1. I added the scenes leading up to and including Persephone's "abduction."
2. I added a bit to the end of the last scene I posted.
3. I did some half-assed research to figure out who Persephone might hang out with and who witnessed the abduction besides Helios. (Helios just sort of witnesses everything.) In some places it says she was with and bunch of nymphs and Artemis and Athena (yet none of these ladies did anything to intervene? really?), and then I found one myth where her friend Cyane tries to stop Hades and gets herself turned into a fountain/well/some sort of water work. (You're a swell man, Hades.) Arethusa is a nymph/devotee of Artemis I picked randomly off a list. YAY.
4. The thing about the mirror and shadows I pulled out of my butt and is ungrounded in mythology (rule of cool?). It's late. I'll probably regret it in the morning.
5. Why is this so fun?
--
Hades had noticed her, of course, in the way that everyone noticed Persephone. Demeter’s precious daughter was a beast of a child. Demeter called her free-spirited and dressed her up and did her hair. Quite a few gods called her a wild child, as she flirted and teased and twirled her hair as it messily fell out of her mother’s carefully crafted braids. Hades, having only spoken to her once, was more inclined to call her an uncouth gremlin.
He didn’t spend much time on Olympus, but he showed up for the bigger parties and gatherings for the sake of maintaining face. For this particular reunion, Aphrodite and Hephaestus were renewing their wedding vows. Again. Apparently Aphrodite thought this would make up for her frequent bouts of infidelity.
(Hera, goddess of marriage, was standing in the middle of things looking quite peeved. Hera hated infidelity.)
Having exchanged the usual pleasantries with his brothers Zeus and Poseidon, Hades retreated to a far corner of the room and watched the divine inhabitants of Greece work their mayhem. Personally, he was hoping Zeus would get a little too distracted by a nymph and Hera would snap. The woman always knew how to put on a good show.
Persephone, clutching a silver goblet and giggling impishly, leaned against the wall a little ways done from him and let Hermes pin her there with one arm. The boyish god smirked down at her.
“Does your mother know you’re here?” he teased. Demeter was notorious for trying to hide her (not so) little girl away and failing.
“I don’t know,” Persephone answered, arching her back against the wall. “What do you think?”
“I think,” Hermes said, pressing his face against her hair so Hades could barely hear him, “Mrs. Grain-in-her-panties would never let her baby go out in such a scandalous attire.”
Persephone giggled again and tilted her body away from the messenger god. Her robes were indeed rather scandalous– too tight and too short.
“Did Aphrodite help you with your wardrobe again?” Hermes asked and tried to press his lips to her cheek again. Persephone ducked away, spinning away from him in a way that showed off far too much leg. Hades looked away in distaste. (Not that he’d been watching, of course.)
“No,” Persephone purred back. Hades wasn’t looking, but there was no mistaking the mischievous lilt in her words. “I found it in a puddle of mud. It’s a bit small, don’t you think?”
There was a long pause from Hermes. Hades was shocked too– was she a goddess or goat farmer? He turned his face so he could size up her dress from the corner of his eye. Yes, it was definitely made for some prepubescent girl, and that was definitely a faded mud stain on her back. And definitely some mud in her hair– what had this girl been doing?
“Haha,” said Hermes halfheartedly. “You’re such a tease.” He made to wrap his arms around her, but she thrust her goblet into his face.
“Get me some more ambrosia?” she asked sweetly. “Or ask Dionysus for some wine. You know how I hate talking to him.”
Obviously displeased, Hermes took and the goblet and headed away. Hades wondered if his position as messenger god and affected his mind in such a way he couldn’t refuse running other people’s errands.
Hades tried to ignore her. His eyes swept the rest of the room: Aphrodite was making a great show of fawning over her crippled husband, although she did nothing to thwart Ares patting her on the behind as he passed. Zeus watched the couple proudly, chatting with Poseidon and Athena as Hera fumed silently next to him. Demeter was far, far on the other side of the room, absorbed in some conversation with a few nymphs and Artemis, which was probably how Persephone ended up over here. She’d inevitably be caught, of course. Even now, Apollo’s eyes were lighting up as he caught a glimpse of her.
