The Taste Of Divinity

Ε Ι Κ Ο Σ Ι Τ Ε Σ Σ Ε Ρ Α

Persephone did think about the nymph's words during the next few days, she thought about them a lot.

She thought about them as the servants he'd appointed to tend to her needs dressed her and painted her face, as they pinned her hair back and used a million different words to apologise every time the clasps of the jewelery bit into her skin.

It had been one of the few times she'd ever tasted genuine fear.

And it had tasted peculiarly sweet.

She thought about them at night, those long nights, when he sat beside her on the dinner table--she had long since denied his requests to join him in the throne room. She thought about them when he slid the freshly cleaned pomegranates over to her, his stained fingers careful not to taint her.

She thought about them when she caught him staring at her in wonder and the remnants of licentious need that remained even as he fought to conceal them with his lovely indifference. She thought about them when when he told her stories of his glorious past; the battles, the feasts, his time on Olympus no matter how short it had been.

She thought about them even when she was certain they tasted like lies.

❁❁

One night, he told her of Crete, confessing how some nights he allowed himself to dream about the rocky mountains that touched the skies and the clear blue seas where the Sun went to die every night. Those had been the first and last days of true happiness he had ever experienced, the last days of his innocence before he understood the coldness in his mother's comforting arms and the cruelty of his father's heart. His face had grown dark as the sky then. She'd felt the strings of her heart tug at his words. She could imagine him, young and already brooding and wise beyond his years while holding on to the naivety of hope.

He'd always been an oxymoron, it seemed.

His eyes lit up when he told her of his first days in the Underworld, never even thinking of omitting the warm welcome he'd received as his warm blood stained his clothes. He told her how he'd welcomed the silence that now suffocated her. He'd found salvation in the dark, or so he said. It was rather evident that he was lying through his teeth. After all, why would someone content with endless nothingness move heaven and earth to bring even the soft, flickering light of the stars into his world?

And why did he, who possessed so many stars, experience hunger? Couldn't he pluck some of them from the sky and consume them to sate his never ending gluttony? Couldn't he fill his body and his soul with his softly crafted light, why did it need to be the last remaining rays she carried inside her?

She never spoke her thoughts out loud.

In fact, during that whole time, she would not speak a single word, feeding that dreadful silence she so detested with the poison of her even breaths.

Only when the wretched nights finally came to an end and he had eaten and drunk his share of nectar and every other indulgence his servants filled his cup with would she part her lips and give him her voice.

"Make good on your promise, Polysemantor." She would tell him and he would watch in admiration as the stars caught the jewellery and the ribbons forced on her. "Take me there tonight."

"Not tonight." He would reply and his fascination would continue to grow as the stars caught the thunders that crossed her body like a tree of veins.

That night however, she stood before him and took his stained hands in hers, clutching them tightly as she uttered her first and final words for the night, "I suppose it won't be tonight, either, will it?"