Does Your Mother Know?

She walked away from the snug, stone cottage nestled in the valley. With each step, the weather grew colder. The leaves around her changed from soft greens to vibrant golds, burgundies and oranges, flaming brightly against the painfully blue sky. The sky faded as the dwelling became a tiny dot on the horizon. The blue, that once hurt to look at directly, darkened to a pewter gray as the leaves drifted from the trees, becoming dry and brittle before they even touched the ground.

Her mother was in fine form today. The more she raged, the more quickly the land died.

Persephone sighed. It didn’t change anything. The woman could throw as many tantrums as she liked, but Persephone had had enough. She loved her mother, of course, but she’d been held hostage to the woman’s unfulfilled dreams for too long. Just because Demeter chose to live a miserable, bitter existence didn’t mean she needed to trap her only child within it.

Persephone drew her cloak more tightly around her shoulders as she continued to push forward. The overly sweet, sickly scent of rotting apples filled the air, clinging to everything around her. She wouldn’t be surprised if the sheep, looking for shelter from the buffeting winds, reeked of the decaying fruit.

Dark storm clouds roiled overhead, throwing needle-like raindrops to the earth. Icy wetness seeped through the thin wool wrapping her body, and she shivered beneath the increasingly heavy weight. She could put a stop to this. If she returned home, all would be forgiven as if it had never happened. In fact, her mother would pretend it never had happened then light and warmth would return to the land. But Persephone was tired of being a captive in her own home. She wanted more than to tend the gardens and fruit trees. Her mother might be content to cut herself off from physical contact, but Persephone wasn’t.

She wanted things. Things she couldn’t even name. Dark things. Things that made her body ache with needs she couldn’t describe, let alone explain. Needs that kept her awake at night and distracted during the day. Needs that twisted her dreams into writhing, pulse-pounding visions of equal parts torment and ecstasy. Needs that became more pronounced every time she saw him. Needs that made her cross from the land of the living and into the dead.