Persephone did not notice. Or at least Hades hoped she didn’t notice anyone watching her, as she was picking wax out of her ear with an unpleasant snarl on her face.
Apollo looked a bit taken a back, but he still went to the spread of refreshments and started filling to glass of ambrosia. It wasn’t just any day you could talk to (try to fee up) the strangely charming (hellion) goddess.
Hades didn’t care what the young goddess did with her spare time, but when she peeled back the top of her robe to start picking grass out of her bust, he felt that as the older and more mature one, he should step in.
“Persephone,” he said smoothly, stepping out from the shadows of the corner he’d been occupying. “Daughter of Demeter.”
She blinked up at him, unsurprised at his appearance. Had she known he was there the whole time? “Hades,” she answered, “Son of Cronus.”
Apollo stopped in his tracks, a glass of golden liquid in each hand. He looked extremely confused.
Persephone and Hades stared each other down for a few moments, then she shrugged and went back to picking grass from her dress.
(What had she been doing?)
Hades had no idea what to say to her. So he went with, “Does your mother know you’re here?” and wanted to kick himself.
Persephone snorted. “You mean you weren’t eavesdropping?” she asked.
Hades raised his eyebrows. “You mean you were purposefully making a fool of yourself in front of me?”
She let go of the top of her gown and it snapped back into place (sort of). “Well I can’t go over there,” she whined, gesturing to the other side of the room, “and make a fool of myself.”
Hades glanced over and saw Demeter still engaged in conversation and Apollo nervously shifting from foot to foot.
“Why make a fool of yourself at all?” he asked.
Persephone sneered back at him. “And do what? Sit around and let mother do my hair and pick who I talk to and what I do?”
Hades considered her for a moment. She sounded exactly like a child and was rebelling in the most immature way possible. He tried to think of a way to explain this to her without sounding like a grumpy old man.
When he thought of nothing, she tossed her (muddy) hair back haughtily and said, “I’m an adult. I’ll do what I want.”
As she turn on her heel and sauntered toward Apollo, Hades called after her, “You want to behave like an uncultured goat farmer?”
Hermes was attempting to lure her away from Apollo with a bottle of something that was definitely not wine when Hades figured out what he should have said when she complained about her mother. He let out a heavy sigh. He really did need to learn how to carry on a normal conversation.
He gave his regards to Aphrodite and Hephaestus, said goodbye to his brothers and left before Demeter realized her daughter was taking bottle shots of Dionysus’s moonshine (but stuck around in the doorway a bit when Hera slapped Aphrodite and raged about the sanctity of marriage, most of which seemed to be directed at her husband).
Many years passed before he saw her again.
--
Persephone’s hair was still neatly piled on top of her head, which meant it was early. Arethusa, one of Artemis’s attendants, was helping her tie together flower chains. They would end up decorating all the women gathered, and Persephone would inevitably end up destroying hers. Cyane was sitting a ways away on a river bank, trailing her toes in the water.
“Cyane,” Persephone suddenly called over. The nymph looked up. “Aren’t you bored?”
Cyane shrugged. “I’m happy just thinking about Anapos.” Cyane and the river god and a thing going on.
“Well, I’m certainly bored,” Artemis announced, stretching her legs in front of her. “Anyone up for a hunt?”
Arethusa dropped her flower chain and perked up. Persephone rolled her eyes. Bah, attendants.
“Nooo,” the nature goddess answered, “I had an even better idea.”
Artemis eyed her wearily. “If you try to set me up with someone again,” she said, “I really will shoot you in the head with my arrow.”
“It’s nothing like that.” Persephone squirmed and accidentally smashed a pile of unused flowers with her hand. Arethusa stared mournfully at it. “There’s a bacchanalia tonight.”
