Garden of Eden

3

Persephone was the daughter of the Goddess of nature, Demeter. Hades was the God of the Underworld. He ruled ghouls and lived in an eternal darkness. She plucked flowers and enjoyed the springtime.

She was light; he was dark. And against all odds, he fell in love with her, hoping her sun could scare away his shadows.

--Greek Mythology

***

The next morning at track practice, Atalanta was strangely energetic for someone who could not sleep. She had drifted off early in the evening, but when her dreams were full of a domineering, blue-eyed, particularly British professor, she became wide awake.

She had planned to read the story of Atalanta just before class so that it would be fresh in her mind for discussion. But that night, she stayed awake reading her copy. And this time, she made many, many notes.

While Atalanta had never given history much thought, she found herself entranced by the reading. The Atalanta in the story was much like herself: the way she ran, refused men, and eventually met a fate worse than death.

After reading, Atalanta wondered if her mother knew of the tale when naming her daughter. 

She wondered if her mother intentionally destined Atalanta to end up alone.

These troubling thoughts turned into fuel for Atalanta, for she outran the rest of the team at practice. Sprints was and always had been Atalanta's event. At the beginning of practice, the others seemed a bit standoffish when regarding the new first-year on their team. However, they quickly learned why Atalanta received the scholarship she did.

At the end of practice, Atalanta was gulping down water when two girls approached her. The taller one with dark hair introduced herself as Katherine, and the shorter, ginger-haired one said her name was Eliza. 

"We wanted to come meet you," Eliza said. She had a round face that lit up like a casino, her large blue eyes sparkling. "Tried to say hi at the starting line but I blinked and you were gone!"

Atalanta smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, I got excited." This was only partially true. She was excited to make a good first impression on her new team, but mostly she had just wanted to clear her head.

"Excited? To run?" Eliza giggled and shook her head, making a playfully disgusted face. Atalanta shed a grin. It seemed every school track team, even a college one, shared the ironic joke in how they hated to run. "Well, we know you're a first year and Kath and I thought we'd invite you over tonight."

Kath nodded. She was super thin and willowy, beautiful in a kind, soft way with her black locks and equally-dark eyes. Atalanta smiled at the two of them, more than excited to have some new friends.

They exchanged phone numbers, and Atalanta walked to her dorm with an extra skip in her step. It was only her second day of class, her fifth day of living on campus, and while at first she wasn't too concerned about making friends, she had began to grow lonely.

This feeling dawned on her last night. Something about reading the story of Atalanta had made her more aware. She never had many friends--not any she liked, anyways, just people from her town she felt obligated to be polite to since they had known one another since birth. By extension, she never had any boyfriends. The idea of one made her uncomfortable.

But after the reading? She shook her head as these thoughts began to trickle back in, disturbing her post-run peace. Did she want to make friends? Was she even capable of such a thing?

How does one learn to form a relationship when all they know how to do is run away?

***

Just as she did the day before, Atalanta made the mistake of arriving to Professor Pattinson's class early. Though this time, she had the sense to wait outside, and she herded in with the others when they showed up.