Receiver of Many

Chapter 3

Kore touched the gentle flowers growing around her and shifted the coloring of her dress to a soft white, mimicking the color of the blossoms. How beautiful they were... like last night, like him, though she knew 'beautiful' was seldom applied to men, and was too soft a word for him anyway.

Asphodel... she was the Maiden of the Flowers and knew that's what these were intuitively, but tried to remember where she had heard the name— and what their significance was.

She had only ever seen asphodel growing as a gnarled dark gray weed. It was one of the few plants her mother would rip out of the fields wherever she had seen it. Kore had always trailed behind her, doing the same. She had never seen asphodel bud and blossom. The white blooms were thin, veined with a center line of crimson, six petals with bright filaments bursting from the center and ending in deep red anthers. They were beautiful and foreign.

The man in her dream returned to her thoughts. She shivered at the idea of kissing him again, of tangling her fingers in the jet black curls of his hair, and melting into the heat of his body pressed so close to hers. She picked one of the small flowers from its dark stalk and twisted its stem around a lock of hair, her russet waves matching the red veins of the flower. She smiled, studying it, then walked from plant to plant, picking one bloom from each, and expertly weaved them into a crown, placing it atop her head.

And you will be my queen, Persephone.

Queen... he'd said 'queen'. Not wife, but something more. Something greater. What would he think of her now, in her simple linen shift, her hair hanging loosely like a child's? She wanted to change her clothes to something more womanly: lengthen it, cover her knees and legs in sumptuous, fine-spun wool, and drape a soft mantle over her shoulders but resisted the temptation. Demeter wouldn't approve, and would insist that Kore keep her youthful short chiton.

She wondered what he would like to see her wearing. Kore imagined him standing behind her and kissing her neck as she wore a beautiful burgundy peplos held up by bronze fibulae, and a girdle of bronze and polished sard stones, but her imagination quickly turned to him unhooking it from her waist with a flick of his wrist and pushing the gown off her shoulders to hold her against his body, as he had in the dream. Kore blushed, fairly certain that if she asked him what he wanted to see her in, his answer would be 'nothing at all'. She leaned back onto the bark of the great oak tree, remembering his hands stroking her body, both of them as naked as the day they were born, caressing each other under its sprawling branches.

"Persephone," she said quietly, remembering him whispering her true name, his lips grazing her neck. She faintly felt the same coil tighten in her belly she had felt with him last night, the same sensation she felt at the Eleusinian wedding. Kore crossed her arms over her breasts and closed her eyes, wanting him to appear to her again. If she willed it enough, would he come to her as he had last night?

The love of men is fleeting. I am sparing you the agony of a husband who lords himself over you, then breaks his oaths and your heart.

Her mother had said she wasn't to marry. She was just Kore, the Maiden of the Flowers, not a queen, not his queen. These thoughts were dangerous. And it was all just a dream, anyway. But if he were not real, if the dream was just a dream, then why were these flowers here? Had he left them for her?

Maybe it would be different for me. She remembered her words to her mother.

It most certainly would not. And don't ever believe any man who would tell you otherwise, Kore. What a fool she must be to moon over flowers, of all things. Flowers— her domain, even! But he hadn't taken anything from her or trespassed on her. He didn't grow bolder with his touch until she wanted it— until he felt her respond to him and ask for it with each gyration of her body against his. Her lips against his...