Hey guys! TWO CHAPTERS IN ONE NIGHT! I had this one partially written when I finished the last one, so I figured I'd finish it while I had some time! Quick aside, I could not find out how long it took the gods to find Persephone. I know winter is long, longer than the time I've depicted here, but it fit better with the story not to drag it out (you'll see why). Plus, from what I've read it seems like the gods found her pretty quick anyway, and the full-blown winter thing only occurred after she'd been found. Also, sorry for my excessive semicolon usage, I'm lowkey a run-on sentence queen. Anyway, enjoy!

Aphrodite, to her credit, considered herself to be in the know. She was on top of things. She gathered gossip all day long, from both Earth and Olympus, and she felt confident that if any given thing were to happen, she'd be the first to know. So when Persephone disappeared, and her outlets on the earth and in the clouds had no idea what to make of it, she felt very vexed indeed.

(That's because nobody thought to look below the Earth.)

Hera was the one who told her, another sore spot with the goddess of love; she was usually the one who relayed gossip to Hera. Hera barged into her palace one morning making such a ruckus that Aphrodite thought it was her husband. She was sitting before her mirror, brushing her hair when the doors banged open, and from the lower floor she heard Hera's voice, more panicked than Aphrodite had ever known it, cry out, "Aphrodite!"

Aphrodite rushed to her friend, her mind playing out possibilities (Did Zeus have another affair? No, Hera sounds scared, not angry. The Titans, perhaps? My word, have the Titans escaped?)

When she saw her friend, Hera's usually stoic, marble-skinned face was riddled with worry. She clasped Aphrodite's hands in hers and cried, "Persephone is gone!"

"Gone?" Aprodite repeated, bewildered, "She can't just be gone. Why someone has to know where the girl is."

Hera shook her head quickly, "No one. Her mother awoke and found her gone from her bed. Naturally, she became hysterical. When she came to Zeus and I, we were certain Persephone had just gone off without telling her mother. So to placate her, we bade Hermes and Apollo to search for her. And she's gone! She isn't in Olympus, she's nowhere to be found on Earth, Zeus even asked Poseidon to search the seas! Either she's hiding somewhere absolutely untraceable or something horrible has happened!"

"Calm down, clam down," Aphrodite soothed her friend, although she too was starting to worry. Why did it have to be Persephone who vanished, thought Aphrodite, and not her air-headed mother? Or my husband, for that matter? She shook away the insult; it wouldn't help find the poor girl.

So Aphrodite worked her channels and came up with nothing. She sent her son, Eros, out to search and enlisted Ares as well. Even Hephaestus, in a rare moment of marital kindness between the two, approached her and said he'd built thousands of automatons and sent them to Earth to search. "I know she is a close friend to you," said Hephaestus, meeting his wife's eyes with more gentleness than he had in centuries, "I hope she is safe from harm." Aphrodite did the unthinkable; she hugged her husband tight and whispered, "thank you."

As Hera said, Demeter was in absolute hysterics. Olympus literally trembled in the sky from her wailing. She took Hecate's torches and searched day and night for her daughter. As she grieved, her blonde hair turned slowly to white, and her lush and generous beauty gave way until she appeared a frail, brittle ghost.

As Demeter mourned, so the earth mourned with her. Plants stopped growing, the trees lost their leaves. Even with Helios shining the sun with all his might, the Earth grew and stayed cold. Crops died, and below the mortals of Earth were beginning to panic. The earth had always been bountiful as Demeter herself, and now it was not providing.

As Persephone's absence turned from days to weeks, Zeus called a council. They discussed at length the two large issues at hand: the disappearance of Persephone, and the despair her mother was bringing upon the earth. The gods received countless prayers every second of every day, each one a plea for the earth to provide. They were as worried as the mortals; they had been asked for help and for the very first time, they could not provide it.

Finally, Athena rose and spoke in her loud, clear voice. According to her, there were two options: find Persephone or face the possibility of the extinction of all life on Earth. "I suggest," she said solemnly, "That we do the former."

The one true folly of the Olympians, their colossal oversight, was that no one thought to ask Selene where Persephone was. Or her siblings.

