Autumn and Winter

Ever since the dawn of her memories, Persephone had been counting the long days until she could go back to her home. It never seemed like enough when she was underground, as snow and wind raged above; when she was warm in Hades’ arms. Her mother, Demeter, openly disapproved of Hades, and so her months with always felt stolen, never enough. Still, Persephone had long since accepted her mother’s hatred for her husband, that was as undying as all of them in Olympus. 

Persephone could feel the days getting shorter, along with her mother’s temper as Demeter fulfilled her duties as the goddess of farming and harvest, going around the world helping farmers reap what they had sown. Normally, Persephone would have gone with her, but the season had lasted longer this year, and her powers as the goddess of springtime and bloom would have been useless. The year was coming to her end, along with her time aboveground. 

As she walked the fields she had once frolicked in with her nymph maidservants and friends, Persephone felt the dying wildlife around her, that would soon go to rest for the long winter, bloom to life as though it was the middle of spring. Her sundress as green as her emerald eyes, not meant for the harsh winds of late Autumn, fluttered erratically around her feet. Birds and small animals gathered around her. The streams that crossed her path were frozen, and she could see fish straining against the cracked ice to get to her. Fish that should have been downstream, heading to warmer oceans for the winter. 

There was so much life in the world, and it was sapping her power. Flowers weren’t supposed to be in full bloom when winter was coming. Birds were supposed to be on the other side of the world. Did Demeter not understand that Persephone’s very being here went against the inevitable laws of nature? Autumn should have ended a month ago. 

She was tired of it. So tired of being the dainty princess of spring. Of being the giver of life to all that crossed her path. Of being her mother’s faithful, beautiful child. She could feel the darkness calling her, from the shadows and the caves and everything lost. Her heart was aching from months spent sleeping alone. She could feel that incessant pull in her gut that always came when it was time. Time to go home. 

It wasn’t that Persephone wanted to leave her mother. It was that she wanted to see her beloved. The goddess of all living things took a breath, giving herself the space of five beats in her immortal heart to mourn the death of the spring, to allow herself to give up her mother for the winter months. She gave herself that time to say goodbye to the blue sky and the sunshine. 

Then, she stepped into the gaping cavern that had been summoned, not from underneath, but from within her own self. For Persephone was not just the goddess of spring. She was also the goddess of the souls long departed, the damned and the blessed, the forgotten and the remembered, those gone peacefully and those still screaming in the fields of punishment. She was the queen of the dead, and they awaited her return. 

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The air was lightless in front of her as she descended that great onyx staircase. Still, she could see perfectly, her eyes now as dark as pitch, as dark as her husband’s, completely in their element. The ground closed behind her, and she felt that small voice in her mind saying that she had been gone too long, that she would not be welcome, that the darkness would no longer accept and obey her, vanish. Persephone took a deep breath of the warm, dry air in Erebus, the land of the dead. Air that was so clean and untouched from the crowded, dirty place above her. Her dress, so different from what she had been wearing moments before, was short and jagged, revealing the long, slender dagger strapped to her thigh. She wore the diadem that now sat atop her head, as bright and silver as the most dazzling star in the great dark sky, proudly. The wails and muttering and laughs she heard in the distance did not frighten her; for those were her people living in the realm of the dead. 

Charon, the ferryman of the dead, bowed his head to her at the bottom of the stairs. 

‘Welcome home, my lady.’ Persephone merely inclined her regal head. The incorporeal spirits that gathered on the banks of the river Styx, waiting for safe passage into the underworld, grew a little more solid in her presence. They shied away, whispering incoherently amongst themselves, recognizing their queen, and treating her with the respect she deserved.   

The Styx churned and flowed crimson red, carrying the hated, unwanted memories thrown into it from millennia of brokenhearted shades of the souls who had passed its banks. Persephone boarded Charon’s ferry with the elegance that the centuries had instilled in her. There was one thought in her head. There was only ever one thought in her head when she first entered Erebus. 

‘Where is Hades?’ she asked the ferryman as they crossed the river, and he shook his head in unknowing. Cerberus, the guardian to Erebus, waited on the other side of the river. The massive hound barked in joy at the sight of her. Persephone smiled. She had missed him, and all the others dwelling in the realm of the dead.  

The dark figures were circling her head, Hades’ most loyal servants and torturers, the Furies. They would not come near her, and they would not speak to her, but that was their way, as old as the abyss itself. They followed her silently as she made her way to the palace, sworn to protect her as their queen. Hades would not be in the palace, for he did not know she was here, but Persephone could wait. She had waited for seven months, and she could wait a few hours. Only a few hours now.