Arethusa recoiled in horror at the very idea and Artemis leapt to her feet. “No!” she yelled. “Do you even know what they do at those things?”
“Have lots of fun?” Persephone answered innocently.
“No,” Artemis hissed, “They have– the have– orgies.” It seemed to pain her to say it. She was, after all, one of the virgin goddess. At the mention of sex, Arethusa yelped and jumped up to hid behind her mistress.
Cyane giggled.
Persephone stood up as well. “They also have tons of great drinks,” she defended. “And sometimes they rip wild animals apart. You like ripping animals apart.”
Artemis narrowed her eyes and the younger goddess. “Be that as it may,” she said, “Bacchanalia are a completely unsuitable atmosphere for anyone of your background.”
“Except Dionysus,” Persephone countered and scratched her scalp. A braid fell from the mass on her head. “You don’t have to participate in the orgies, Artemis. I just want to dance and have a little to drink. Are you in, Cyane?”
Cyane considered it for a while. “It’ll be at night,” she said, hesitant. Persephone rolled her eyes. Cyane had this bizarre paranoia of falling into pits she couldn’t see in the dark. She could comfort her… or she could make a lewd joke.
“I’m sure you can spend one night without your boyfriend,” Persephone drawled.
“Will you leave with me if I don’t like it?” Cyane wanted to know. “Or if I think there are deep pits around?”
Persephone frowned, opened her and then closed it again. Finally she shrugged and said, “Fair enough.”
Artemis considered telling Demeter. The goddess of the harvest would probably be able to put a stop to this madness, but Persephone was perfectly capable of sneaking out anyway as she had that time she’d gone cattle tipping with Apollo’s herd or that one disaster on Mount Olympus. Also, the last time Artemis had warned Demeter about her daughter, Persephone had been furious with her and they had been on rocky terms for over a month.
“You’re going to go whether I do or not,” Artemis said. Persephone grinned cheekily back. The huntress sighed. “I guess I’ll go,” she said, “but no orgies.”
Persephone squealed in delight and grabbed Cyane to lead her in a sloppy dance. All her braids fell and she managed to get all sorts of grass stains on her dress.
She told Demeter she was going to stay with Artemis for the night. Demeter, who still thought her daughter was fourteen and like to engage in giggly pillow fights, thought this was a fantastic idea. (Persephone did, in fact, still engage in pillow fights, but not that kind of pillow fight.)
Artemis guessed she would need back up for when the party inevitably got out of hand and managed to recruit Athena to come with them.
“It would be wiser,” Athena remarked dryly, “to stop her from going at all.”
“Shut up,” Artemis answered. “You try stopping her when she gets a stupid idea.”
Not even Persephone was cruel enough to force the terrified Arethusa to accompany them, so they arrived as a party of four. To the nature goddess’s chagrin, Dionysus noticed them straight away.
“Hey Sephs,” he called and threw an arm over her shoulder. He was already pretty far gone. “I knew you’d show up for one of these eventually.” She awkwardly pulled at her skirt as he eyed the two goddesses accompanying her. “How’d you get the virges to come?”
It took a moment for her to figure out “virges” meant and why he was drunkenly laughing at his own joke. Athena raised a fine eyebrow and Artemis put her hands on her hips.
“I came to rip apart wild boar with my own hands,” she announced. Dionysus’s chortles stopped abruptly and Persephone managed to shrug his arm off.
“Huh, Arty…” he said and squinted at her. “Yer more like a bro than Apollo, you know that?”
Artemis snorted and Athena promptly asked about the cultural significance the festivities held for the nearby towns, and if he approved of the recent movement for more secrecy and the banning of males, and what precautions (if any) did he take to avoid poisoning via the consumption of raw meat?
With the wine god sufficiently distracted, Persephone made a beeline for the bonfire. Revelers we hooting and dancing around it, passing bottles between themselves. Cyane and Artemis followed her.
