Her long corn-silk curls were matted with sweat and red clay. It streaked across her once shining face in muddy smears; it coated her torn smock and caked the sore, battered flesh of her hands. Tears poured from tired, bleary eyes in a continuous flood, dropping uselessly to a barren landscape ripe with dusty footprints and the low wailing of a deserted mother.

If she had been more attentive; if she had observed her daughter's playmates more closely; if she had kept Persephone by her side: in her moments of guilt-ridden clarity Demeter would revisit these possibilities in a vain attempt to turn back time and save her beautiful daughter from an unknown fate. It was the ignorance which pierced like a sickle, the not knowing, the lack of knowledge of her dear daughter's very soul. How could the most innocent being, the prettiest of the Pantheon, disappear without leaving anything of herself behind? A few flower petals that crumbled in Demeter's terrified grasp: nothing, worthless!

She avoided the company of other Gods, her senses bent on discovering the whereabouts of her lost child, foregoing her duties, blessing the Earth only when she stopped to rest on her never-ending pilgrimage.

Finally she lay her weary bones against a sun-bleached boulder, breathing hard in the shade it offered but not caring for her own fatigue; only Persephone mattered, only the search.

"You look tired."

Demeter squinted her watery eyes at the vision before her. Gleaming white robes billowed around supple limbs; three faces—six dark eyes—stared down at her before shimmering into one. A sparkling torch was held high even in the heat of Helios' chariot moving high in the heavens.

"Hecate?" the grain Goddess croaked. "Do you…do you mock me?"

"No." The guardian of crossroads, of the paths between life and death shook her white head, locks tumbling around strong shoulders and high breasts. A cruel smirk played upon the edges of her blood red mouth as the silence purposely grew between them, as she watched the once mighty Goddess now brought so low. "I've watched your suffering Demeter, but now you must learn the truth."

"What are you babbling about, hag?" Demeter scoffed, running her injured hand along the shade-damp soil unmindful of the potential enemy she was antagonizing with her insults.

"Babbling am I?" Hecate pursed her lips, the torch wavering at the slight. "Am I to assume you no longer care about where to find your missing child?"

Demeter's attention was quickly focused, her breath coming in rapid pants, her mud smeared cheekbones rising and falling.

"What? You—you know where Persephone has gone? You—Have you known? Have you known all along?!"

"Mostly," she dismissed the mother's outrage. "But remember, I am the first to let you know."

"Let me know what?"

"Your child is no longer on the Earth, Demeter. Persephone is in the arms of her uncle." Another silence fell as Demeter stared, agape, jaw trembling. She painfully pushed herself up, anger replacing the weeks of melancholy and utter despair.

"Who?!" she demanded, eyes flashing. "Tell me now witch! Poseidon? Does he dare to hurt me through Persephone?!"

"It's not your brother of the waves Demeter. It's the Dark One, the Rich One: your brother of the Underworld."

"You lie!" the words left Demeter's cracked lips in a hiss, like a summer breeze through dried wheat. "He is incapable of lust. Nothing would stir him to distraction Hecate, he is stone."

A deep, purring laughter rumbled from the other immortals' throat. With one hand on her shapely waist she turned her back on Demeter, walking away from the crossroads and fading once again into nothingness.

"I'm too elegant to lie."