Meetings Through the Ages

"Eros, dear, can you perform a favor for me?" Aphrodite asks her only child, a handsome young man known for chasing skirts like his mother chases coattails.

"What is it Mother?" Eros responds, willing to humor his mother but not without information.

"I want you to strike Hades with your arrows child." Aphrodite says with a sweet smile to her young cherub.

"But why?" Eros frowns, confused by his mother's request. After all, it's not easy finding the King of the Underworld as he almost never rises from his gloomy dwelling.

"I just want everyone to be in love and happy child, that is my domain after all." Aphrodite responds with an innocent smile, Eros not falling for it for a second.

With a last glance, his mother's face still the epitome of innocence, he flies off the cloud and down toward Earth. Aiming, he shoots the King.
...

It is common knowledge that being shot with Eros' arrow means that you are doomed to love the first person you see.

What is less common is the knowledge that true love can break the arrow's spell, rare as though it is.

When Hades, the eldest brother of Cronus' children, is shot with a love arrow while looking at his sister's handiwork, he is immediately rejected by the young girl.

Heartbroken as only a Petrarchan lover is, he finds solace in a old yet fruitful pomegranate tree in the outskirts of a poor village and the rejected girl who tends it.

As he woos Persephone, Hades quickly begins to think that maybe Demeter's daughter is not the one he wants but is confused by the veil of the spell.

But how can he claim the hand of a mortal when such a relationship is condemned and forbidden by the rules set by his dear mother Rhea and his heart belongs to another?

Or does it?