The winter solstice. Shortest day of the year. Hues of violets and grey dance across the universe, breathing frost in their wake. Cold, bitter and biting, curls her iron hand, gripping any being daring to part from the comfort of the hearth. Glacial streams stand petrified, woven amongst frigid and barren trunks and boughs. It was as Helios crossed the horizon and the Moon awoke from her slumber that I came into being all too quick and unprepared for the chill that would greet my entrance.
Shivering and curled in on myself, I'm told that my fragile existence brought hope, for I was to be the bringer of fruitfulness. Harbinger of warmth and life. Sister of flowers and mother of fertility. Daughter of Zeus. Maiden-eternal. Earth goddess. Pure.
Yet it came as a surprise to all but me when the Underworld called my name. The eternal branch of the solstice to which I was born reaching out to caress me, run its boughs through my hair, the voices of the departed calling me undergrounds as the wind whisked their souls from this realm and into the next.
'But this can't be' they all said. 'She is the harbinger of hope; light incarnate. She's been cursed, stolen, mesmerised by those daemons travelling between worlds.'
No. It couldn't be. I would never have run into the craw of the Underworld, House of Cerberus, the smoldering hearth of Hades.
No, that could never happen. It is forbidden.
For I am Persephone.
YOU ARE READING
Elysian Fields
FantasyFor Hades, the game is to find a wife. For Kore, the game is trying to survive. Kidnapped shortly after her twentieth birthday and forced into isolation, Kore just come to terms with her reality and the divinity lurking beneath her mortal skin.
