Dirge of Hell | Greek Mythology

31 Kill, Obliterate, Remove, Exterminate

Demeter sat on the window ledge with her legs drawn up to her chest while looking out into the ocean despondently. It was almost as if a black cloud was visibly raining on her head with the way the shadows played on her face. Her eyes had sunken, her hair and nails had turned brittle, and her skin had started to crack and look scaly from her self-imposed starvation. The goddess of harvest didn't look like her usual plump and jovial self but a dried up prune of an old woman instead – like a piece of parched land unfit for farming.

Poseidon continued to coax her out of her deep depression. He tried to entertain her with his childish water shows; to which she clapped rather unenthusiastically - almost painfully patronizing. He tried to tour her around the most beautiful coral reef formations in the sea, showed her the lair of the rarely seen mermaids and requested them to sing soothing songs for her – absolutely anything and everything to cheer her up.

But all of his efforts were futile. Instead, he was forced to watch her fall deeper and deeper in her isolation. It had come to a point where she had run out of tears. With each passing day, she would speak less. Her complexion would turn even more ashen than the day before. She became thinner. She would stare into nothingness for hours on end, just sitting and not moving if she were left alone. If she wasn't sitting, then she was sleeping a lot. It almost frightened him how dead she seemed. As if all her life was sucked right out of her and she was nothing but a moving corpse.

The Upperworld reflected her state. The fields, which had been lush a month ago and almost ready for harvest, had been attacked by locusts without Demeter's protection. Those that weren't consumed shriveled up under Apollo's sun. Because famine had never struck Hellas for more than five hundred years (largely attributed to Demeter spoiling them), the mortals had become complacent and lazy and forgot to store sufficient grain in their sheds and barns.

Moreover because of Kore's disappearance, the god of the north wind, Boreas, was in the mood for the worst frost Hellas has ever seen for more than two hundred years.

Poseidon walked inside the room with another tray of food. He was getting frustrated and weary of trying to cheer Demeter up. Out of all his siblings, she was the most stubborn (Zeus and Hera came as a close second); and she had stubbornly dedicated herself to remain dark and gloomy and dead.

"Demeter," Poseidon said softly almost like a dire plea or a prayer. "Please eat." He set the tray of food on the window ledge, across from her curled form and pushing it gently towards her.

Demeter didn't shift. She didn't even acknowledge Poseidon's presence, let alone the food. She just continued staring out the window.

That was the final straw.

"Eat or else," Poseidon threatened. But she wasn't moved at all. She just remained silent and detached. Why couldn't she just snap out of it?! He thought. So he grabbed her arm and threw her on the bed, wanting to shake some sense into her. She bounced twice but she didn't make a sound. She just lay there like a broken rag doll.

"I try. I try really hard Demeter. But you are not helping me nor are you willing to help yourself and that has been pushing my patience to the limit," he said as he crawled on top of her, pinning her alarmingly thin wrists above her head. "This is not you! Do you want me to force feed you?!"

"My daughter is in Hades," she croaked with an unused voice. "She is practically dead. I cannot enter the realm of the dead because I have neither Hades nor the Fates' permission."

"She is not dead! She's merely lost! You just need a little patience and she will come back! Can't you believe in your daughter?"

"I believe in my daughter!" she said angrily. Her outburst brought a relieved smile on Poseidon's face but it was short-lived. "I just don't believe Hades or Zeus would ever let her go," she continued listlessly. "I'd rather cease to exist than continue on without her…"