Persephone and Hades

An Unending Captivity - Chapter 1

The feel of the breeze sweeping over my face and brushing my hair back brought me to a sort of complicated ecstasy. It was my freedom. My mother always hated the outside world, saying that only bad could come from bad. That my purity and beauty would be tainted and ruined if exposed to that world. I hate that. This wasn't beauty, purity was a curse. That's how I see it and I hate the fact that when my dryad friends speak about kisses and how they feel, my lips are sealed with inexperience. I want to love. I want to feel that uncontainable passion that I read about in books, but my mother stands in the way of that happiness. She took a piece of the world and locked it away, locked me in it and told me to be happy. But how can anyone be happy like this?

The wind makes me feel like it all doesn't exist, and if I close my eyes gently enough and let my imagination take control then I can pretend that it isn't the wind that moves, but myself; soaring through the sky. That these fields, no matter how beautiful, are not in reality the extent of my freedom. They are enchanted grounds, that seem to go on forever but only bring you back to where you started. 

I bite my lip and my forehead creases as I feel the truth of interment sink into the crevices of my mind, letting their colours invade and taint any fallacious euphoria I had created. I imagine myself opening my mouth and screaming, so loud that all the flowers in the field burst away, roots, soil and all. The small laurel trees flying into oblivion. Until the only thing that surrounds me is a neutral darkness. I would let it engulf me and I would fall in love with that darkness because it would be my liberation.

I open my eyes, slowly lifting them up to my real world. The clouds drift across the sky lazily, the birds fluttering about chirping, and the flowers tilting in the breeze. The wind tugging at them to dance. I breath in and the smell is sweet, the fragrance of the flora intoxicating. Like a drug that dulls the reality of this place's pretentious demonstrations.

"Persephone!" I turn around and see my mother walking toward me, one hand lifting the fabric of her dress so she doesn't trip, and the other covering her eyes from the sun's light.

"Come child! Don't idle!" I stand up and walk over to her, speeding up my pace when she calls my name again in more irritation.

"What do you do all day here? When I designed this place for you, I didn't expect you'd spend every free moment on its grounds. Oh! And look! You've gotten your dress dirty. Stained with grass. You silly child, you should spend more time with your mother and not waste so much in this place alone." 

The stain is a noticeable contrast to the white fabric, I try to whip it away but it only smears and makes it worse. I don't really mind, it's just a stain, and I like the way it doesn't conform to her ideas of perfection.

I follow her back to the house, listening to her speak but not doing so myself. She wouldn't take note of anything I would say anyway. My mother and I are very different people. I love her of course, she is my mother after all but if we were strangers, we'd certainly not be friends. Mostly, I nodded my way through our conversations, catching snippets of words and phrases that she's been repeating throughout my entire life. Be a good girl. Listen to your mother and her favourite; "the world is  a dangerous place with cruel people and terrible men, you must stay here with me".

When we reach the house, I rush up to my room before she can stop me. I walk in and close the door, hearing the click as a soft reassurance of my safety zone. I tilt my head back and close my eyes, taking a deep breath. After a moment, I look around me, to my bed, to the desk with neat piles of paper and then my eyes rest on the books lining the shelves. Only my favourite books are there. We had a library that my father had maintained before he had abandoned my mother for another woman. Sometimes I think I remember him reading to me when I was younger. Mother never payed attention to books, if she knew half the stories though, she would probably take them away and burn them for, "filling my head with stupid nonsense." But love and travel and adventure weren't stupid for me. I dreamed of assignations between lovers under the light of the moon in cities in which the stories I read were set. I dreamed of seeing the sea and hearing it lull me to sleep every night. I loved thinking about having just one day like that, I would hold it dear to my heart for the rest of my life.

I wander to the balcony, the ivory curtains billowing in the breeze and bright with the last rays of sunlight. The sky was so beautiful, the colours so warm and welcoming to the eyes and the soul. Maybe one day I would shine as gloriously as its colours now.