Persephone Incarnate [Wattpad Prize 2014] | ✔️

{17} Sophie

By later, I meant 5 minutes later. xD 

The chapters get shorter and shorter around this point because I had severe writers' block, since I had no idea how to write these scenes. So sorry about that! ^.^

I hope you enjoy nonetheless!

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I’d never ridden a horse before, so I was both exhilarated and nervous as I mounted Fig. She snorted and pawed the ground a few times, and I had to sing to calm her down.

To which she would telepathically reply, You’re taking too long. My sisters and brothers are already flying.

Her presence threw me off at first – I wasn’t used to having anything other than Persephone in my mind, and I felt strangely worried about my privacy. If a horse could get into my mind, what was to stop anything else?

Fig snorted again, as if she heard my thoughts, and I looked at her balefully. “Keep out of my head,” I muttered, not even bothering to sing it. As much as I loved singing, it felt weird to sing everything I wanted to say.

Please don’t do that. The sound of your human language grates against my sensitive ears. She flicked her ears for emphasis.

I ignored her, and made myself comfortable on her back before I sang, “Go!” as loud as I dared. Fig reared, surprised by the sudden command, and I held tight onto her mane. I straddled her flank the best I could, and pressed myself onto her neck – there was no bridle, no reins, and no saddle for me to rely on. Pegasi were supposed to free creatures – they protested at any kind of restraint like that. They looked down at their earthly relatives who let themselves be harnesses and used for the toil of men. Fig had made that distinction with disdain earlier when I had marveled at how much she looked like a horse.

And then we were flying.

I felt the wind rushing gently past me as Fig’s wings flapped quickly, then slowly as we got higher. Domes and people and streets all shrunk down into colorful dots in the distance as we flew higher and higher, sometimes into clouds, and sometimes just into a wide expanse of blue sky. I craned my neck back, looked up, and breathed in deeply.

It seemed that Zeus was in a good mood today – there were no storm clouds in sight. This would be a pleasant flight then.

Eventually we made a large loop around, back to the Oceanids, who looked even more irked than before. “We really don’t have much time, Persephone. Your mother will leave soon if we don’t go now,” Admete warned.

“Okay, sorry, let’s go,”

With that, we were off – the pegasi ran on the air and leaped over clouds the way horses run on the ground and jump over hurdles. They occasionally beat their wings, slowly, once, twice, a few times, to go even higher.

The clouds and the sky were the only things I could see, and I felt giddiness trying to fight its way out of my throat in the form of a whoop of joy. I fought the urge and clung tighter to Fig’s mane instead. Ow, watch the hair.

I loosened my grip – by just a little. I may have been in the body of a goddess, but I still had the fears of a human, and that included falling tens of thousands of miles to my death. Or...whatever would happen when gods fall a great height.

That’s not much better, you – she stopped short of saying something, though I was certain it wasn’t something pleasant.

Before I could ask her what she was about to say, Cacao whinnied loudly, and the other pegasi stopped running along, and started flapping so they wouldn’t lose altitude. We’re here,