The Colour Of Pomegranates

Chapter 60

There was something blissfully intimate about sitting at the dining table with your wife and feeding her small bites of everything.

'I really can't believe how much you can eat,' Hades chuckled. His mood had improved drastically, and it wasn't just his mood. It was his entire demeanor. Persephone did that to him, her slowly growing belly did that to him. He loathed Zeus and he still didn't know if he could forgive his offspring growing inside Persephone's belly - but the soothing feeling that one of them was his calmed him. He could feel it as well as Persephone. One of them would be his flesh and blood.

'Better believe it. I want an olive with whipped cream.' That's disgusting. He didn't say it out loud, though. Instead he picked up an olive, pitted it and coated it in whipped cream. He wouldn't put it past her if she only ate those disgusting combinations to taunt him. The thought alone made him smile.

'We have to go to Tartarus in the afternoon. We're expecting royal company.' 

She rolled her eyes. 'Will there be a time kings will be humbled before they come here? Especially those that die on the battlefield think they deserve a seat at our table. It's becoming tiresome.'

'It takes some time getting used to not being at the centre of your own universe.' Persephone scoffed, still not feeling an ounce of pity in her body. She wondered about that. She always thought she was a most emphatic being, she thought she was a god of mortals, but since her coming Down, it felt like anything but that. Sure, she felt a need to nourish and comfort any soul that asked for it, but she never pitied them. All the choices they made in life brought them to the point where they were right when they died. She never met a single soul she really pitied, not even Eurydice. Persephone didn't even know the colour of pity.

The goddess of Spring knew that all souls desperately longed to go to the Elysium Islands, but the Queen of Souls felt a stronger pull toward Tartarus. Maybe it was the tragedy of lost souls that had tasted nothing but blood. She thought about their selfish motivations and silly reasons to cloud the world in darkness and drown its inhabitants in crimson blood while Hades and herself rode into Tartarus.

'What is his name?' Persephone sat down in the throne and leant over to Hades, who sat next to her in a similar obsidian seat.

'Her name is Alexandra of Sparta.' Surprised, Persephone sat upright. Before she could ask anything else, the doors opened and two guarding satyrs brought in a tall woman, whose wavy blonde hair framed her beautiful face. She whipped it over her shoulder, as her hands were bound in front of her and looked up to the Queen and King of the Underworld, a curious glint in her chocolate brown eyes. After one of the satyrs brought a rolled up scroll of parchment up to Persephone, both of them left the room.

'So it is true,' the mortal said with an airy light voice that lacked respect, 'we are supposed to honour Persephone, fairest of the gods Below.'

'There's no need to mock me,' Persephone answered equally airily. 'Perhaps start with telling me why you are here.' They would always say it's a mistake, they would always beg for forgiveness, try to explain their actions. In the short time she had been Queen she had heard it all already.

'I don't know exactly,' Alexandra said, not breaking eye contact. 'I mean - is loving a woman wrong enough to be sent here? Is making love to a woman a sin? Or maybe it is the fact I killed my husband for her. Or the others. Maybe it is because I defiled the temple of Aphrodite, as I made her mine on those cold marble floors.' Persephone cocked her head to the side.

'Go on,' she said in a calm voice. 'I don't care who you loved but there's a lot more you're guilty of than defiling a temple.' Alexandra rolled her eyes.