It took some prodding a nudging to get Artemis to drink anything, but eventually the huntress was tipsy enough to let go and dance with her, hollering and laughing like the rest of the revelers. Cyane, being Cyane, stayed quite no matter what and no one was really sure how intoxicated she was. Athena continued interrogated Dionysus, which the sadist part of Persephone enjoyed immensely.
“I have an idea,” Persephone whispered (yelled) to her comrades.
“What?” Artemis yelled back.
“Follow me!” Persephone called, bumped into a group of dancers, and then staggered away from the mass of people around the fire.
Under more lucid conditions, no one in their right minds would follow Persephone after she yelled “I have an idea!” and then asked to be followed, but these were not lucid conditions, and so Artemis and Cyane found themselves crawling under Dionysus’s tent along with their friend.
The tent was pitched far enough away from the fire and revelers not be noticed, but close enough that Dionysus didn’t have to do too much work to drag more alcohol to his party. It was a sort of storage room and, Persephone reasoned, he was obviously keeping all the best drinks for himself.
They crashed around a bit before she picked out what she deemed to be the strongest and pushed it into Artemis’s arms. The huntress sniffed it.
“I don’t know,” Artemis said. “I want to remember ripping a boar apart.” She passed the bottle to Cyane.
“But,” the nymph protested, “I mean, it was fun, but you’re already really wasted, Persephone.”
Persephone sighed dramatically. “If we we’re meant to occasionally get drunk off our ass,” she said, “then my sweet mother Demeter would not have invented fermentation.”
That sentence was cohesive enough that Cyane took a swig and passed it back to Persephone who took her own lengthy sip.
“Whatever,” said Artemis, “I’m going to go start me a boar-hunting frenzy.”
She left, and Persephone and Cyane sat down behind the tent and set about finishing their bottle.
--
It was an unusually slow night in the Underworld. Hades was bored and so he dug out his old mirror that let him view the mortal world. It was not a particularly useful artifact: it only showed whatever happened to be above where the hold was standing.
Hades strolled through his kingdom, occasionally glancing in the mirror in hopes of finding anything interesting. Sometime close to dawn, he found her.
He didn’t realize who it was at first. It was two girls, running and falling over themselves in a field, obviously inebriated. That was interesting, but not the type of interesting he was looking for. He was Lord of the Dead; he was above spying on drunk girls. (Nevertheless he kept his eye on the mirror as he kept walking.)
Then, as the blonde one stopped to pick a wedgie, he realized who it was. He stopped and gawked at the mirror. She really was the same as an uncultured goat farmer. No, worse.
Now that he knew who she was, if she managed to get herself eaten by a fury or something he was going to feel responsible. And she was immortal, so she’d live through the whole digestive process. He winced at the idea and made up his mind to offer her a hand. He went to the stables and prepared his chariot.
The sky of the underworld was always black, as it was an uneven sheet of rock. He drove his chariot upwards, and with a mighty crack the sky parted to reveal the dusty blue of the heavens, Helios on his own chariot somewhere just short of the horizon. The hooves of Hades’s horses thundered against solid ground and the death god erupted from the earth in a storm of otherworldly shadow.
While this was all normal routine for Hades, he supposed he should have taken into account that it was normally considered terrifying for the general populace.
“AAAAH!” the two girls shriek. Yes, it was definitely Persephone and some nymph.
“Ladies,” Hades greeted and stepped down from his chariot. “I think it’s time for you two be to getting home.”
“RUN!” Persephone screamed and sprinted away, only to trip soon after. “Help, he’s got me!”
“Persepony!” the other girl, a nymph, slurred. “I’ll save you!” And she slammed her shoulder into Hades.
“Um,” said Hades. “I think you should calm down and listen–”
“I think,” the nymph bit back, “You should fall into a dark pit because it’s dark and you can’t see in the dark.”
This made no sense. “What’s your name?” Hades asked. The girl’s eyes widened.
“Goo idee!” she said.
