I look at myself in the mirror, the morning light shining on perfect glass. And for a moment, I see my mother.
Not Hades, but the memory of my mother from last evening.
We sat together, her arms around me and my head on her shoulder, while she told me over and over how upset she had been. How she missed me like she would miss her own heart. How she would miss the sun or the seasons in the mortal world. Her voice swelled with pain over and over, and her hands would clutch at my hair, then relax again when she realized I was back.
I’ve never seen my mother so distraught. I know how I longed for her, but I had Hades and my magic to occupy my thoughts. My mother had a hole in her heart and my empty room and no knowledge of what had happened to me or whether I still had breath in my lungs.
I cried with her when she confessed she barely had hope that I was still alive, but hope was there.
I told her I missed her, too. It was the truth. It is the truth. I was so afraid, in the Underworld, that I might never see her or speak to her again, and that thought had been unbearable. It made me fold up into myself, scared to move a muscle in case I made those horrible thoughts come true.
I missed her—but I do not like the idea of her causing so much pain in the mortal world. That is the kind of change that speaks of ruin. Her anger is frightening. Her vengeance is brutal. I’ve never known this side of my mother, but then again, she’d never known loss like she did those days of my absence.
Lightning strikes again and this time I only flinch. The war still rages as Demeter copes with Zeus's betrayal. It seems impossible to calm my mother. To soothe her pain.
I don’t know how to explain to my mother that she does not need to be ruined. I wasn’t ruined in the Underworld, and I have not been given back to her a broken shell of myself.
If anything, I was a shell of myself before, on Olympus, when my powers were ebbing away and I was staring into a future as a forest nymph.
Eventually, food was brought. Hades’s order repeated in my mind again.
Do not drink the wine your father gives you.
I looked at the cask of wine brought by the servants. Would that wine count if it was not given to me by Zeus himself? I did not drink it, choosing water flavored with nectar instead. If my mother noticed, she did not point it out.
We stayed together as the sun set, glowing in through the windows until at last the stars covered the sky. I got into my bed, which felt as strange and new as the rest of Olympus. All the nights I slept here before seem like they were lifetimes ago. Perhaps I did not expect to lay my head here again. Perhaps that is why it took me so long to fall asleep.
My mother sat by the bed until I drifted off. When I woke in the night, she was not here, but she returned in the morning, not long after I woke.
We had tea and light and airy sweet cakes for breakfast. She brought out a gown for me to wear, simple and white, yet beautiful, and I sat at her feet while she braided my hair.
And still she cried, her tears falling on the delicate fabric of my dress. Demeter’s sadness is palpable, I feel anguish for my mother.
Now I stand in front of the mirror, looking into the face of a woman I do not know.
I turn my head from side to side, letting my eyes travel over my eyebrows, my nose, my mouth. The braid in my hair, which curls down over my shoulder and meets the clasp of my gown.
My features are the same. I cannot pick out any obvious differences. The slope of my nose and the bow of my lips—the same. The point of my chin—the same. The pink in my cheeks?—
It’s the same, isn’t it? Perhaps, under my eyes is slightly darker from the lack of sleep.
I lean closer. My cheeks are pinker than they were when I left, but then—I had not been well when I arrived in the Underworld. And I had not been well for some time before that. Fear can make a person unwell. It can even make a goddess unwell.
Shouldn’t I look unwell?
I don’t.
I step back from the mirror and lift my hands to my hair, patting carefully at the braid so I don’t disturb my mother’s work. Her fingers had been so gentle. So loving. She sewed protection within the braids. Chanting her love and that I am divinely protected, divinely guided, and being shown the best of all the worlds and nothing less.
No matter what happens, I will treasure this, at least. It is a sign of her love for me as my mother, and I cannot be ungrateful for that. Even if I crave a world she’ll never know. Even if I could not find the courage to tell her I’d fallen in love with the god she loathes.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes, turning my mind to how I felt when Silvie came to my rooms in the Underworld. I didn’t know what to think of her at first. I worried she had been sent to?—
I’m not sure. Spy on me, or encourage me to do dangerous things, or control me.
But she did not.
She taught me what she knew of the powers in the Underworld. She guided me through the knowledge I was missing, again and again until I understood it for myself.