Not only did Selene know immediately what had occurred as soon as Persephone went missing, Helios had seen the whole thing. He'd watched Persephone take Hades' hand and ride off into the Underworld, and suddenly her recent actions and emotions started to make sense. Helios sat on the information for the rest of the day, pondering up in the clouds, until his sister Selene came to relieve him of duty. Then, he reported what he saw to Selene, and only to Selene, who told her brother the entire story and swore him to secrecy. Of course he told his sister Eos, but after that, the secret remained closely guarded by the three of them. They sat in silence, trying to look bewildered, as the gods held council to decide what to do.

After the council meeting, the three siblings gathered around the fire in their palace, speaking quietly, as though they could be heard on the wind. Persephone was their friend, they didn't want to betray her. However, her disappearance was approaching a month, and the people of Earth were starving.

"People are going to die," whispered Eos, the terror in her blue eyes matching that of Helios and Selene.

"People are already dying," said Helios bitterly, "It has already begun. I see it every day. I make the sun shine as hard as I can, with all of my energy. But even that is not enough to warm the earth, even if Demeter's clouds don't cover me. Sisters, I am torn."

"We can't tell on 'Sephie! We can't tell them where she really is!" cried Selene, her voice wavering slightly.

"Selene, we either tell them what we know or more people will die every day! And it is on our shoulders for letting it happen! Is that what you want?" cried Helios. He looked at the pained look on his sister's face and softened his tone, "Selene, you know I love 'Sephone. She's as dear to me as she is to you, to all of us. But this cannot continue." Selene's eyes welled up his tears, and she sank into her brother's shoulder, weeping.

"Selene, it's okay!" murmured Eos, placing a hand on his sister's shoulder, "She's with Hades, he's as powerful as it gets. If she doesn't want to leave, I'm sure Hades won't give her up without a fight. And 'Sephie can hold her own, too!"

"That may be," said Selene, her voice exhausted, "Hades is her lover, but remember who is her mother."

The three sat in silence for what felt like eons, until Helios spoke.

"Let us compromise. We forgot to consider one possibility, Persephone could just be biding her time, waiting to reveal where she is. She is probably distracted, to say the least, and does not know what is happening on earth. Let us do this, we will give Persephone two more weeks. Half a month. If she doesn't make her whereabouts known by then, we will speak." Helios looked to his sisters, who nodded in agreement. The plan was in place. And until that time, the siblings stayed silent; watching, waiting.

As Helios predicted, Persephone had no idea what was going on above. And neither, for the most part, did Hades. Had Persephone not been there, tempting and radiant, finally so near to him always, then perhaps he would have noticed the sharp uptick in souls departing to the afterlife. But he did his duties with half a mind nowadays, the other half remained with Persephone; her body, the way she moved, her smile, the way she felt, her voice and how she said his name so sweetly, moaned it so sweetly as he made love to her…

While he was away, his mind occupied with thoughts of her, she roamed the palace and the garden. She walked along the River Styx. She visited Cerberus daily and brought him treats to eat. She read books, countless books, in Hades monolithic library. Often, he'd arrive back at the palace and find her curled in a chair, asleep with a book open next to her. He'd wake her gently, by stroking her cheek or kissing her hair, and those luminous green eyes would blink open and look at him with so much love he thought his heart would burst. Often, they'd make love right there on the library floor, him lying on his back so the hard floor wouldn't give her an ache.

How wonderful it was, Hades thought, to be able to wake up next to her. To feel her pressed against him, to be able to reach for her in the night and find her, to pull her close. Her physical presence was something he had found himself craving in the time after he met her, aching throughout the day to be able to touch her at night. Just to physically touch her, to feel her hair slip through his fingers, to place a hand against her smooth, soft skin.

Their days passed in absolute bliss, more of a heaven than Persephone could have ever imagined on Olympus. But as she became more and more immersed in her new life, she forgot to open Selene's most recent letter. And the one after that. And the one after that. The letters took up residence on a library table, where Persephone always promised herself she'd read them next time she sat down to read, but before she knew it she was devouring volumes of poetry, falling asleep, and waking up, ready for sleepy lovemaking with her new husband.

Had she read the letters, perhaps what happened next would have gone differently, or perhaps not. Perhaps some things in this world are simply fated to be.