With a dry throat, I rush forward a few steps, but my mother is already running. She sprints across the shining floor, the skirt of her flowing black dress flying behind her and her arms stretched out to me.
She’s abandoned her green dress for black, for mourning and death.
I barely have time for another step before I collide with her. My mother’s hair falls all around me, tickling my face as she closes her arms tight around my body. We’re so close that I can feel her pounding heart and her fast, unsteady breath.
Tears prick from the relief of being beside her. My mother. I’ve missed her so much. I’d speak but I don’t trust my voice. My throat is tight and dry, and my body refuses to do anything but cling to my mother.
“Persephone,” she says into my hair, her voice trembling. “My daughter. Persephone.” Her voice is strong and yet gentle. A warm tear falls from her cheek to mine.
Mother. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.
The relief in her voice makes my heart twist. I have missed her so much. I know that her love for me is genuine. There is no hidden meaning in her words, she’s not careful about her emotions the way my father is when he speaks.
I couldn’t hold her any closer if I wanted to. The two of us embrace as if unsure if we would see each other again. Because that’s the harshest truth. That moment existed, that memory and nightmare wove itself in our days and nights that are behind us.
Never again do I wish to mourn that loss. Never. She is my mother and I love her dearly.
“I missed you,” I whisper into her hair as my own tears fall. The scent of her, the warmth of her. The comfort of being in her embrace is exactly what I needed to breathe here in this hall.
I have worried after her. I have wanted to reassure her, and be reassured, too. I wanted her to stroke my hair and tell me it would be all right. Tell me she understood.
She doesn’t say a thing to me, but they are all communicated in her touch.
Only…
I know, too, that it may not be all right. That something is not right. That Hecate and Hades have an understanding that somehow involved bringing me to Olympus. That my mother is involved. I wish I could take it all back. There’s been so much destruction and death.
My mind scrambles to create a way where every wrong is righted. My mother, from how she refuses to let go and how she is breathing into my hair, her breaths hitching like she may be crying, is beside herself.
The gods have created an imbalance. Your mother?—
Was Hades right? Did my mother really do this? For me?
She’s never been one for violence. Never wanted harm to come to anyone. She’s the most generous of the gods. And yet death and despair follow in her wake.
I’ve never known such things, but I’ve also never known grief like I did losing her. I can only imagine how she felt.
I hold her back, breathing slowly and steadily to keep myself calm. Surely there is a way to stop it. To bring life back. To let what happened stay behind us.
Mothers would do unfathomable things for their daughters.
Unfathomable. That is the word Hades used. The souls filling the sky seemed unfathomable to me.
My mother would do no such thing!
I can feel in her touch that she would. That she might do worse, if she thought it would bring me back to her.
The imbalances.
All the deaths.
The souls in the sky above the Underworld. The destruction of our realms.
Hades. My mind stays on thoughts of him as I stare at my mother.
I stroke my mother’s back in rhythmic circles. She relaxes into me, and I realize I’m frowning into the distance.
I let my face rest on her shoulder, hiding it from anyone who may be watching. Olympus feels strange, but my mother does not. I keep holding her, nearly afraid of letting her go.
