Author's Notes:

A big round of applause please for HGRomance whose profile prompt sparked the plot bunny that would not let me be until I at least outlined the story and wrote the prologue and first chapter.

And don't worry, for my Mockings Hall readers, I will be working on this alongside Mockings Hall. I may be shooting myself in the foot by working on two completely different stories at the same time but what the hell. (No pun intended, at least for this story.)

This will be a retelling of the Persephone-Hades mythology but I will take liberties (the size of Mt. Olympus) to adapt it into the Hunger Games world. I do beseech an open mind from you, pretty please!

Anyway. Mythology, prepare to be twisted, Hunger Games style.

In the Elysian Fields

Prologue:

"Ah, but what can we take along

into that other realm? Not the art of looking,

which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.

The sufferings, then. And, above all, the heaviness,

and the long experience of love,—just what is wholly unsayable."

- The Ninth Elegy, Rainer Maria Rilke

I waited and waited until I can go back.

The passing of the days, the hours, the minutes, and the seconds, until the infinitesimal element that brought us from past to present and present to future, passes through my body and tells me I can see him again, was my only guide.

But until that moment, I was here in the mortal realm, above where I yearn to be, where I am dead until I can live again, until I can breathe him in, until his touch sparked the life back into my eyes.

I laid in the meadow behind our home. The tall grasses concealed me in the ground and the sun offered no warmth to my cold skin. My sister called to me for our midday meal but I did not heed her. My tongue longed for the sweetness of ambrosia and not the sustenance of mortals.

I heard her footfalls, as her feet bended the stalks and her dress sailed through the tips. She approached me, apprehensive of what she would find. Once she had found me only staring at the crashing sea beyond the cliffs where our home was perched. Once she had also found me lying in the grass, looking at the bluest sky until the sun blinded me of its light. And once she had found me, crying and pouring my grief into the wind, praying that it carried my lament to him, to where I cannot be. And she had learned to let me, let me until I came back to her as well.

I had forgotten, in the throes of my despair, that the Fates had decreed me a daughter of two worlds, two irreconcilable worlds and I was the only one able to walk both. I had not chosen where I had been borne, nor could the gods choose where they ruled. It was the cruel fate that escaped our grasps.

My sister sat beside me. On a good day, I would hum. And she would sing with me the lullabies that sailed with us to our dreams. And I would smile at the memories that danced in my mind with each note. If I was happy, I would let her lead me back to the house, through the aged and cracked wooden door, down the white stone walls, and into the dining place where a simple meal greeted us and a hearth burned by. I would sit down and eat. She would sit in front of me and she would tell me her day, out in the field that turned her soft hands to leather, or in the market where she sold the remedies passed onto her by mother. And I would listen. For a few glorious moments my despondency would be forgotten as my sister's voice fought its slithering tendrils in my mind. But when her tale ended, my gloom would begin once more. I would stand up, thank her softly for the meal she had prepared, and go back out the salt-aged door and into the meadow once more. Sometimes the wind drowned her soft cries, sometimes I heard them and they pulled at my heart. But my strength was inadequate today and I stayed in my meadow.

In the evening, I went back to bed and dreamt.

Perhaps he would visit whilst I slumber, or my mind would summon him for me so we can dance again, laugh again in the Elysian Fields.

But until then, I waited and waited until I can go back.

Author's Notes:

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