Persephone Incarnate [Wattpad Prize 2014] | ✔️

{ e p i l o g u e }

This time, there had been no fall, no chariot of stygian iron pulled by horses with glossy black coats. It had been as simple as plucking a flower.

Persephone stared at the flower that she held by the stem between her index finger and thumb – small white petals, tipped with pink, much like the one that Hades had made for her when he’d kidnapped her. “If you want to come back, just pluck the flower. If you don’t, it’s all right. I’ll understand,” he’d told her, so many years ago.

She was ready to go back now. She had seen thousands of years pass by, thousands of people die, wilting, one by one, like beautiful flowers. No, they were not like beautiful flowers. They were the flowers.

She had come to know how delicate they were – fragile and soft, smooth and malleable, but they had that one thing that made them so human, so amazing – they burned bright. They made their time on Earth worth it, because time had meaning to them. Time was not just a black hole that sucked all the joy out of life for them, time was a ticking bomb, counting down the moments until it would all just burst into a fiery spark and settle down like an ash.

And as she stood there on the beach, she realized something: they, the gods and goddesses, with their immortality and unbreakable skin and pure energy existence – they were nothing compared to the humans. The humans – they were the things of dreams and legends. They were the artists, the writers, the creators – they made life. And that was their legacy.

What have we left behind but tears and myths? she wondered as she stared off into the dim horizon. There was no sun there; there never was in the Underworld, but she liked to imagine that she was on the surface again, and she could feel the waves lapping against her bare feet and the sand between her toes and smell the salt mingled in with the fresh breeze. 

She suddenly stilled when she heard the sound of someone walking through sand, kicking it up as they walked. She whirled around and came face to face with Hades. She saw him, in his true form, for the first time in two thousand and some years. He hadn’t changed a bit – he still had his wavy black hair, death pale face, and those surprisingly warm eyes.

“Persephone,” he said, curtly.

“My lord,” she replied, mockingly. She knew he didn’t care much about the title anymore – if he did, he would be carrying his scepter and wearing his trademark black sweeping cloak that had replaced his chiton in the 1400s. Instead, he was wearing dark jeans and a black t-shirt. It should’ve surprised her, since she’d never seen him go so casual before, but she just couldn’t find it in her to react.

To her surprise, he smiled, causing the corners of his eyes to crinkle and that one stubborn corner of his mouth to dimple. “Have you come to stay?” he asked, softly.

“I’ve had time to think, these past centuries.” She looked down at the sand; as if she was fascinated at the little dunes it created. “Ever since…” she swallowed, “Sophie…I’ve had a lot of time to think. We spent a lot of time together, and she’s changed the way I thought about a lot of things. But…mostly…mostly…mostly you.”

“It’s been five hundred years. You can’t forget her?” His eyes studied her, without judging.

“She was…special. She was just so…human, she got depressed, but she cheered up, she cried, but she loved, she was determined, she lost hope, she lived, she died. She was always like that, straight until the end. She didn’t try to move on, to forget, like everybody else. She didn’t try to pretend like it didn’t happen. She remembered, she let it haunt her and her dreams, it was part of her personality from the moment she stepped foot on the surface again. And I remember…even at her wedding…do you know what she made Alexander do?” She laughed at the memory. “She made him swear on the River Styx that he would love her forever and forever. Not because she didn’t trust him, but because she loved him like that.”