Receiver of Many

Chapter 2

Moist soil gave way to tender blades of grass and a host of flowers. Kore waved her hand over the barren earth at the banks of a stream and bright green shoots appeared in its wake. A twirl of her fingers drew gentle buds up from the ground.

"Larkspur, milady?" said Minthe, brushing her blonde hair behind one ear. "I doubt your mother would want even more in this field. Why not something else?"

"I'm feeling... uninspired right now," she said, annoyed by Minthe's high-pitched voice. Though Kore was older than Minthe, she looked younger, and her more youthful appearance made the naiad's cosseting chafe all the more.

It would be worse if Athena and Artemis were here. Though older than them by aeons, she still retained the countenance of a youth and they looked so... womanly. She was not alone among the immortals in her youthful appearance. Eros, Demeter would remind her, looked as young as she did and was nearly as ancient as Kore. She sighed. Perhaps that was what her domain would always mean for her. Flowers and budding shoots were young and she was their goddess. Kore frowned. And because of this, she thought— remembering that her cousins had been elevated to the Dodekatheon while she had not— she would always be a goddess of little consequence or responsibility.

Kore made short strands of larkspur and wove them about her wrist, then a strand around each of her ankles, contrasting the white blooms against her short, sage green chiton. Kore looked down at her bare legs. Though youthful, she was ages past her flowering and the same as every other woman who had her monthly courses, she wanted to wear the longer belted dresses of an adult, and to wear her russet brown hair braided up in a beautiful chignon.

Kore dropped her gaze, frustrated.

"What's the matter with you?" Minthe asked. "You've been like this all afternoon."

"Nothing..." she lied, looking to the storm raging around Olympus. While she had begged her mother to let her come today, she was now glad that Demeter had refused. The dark clouds and lightning did not lie: there must have been a terrible disagreement today.

The sweet sound of pipes in the distance caught her ear. A plucked string from a lute answered the pipes and grew louder, closer. She heard laughter. Kore started walking toward the music.

"Lady Kore, we mustn't. It's the mortals! Your lady mother forbids us to go near them."

Kore giggled. "The way you talk, they sound like monsters! Honestly, Minthe, we have nothing to fear."

"I cannot stray from the river, milady, please..." Minthe implored her. Her immortal spirit was rooted to the riverside, vulnerable anywhere else but here.

"Then stay. I'm going to see what they're doing," she said, quickening her pace.

"But your mother—"

"I won't tell her if you won't!" Kore called out behind her. Minthe nervously wrung her hands before disappearing into the grasses in a flash of green.

Kore ran toward a grove of venerable oaks and peered around the thick trunk of a tree. The villagers from Eleusis were casting white flowers into the wind around a tent they had erected in the clearing. From under a saffron cloth emerged a man and woman smiling at each other, followed by one of her mother's white-cloaked priestesses. They paraded around the tent with other guests, then sat at a small table while the rest gathered around. On the table were two small barley cakes alongside straw effigies of Kore and her mother that were draped with vibrant flowers.

She smiled. It was a wedding party!

The woman wore a long saffron peplos and a crown of laurel and olive. The man, bare shouldered and tanned, fed a cake to the woman. The bride picked up her cake and fed him a bite. They kissed, and the crowd cheered again.