“What?” Hades asked.
“Goo idea?” the girl tried again.
“Tell me where you live,” Hades said. “I can give you a ride–”
“SABE YOURSELF, PERSELFINY,” the nymph yelled and turned herself into a well.
Hades stared at her, nonplussed. “That was uncalled for,” he said. “Here, turn yourself back and I can–”
“MONSTER,” Persephone screamed and tackled him. She ended up mushed ineffectually against his chest.
“I’m just trying to help,” Hades explained, recoiling as he tried to push Persephone away from himself. One his horses stomped its hooves and a shadow escaped into the night, cackling as it went. Persephone made a strange hiccupping noise, although Hades wasn’t sure if it was from fright (he really wasn’t supposed to let those thing loose– they caused nightmares) or from her efforts to push him into the well.
Persephone let out a deranged sort of screech and ran. Not seeing anything else for it, Hades chased after her.
The sun was peeking over the horizon when he finally managed to grab her by the elbows and drag her kicking and screaming into his chariot. She sounded like she was trying to curse him in a language she had made up on the spot.
He tried to drive her home, using one hand to work the reigns, but restraining her with one arm proved too difficult and she threw herself from the speeding chariot. It was remarkable she wasn’t injured (not really; she was a goddess after all), and Hades wasted another fifteen minutes or so wrestling her back into the chariot. Another shadow escaping into the breaking day.
The Lord of the Dead had had enough. He wasn’t going to drive this lunatic across half of Greece. The ground broke upon again, and Hades descended into his dark kingdom with the screaming daughter of Demeter.
He took her to the first building he could find and gruffly told its tenants they were being relocated for a few days. They scurried away in fright. For some reason people tended to fear him.
He dragged Persephone into a bedroom and sat her on the bed.
“Sleep,” he commanded.
She tried to spit in his face, and saliva dribbled down her chin.
“You’re a real beauty queen.”
“Bastard,” she replied, then slumped over snoring.
Shuddering, Hades retreated to his castle. He couldn’t wait to get the hooligan of a goddess out of his kingdom.
--
When she awoke, she thought for sure Artemis had actually shot her in the head. She groaned and curled into herself, the blankets twisting around her waist.
Persephone didn’t remember how she had gotten home, but she had a massive headache and her whole body ached and her mouth felt like sand and her feet were freezing. The first three problems were the usual symptoms of a bacchanal gone awry, but why would mother let the warmth of spring wane like that? Was it some sick form of corporal punishment?
She spent a few hours wallowing in self pity and the strange bed she was fairy sure wasn’t her own. The headache marginally subsided and she dared to force her eyes open. They were crusted over and she flicked the dry goo away.
The room was dark, thank Zeus. The walls and floor were smooth, polished stone. It was all continuous, without the ordered cracks of tiles. There was no furniture besides the bed she was sprawled across.
She laid staring at the ceiling and wondered if she was hallucinating. This seemed probable. She had partaken of Dionysus’s personal store, after all.
She was thirsty. She imagined a glass of sweet, cool ambrosia and wondered why her hallucinated room didn’t provide her with it immediately.
She wondered if her hallucination came with servants to bring her water at the least. She opened her mouth to call, but it was so dry she felt as if the action opened cracks down her throat.
Wincing, she managed to roll her body off the bed and stand unsteadily. She pulled the blanket around her shoulders (why was it so cold?) and reassessed the room with blurry eyes. Nope, still no imagined glass of delicious ambrosia.
She found a door (it had probably been there the whole time, she thought in hindsight) and staggered into an equally dimly lit hallway. Still no magically appearing glasses of ambrosia.
She wandered around the hall until she found another door which led to a large, empty room. This one had a window, although the landscape outside was only slightly brighter than inside. She climbed (fell) out the window and her bare feet (and knees and palms) met soft, black glass.
This was definitely the most gothic hallucination she’d ever had.
