Of Petals and Raindrops

Persephone spends her days on a cold throne, dreaming of springtime.

She can taste it on her lips, a tantalizing mixture of spice and rain. The fragrance lingers in her nose, freshness and flowers dulled, but not quite vanished despite the cloying odor of dirt and death. Her fingers, clamped around the frigid metal, imagine they can feel the ghost of refreshing rain and crisp wind. Her eyes are lightly closed, seeing bright colours and sun, rainbows stretching across the sky. She listens for the chirping of the birds and hears it although she knows it isn't there.

There were times that her husband could push it all from her mind, with his fingers that were everywhere and his scent, somehow so much more appealing when she was drowned in it. Her eyes would remain tightly shut and the world would vanish in the heat as all that could be heard was the combined thumping of two heartbeats and the desperate moans as she tastes his lips and skin and him. It hurts, when she knows that she's not the only one to have this privilege and so her resentment grows deeper.

She wants nothing more than to leave this dark place behind and return to the bright world of above, and she does it again and again, year after year, drinking in everything that she has dreamed of. But it is never sweet, when she knows that soon she will be torn away again, into the palace of shadows.

One day, she stands before the entrance and feels her legs tense in preparation for a desperate dash away from this nightmare. She imagines it clearly, the beauty of a full year without the depths of the Underworld. A full year, a full century, a full millennium, she imagines- forever, even, forever. It is her deepest fantasy and the one she can never attain; her curse, even, she thinks at times. Perhaps to forget it all would be better, would dissolve the prison walls she sees around her and replace them with the beauty of a home and love.

But then, for that, she would also have to forget di Angelo and the others, the parade of women that her husband brought through his bed before returning to hers as though he never left.

She forces her feet forward, step by step, into Hell.

She hates them with the fervor she can't quite seem to achieve when she thinks of Hades, because she would like to imagine that it's their fault. Perhaps, if she absolves him, she can forgive him. It never works, but she'd rather be caught in limbo than learn to blame him, and feel hate coursing through her veins. Besides, she's not quite sure she can.

She has never taken her own lover, never even thought of it. There had been many to catch her eye and far more to try, but she ignored them in the end because if there is one thing that she is not and will never be, it is hypocritical.

She wanders sometimes through his kingdom. Souls stare at her with accusing eyes, taking in her beauty and elegant air of purity, and tell her with their rejection she is unwelcome. She doesn't belong. She wants badly to turn and leave them to themselves, but she can't because they, at least, agree with her. There are few who are loyal to her, and fewer still who love her. She is too easy to envy, to hate- come from above with her dainty jewels and gowns and sullen looks, gracing them all with utmost reluctance, and leaving the moment she is able. She can feel their thoughts and read them like they're her own, but she can't care.

She doesn't much care what anyone has to say in her home, either, and here in this foreign court opinions mean even less to her. All that matters, really, is the count.

How many months, how many weeks, how many days, how many minutes-

How many seconds until she can leave?

And then, when she finally attains it and her heart is basking in the sunlight, it begins again.

How many months, how many weeks, how many days, how many minutes-

How many seconds until she must return?

It's alternately the cloud's silver lining and the cloud itself, and it beats inside her head until she wants to scream and bang her head against walls to stop it. She wants to break down and sob some days, but she's a goddess. An all-powerful goddess, above all petty mortal emotions such as despair; never just an unhappy woman caught in a forced marriage, no, never that. Whatever would they say?

She learns to live without tears, but envies mortals more every day.

She has learned her lesson over and over again, but she will continue to be punished. Never give in to temptation. And so, she stays even when she can feel the world calling. She knows better than to make the same mistake twice and anything irresistible in its beauty will extract its price. She is not the goddess of wisdom, but she is no mortal either, foolish and unable to control her whims.

She is bound to this place by tethers of divinity and debt, and she knows not to try to break them. She is hardly able to comprehend them, forged by the eldest of the gods. Still, none can keep her from her fantasies.

She dances in the rain and doesn't notice when it turns to sun, and flowers bloom around her.

"Look," she cries to her husband, and he looks like he belongs here, in her home. He smiles at her gently, and takes her in his arms and she has never felt such magic, to be with him and surrounded by nature's bounty at once. The flowers multiply and grow until they cover the two lovers and add their own embrace. Both she and her husband welcome it.

When they are done, he presses a kiss to her lips and for a moment it tastes wonderful and it soothes her as nothing else has done for years, and then-

And then it becomes captivity and darkness and corpses and she screams.

She opens her eyes and lets out a vivid curse, odd-sounding in her elegant voice.

Forbidden fruit, how sweet the taste, before it turns to ashes.

Lioness Amaya

With special thanks to my beta, Argentum Luna, and the rest of Veritas. Writetn for the Monthly Veritas Prompt for May, "Forbidden Fruit".