Persephone
“Persephone?”
“Yes, mother?”
“Be sure to stay close while I tend the fields, darling. We will only be a moment.”
“Yes, mother.”
Demeter filled the gilded landscape with bushes and trees, the flora dripping with ripe fruit. Crops grew in rows on the rolling hillside far as the eye could see. Persephone swelled with pride watching Demeter work and admired her mother’s elegant strokes as she painted the terrain with a wave of her hand.
With a hum and a smile, Persephone ran from the harvest and toward her secret haven of daffodils. While Demetertended the crops, Persephone bloomed her favorite six petaled flowers in an alcove hidden by a copse of trees. Demeter often chastised her for frolicking, but the sweet flowers drew her every time nonetheless.
Birds flitted through the sky as they chased one another, their high-pitched songs the perfect tune to fill the silence. Once out of sight, Persephone walked without haste, running her fingers through the waist high grass that danced with the breeze and coaxing blooms where she touched.
Demeter was a goddess of the harvest, capable of growing grains and vegetables without a thought. But Persephone? Her gift was flowers. Delicate silk petals blossomed with whispered praises under her fingers. Everywhere she touched, beauty grew.
Persephone stopped on the peak of the highest hill, closed her eyes, and embraced the world around her. Water tinkled in the distance as the brook flowed steadily downstream. Light from the setting sun warmed her skin and the breeze ruffled the pink hair around her shoulders.
“Such a pretty flower,” a hushed voice grazed her skin. Persephone didn’t open her eyes or turn. She expected the whisper, and a shiver of anticipation pulled at the corner of her lips. The first time she heard it, Persephone ran back to Demeter without a backward glance, terror fueling her sprint. The second time she fled slower, throwing distraught looks over her shoulder and searching the meadow.
Each time, Persephone grew more hesitant to leave. The voice whispered her praises, doting on the braids in her hair or the chaos she wove through the ground. The low, masculine lilt in the voice intrigued Persephone and the closer she got to the water, the louder his whispers became.
This would be the seventh time the voice visited her.
Seven times she heard the voice.
Seven times she felt its presence.
Seven times, she’d been okay.
Persephone opened her eyes to the sun and descended the grassy knoll into the field of wildflowers. The world seemed to sigh as she connected her mind, body, and soul to the plants brushing her ankles.
The skin on her neck prickled as ghostly eyes roamed her body, but she brushed it aside. Her heart pounded as Demeter’s warnings rang through her mind.“Don’t go toward the streams, Persephone. Water from the Underworld trickles through these valleys and we are outside the protection of Mount Olympus. You don’t know what may be lurking, and finding out could be your death.”
And yet she still stood. Demeter had always sheltered her, but as Persephone grew older she found herself longing to make those choices for herself. So rather than run back into the safety of her mothers arms, Persephone stepped toward the brook and sat in a cluster of flowers at its side, dipping her feet into the cool water. As brilliant hues of the setting sun lit the sky, she twirled one finger around a strand of pastel hair lighting fuschia with the dawn. Persephone busied her other hand in the dirt to keep them from trembling as anticipation rolled through her belly.
Would the voice appear again? And who exactly did it belong–
A ripple of water lapped against her ankle and she startled, feet slipping in the softened ground as she scuttled backward. A man with tousled brown hair and a crimson silk robe rested his arms on the bank. “Easy, flower, everything is okay.” He lifted placating hands and offered a reassuring smile.
“Who are you?” The rise and fall of her chest was quick as adrenaline froze her limbs.
“I’ve been watching you. You always leave my field looking so pretty.” He smiled, cheeks dimpling as he flashed teeth white as pearls.
Watching her?
“Is that supposed to be comforting?” Her tone held a clip of haughty defiance, one her mother snapped a vine across her knuckles for on more than one occasion. Defiance was not obedience, and good girls were obedient. Persephone swallowed and bowed her head, the epitome of submission.
“Don’t be shy. I was going for flattery. The blooms are most beautiful after you’ve touched them, and your radiance is blinding after they’ve touched you.”
Persephone was taken aback as he smirked, the insinuation sitting heavy in the air between them. A familiar wave of suspicion deepened her brow as she watched the stranger, waiting for the moment he became just like the rest of them. No man wanted to know Persephone. They wanted to own her.
“Flattery will get you nothing. If you wish an alliance with my mother, you’ll have to ask for my hand like everyone else,” she snapped.
Suitors lined Demeter’s estate to ask for Persephone’s hand. Demeter was one of the twelve Olympian daemons worshiped as a god by the humans and served as an authority figure for their race, daemonkind. She had one of the more potent wells of chaos running through her bloodline. An alliance with Persephone, daughter of the goddess Demeter, was an alliance with The Twelve.
“Ask for your hand?” The stranger tilted his head. “Come now, little flower. Surely you don’t mean to tell me that you have no choice in who you fuck?”
