Psyche

Chapter 41

Psyche ran and ran, despite her exhaustion. She had made it out of Hades, as far as she knew, one of the only mortals who had ever down so. Finally, her pace lessened.

She closed her eyes against the brightness of the sun and breathed in the fresh air of Earth and she smiled to herself. She walked for a while, until she came upon a field of flowers, small white starlings that she found them just lovely - especially in that they were alive. She sat down in the field, almost engulfed by the flowers. Soon she was marveling at the sky, birds, trees. . .all the things that gave life its power. . .were suddenly quite acute to her. She laughed joyously.

Feeling lightheaded, she checked inside her robe and she found the box in which Persephone had put her beauty.

She stared at the box, and suddenly she was overtaken with fear that even if Aphrodite approved of a reunion with Erik, that he might reject her. She was no longer the perfect beauty with whom he had fallen in love.

Again, the irony of how strongly she felt this loss gripped her to her very soul. How many times in her young life had she wished for less beauty? How many times had she wished to be ordinary, dismissing her looks as a terrible bother at best and at worst, a burden that kept her confined in loneliness.

Yet, she remembered all the nights she had spent with her husband. She was blinded by darkness, but he could see her. He kissed and touched every part of her, whispering all the while of her great beauty.

Logically, she understood that Erik loved more than her beauty, but she had hurt him enough with her betrayal. It wasn't fair of her to force him to overlook the loss of her beauty.

When he saw her, would he only take her back because of the child? Even if he forgave the betrayal, would he ever truly love her like he had, if her beauty was gone?

She knew that she had only lost a little portion of her beauty. Persephone had placed far more than what she had lost in the box.

Psyche's hands started to shake.

Aphrodite certainly didn't need any more beauty. Persephone's gift had only been a gesture, but Psyche needed the beauty.

Perhaps if I just take a little bit, she thought.

Yet, her hands could not open the box, they trembled too much.

I cannot do it," said Psyche aloud, whose every instinct told her not to open the box. Such selfishness and greed were never rewarded.

At that moment, for the first time, she felt a strange flutter in her stomach. She put down the box and clutched her belly, fascinated by the motions under her fingers as well as against the inside of her body.

"You are restless, little one?" she whispered, "Tell me why? Do you wish to meet your father? Or are you telling me that I need no more beauty? Do you think you have a foolish mother?"

Psyche glanced over at the box.

"I'll bet if I look at the beauty, it will deter me. After all, Persephone's beauty is far different from mine. Hers probably won't even mesh with my own."

Yes, she thought, Looking at it will deter me.

She opened the box, the interior of which appeared lined with black silk. Yet, she saw nothing inside, certainly no beauty. She stared down, and then gradually, a kind of fog appeared in the box.

It began to swirl gently, like clouds before one of the terrible maelstroms that sometimes hit Atlantis. The smoke gradually drifted up from the box, becoming a large and dense cloud that began to swirl around Psyche.

She wasn't fearful, but she was curious. She knew she wasn't seeing beauty. It was most certainly something else.

She watched the cloud, and then she realized she was quite tired.

She yawned and stretched in the cloud and then laid down in the flowers.

"I'll just rest for a little while," she said as she drifted into the infernal sleep. 

As she did, she started to vaguely feel a presence of something warm and familiar. There was a god, striking and beautiful with wings that spread across the sky of the underworld. Something she couldn't quite reach out and touch. Something or someone she loved.