the Goddess.

And so did the almighty King, the Receiver of Many, whose steps caused the earth to shake. He hid in his chamber and counted the tears falling from her eyes as they kissed the cold, granite floor.

No, he did not fear her, did not fear the darkness in her heart, merely acknowledged that she was beginning to discover her true nature, a nature that both gave life and took it away.

He did not fear her.

After all, who could ever fear their own soul?

All those nights Aidoneus remained unmoving, until the cries stopped and her breaths no longer touched his skin. He lost himself those nights, doubted his feelings for her as he felt her suffer. Surely, love doesn't make one suffer. Surely, love protects and worships.

And then, he'd curse himself for ever doubting what had pained him all those years.

He'd fall to his bed once her feet no longer hit the floor, his naked skin glistening under the pale light. But he wouldn't sleep. He'd twist and turn and picture her only meters away, so far away. And he'd shake, a fever unlike any other conquering his body and feeding on it.

Perhaps, it had been a mistake to give her the room that accompanied his.

He could feel her through the walls.

He'd spent hours picturing her on the bed he'd commissioned Hephaestus to make, throwing precious jewels at his hands while asking him to wield metal into flowers, narcissi with a hundred petals and a hundred bleeding colours. He'd thought it appropriate.

He wondered if her fingers ever trailed the metal flowers as though they were her thighs, softly with the eagerness and the excitement of an addict. He wondered if she slept fitfully or if, when sleep claimed her, she became docile and surrendered immediately.

He did not know that Persephone had not spent a single night in that bed, that she refused to accept any more gifts coming from him, that every night she opened the large doors and stepped outside, to the garden where asphodels grew and willows wept.

She lay her aching body to the soft ground and slept, surrounded by what was familiar and sweet. Comforting.

❁❁

"Calming, isn't it?" The decadently suave voice came from behind her and the young Goddess had to press the heels of her feet to the earth and bite her cheeks in order to keep the startled yelp from falling out of her lips. "I often come here myself, to get away from the rest of the world. Only the trees speak here and their words are always comforting."

That night, the eighth night, after the first soundless sobs and the liquid detachment that fell onto her high cheekbones, she'd gone to the garden. She'd fallen to her knees and pressed her back against an ash grey poplar tree, thinking and renting the petals off of the asphodels in her hands.