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Medea Park has no choice where her key to the Underworld spits her out. While it has a tendency to dump her into places that aren't quite deadly, it does manage to locate ones that are distinctly uncomfortable: the edge of the Styx, Shakespeare's seat in the Judgement Pavilion, and once it nearly dropped her directly into the river Lethe if Nico hadn't grabbed her hand at the last moment. Part of her thinks it's the punishment that she has been dealt. A warning: this is what happens if you are born in vengeance. But this time, rather than Lethe or the Judgement Pavilion, the Fields of Asphodel stretch plainly against the grey backdrop of her birth home—the distinctive yellowing grass and desaturated trees pale against her black jeans and Camp Half-Blood shirt.
Stumbling blindly through the grass, she finds it tough to navigate without something to cut through the thickness; without her Stygian Iron dagger that Nico dumped on her doorstep at the end of last summer. A part of her aches, it's been far too long since she's seen her brother, wherever he's hiding amongst the ghosts and the American states. Medea shakes it off, trying to focus her blurred vision on the steps she's taking. She doesn't want to be here long. Medea's stomach churns underneath her skin—a scattered feeling of uneasiness crawling up her spine that only comes with being where the natural order is held most strict. Sixteen years and she still hasn't gotten used to it. There's nothing like it; that feeling of drowning—heaving against the tidal wave that is being warped into something so distinctly small that you can travel between the dirt and bone to the deepest place within Earth's crust. Her ears buzzing, Medea's frazzled state only continues as she basks in the aftermath of pulling open the door to hell and slamming it closed again.
Around her, the faded souls of the dead aimlessly walk—the yellowed grass barely flinching with their presence. The statement is clear: the dead of the Fields of Asphodel live an ambiguous existence at best. Looking around as she presses a hand to her abdomen, Medea thinks of how it must be a lonely existence, to wander without aim for the rest of eternity. She takes another hit of nausea as she passes through the nebulous image of a wandering ghost, tripping over her red converse and landing on her ass in the yellow grass. She's never been particularly graceful. Nothing like her mother in that regard—always crude and eroding like a snake bite.