She thought maybe the servants were outside milking to cows (because what else would they be doing?), and milk would make her not thirsty, so she continued to walk. She thought she saw people in the distance, so she walked toward them, forgot there were there, and veered directions.
Eventually, feeling only slightly more lucid, she found a river.
Persephone was beginning to suspect that she wasn’t navigating a hallucination but rather an actual, bizarre place. Still, she was incredibly thirsty and there was water right here. She knelt down and cupped her hands. She took a sip.
It was unbearably satisfying. She bent further and put her face to the water, drinking freely. Yes, it was too satisfying to be a deranged figment of her imagination. When her throat stopped feeling like it was coated in salt, she should go and… and…
She was still sore. And tired. And she should really… she should…
She should lay down and take a nap. The grass was soft.
--
Hades’s throne room was as grand as he could imagine it to be. Admittedly, Hades wasn’t the most imaginative god there was, but he thought he had done a good job with the vast, cavernous room full of shadows and things going bump in the eternal night. Torches along the wall allowed for ominous lighting, and his throne was on a raised platform and decorated with polished black skulls.
The whole scene was frightening even without the fiercely-featured Lord of the Dead glaring at you from his skull-throne, so to was no wonder the servant boy was quaking before him.
“She drank WHAT?” Hades bellowed at him, having stood threateningly.
The servant boy was graveling impressively. He was on his knees with forehead pressed to the floor. The poor kid was new.
“We– we found her by the River Lethe,” the boy squeaked into the stone floor.
“And who was watching her when she did this?” Hades demanded. The boy flinched and mumbled something. “Speak up,” Hades snapped.
The boy lifted his head. “I don’t know,” he said.
Hades let out a heavy sigh and rubbed his temples.
“And you’re sure she drank from it?”
“She doesn’t even remember her name.”
Hades slowly sank into his throne. Great, just great. There wasn’t a curse in Greece strong enough for this situation.
“You can get up now,” he told the boy and dismissed him.
He decided to visit her. He might as well assess the situation before he dumped it on Demeter. Unless of course, he could fix it before he returned the wayward goddess to her mother.
Hades pondered possible solutions as he descended staircase after staircase. In the Underworld, buildings were built down rather than up due to a lack of space above ground. Persephone had be taken to the very bottom floor, where rooms could be kept warmer.
He founded her seated primly on a couch, picking threads off her ruined robes. Her hair was doing its best impression of Medusa. He waved her attendant out of the room.
“Hello,” he said cautiously.
“Who are you?” she asked suspiciously, eyeing him up and done.
“The real question is,” he said, “who are you?” He then mentally slapped himself for sounding like an agora-reject philosopher.
“Kore,” she answered promptly.
“Kore?”
“Yep,” she said with one of her mischievous grins. “Now you tell me your name.”
“Hades,” he answered flatly. “Do you know where you are?”
She cocked her head to the side, grin unwavering. “I’m on a couch, dear Hades.”
Hades pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you,” he said, “or do you not remember who you are, how you came to be here, and your life in general?”
Hades had listened to a lot of farfetched stories. As Lord of the Dead, he had been obligated to sit through explanation after explanation of why so-and-so should not be punished for life crime, why this person she be let to return to the living world, and so on. He was fairly patient when it came to nonsense.
But Persephone, as she babbled on about her life as a traveling lyrist, playing catchy tunes for happy children and once leading a rat infestation out of a suffering village, really took the cake.
“After I broke the cheese-making record,” I finished, “I fell into a deep sleep and woke up in that field. And now I’m here.”
“That’s… lovely,” Hades answered.
“You’re not a very fun person, are you?” she said and rolled onto her feet. In two steps, she was standing toe to toe with him, smirking up at him through gold eyelashes. “And a little scary too, I think,” she purred.
“Aletta,” Hades called over Persephone’s last syllable, wrenching his face away from her. The attendant reappeared. “She smells like mildew.”
--
dhsjkfhdjksfhj Per$ephone stop being easier/more fun than Juniper plz.
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