A Bloom So Deadly: Hades and Persephone Retold

The Beginning

It was not love, nor lust, nor infatuation when Hades stole her away.

It was hatred.

But years before Hades ever knew the offensive thing of a girl existed, certainly long before the two would together become legend, there was another who laid eyes and claim to her first. And just as it is smaller, less legendary stories that eventually weave their way to Fate, one must understand the story before the legend to understand the whole of it.

That begins with Persephone's first suitor.

It was a short war when he sensed her for the first time, a trace of her inky darkness dancing on the wind. The year was 1739, near Mumbai. The Battle of Vasai, they would call it. And while all the pieces were there for a long war, he was too entranced by the darkness on the wind to continue. So the battle ended, just shy of three months with what could have gone nearly a year. But he was too curious, too lustful from the fight to ignore it.

Ares, the God of War, scorned and forsaken son of Zeus and Hera, followed the ribbons of darkness he sensed on every breeze.

After three days and three nights of searching the mortal world, he came across a grove lined with thick briars on all sides. It was Demeter, his reclusive aunt, that he saw first when he snuck a few of the briars aside. But he had known his aunt long before she left Olympus behind for the mortal earth and he knew it was not her that he sensed.

So he waited.

And waited.

Long had Demeter been gone to tend the fields of the earth, ignorant to his presence, before there was a flicker of movement from across the grove. Then Ares, hiding among the bushes and brambles, first laid eyes on Persephone.

She emerged from the riverbank, tawny hair tousled from slumber. Sari silks, the fashion of this land and time, gave her modesty, but the sight of her strawberry-stained lips would send any man into a spiral of perverse thoughts. Any god, Ares included.

Mid-stretch, devilish mouth open in a yawn, she suddenly startled with a jolt. And then she whipped her eyes to him in the distance, sensing his own darkness the way he had sensed her. Ares sank back into the shadow of the brambles.

While her skin shone in golden honey hues, as if kissed by Helios himself, and while her cheeks looked painted pink with tulips, her eyes - her eyes were as black as Nyx's darkest night. And they saw him, hiding as he was.

"Come out so that I may see you," she called, voice sweet as nectar, sight never leaving the shape of him hidden among the outskirts of her grove. "You are no Shade, no mortal. I wish to know what you are."

Deftly, fearing the sight of those fathomless eyes, Ares slipped the dagger from his belt. And slower, slower still, sank his own blade into his flank, gritting his teeth so as not to make a noise of pain.

"What I am is injured, my lady," the clever god called out, voice gruff from the battle he'd left behind. With a sly twist of his mouth, he said, "I do not wish for someone as fair as you to see it."

The blood at his side stained through his clothes, growing slick over his fingers, blade still in hand. But he did not look to his wound. How could he when he was enamored by the sudden look of concern in her black eyes and her quick steps to the bushes that surrounded the grove?

"You will have to come into the clearing," she said, growing closer still. "My mother will know if I step past the briars. But you must never speak of this, our home is forbidden to men."

No, Ares thought darkly, Demeter did not want you near the likes of me or the others.

There had been a note of longing in the girl's voice. Easy. Too easy. Perhaps he would leave her naked, beaten and bloodied, so that her mother would weep for her daughter's stolen innocence. Or...perhaps not. That darkness about her lingered yet. What was she?