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tamingthemuseTitle: Thoughtful.
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
skinthief.
Fandom: Greek Mythology: Hades & Persephone.
Prompt: 095. Thoughtful on 100 Moods; 154. Polysemy on Taming the Muse.
Rating: PG.
She’s never wondered why flowers sprout in the world of the dead. She’s never wondered, and so she’s never asked. Her husband doesn’t wonder either, but his lack of curiousity is due to another reason: he already knows. The Underworld is him, and he is it – nothing can happen without his knowledge.
Before he stole her away from the sunshine of the world above, his domain was cold, dark; lifeless. The ground was empty, and nothing grew in the hard, icy mud. Sun never filtered through the faint cracks in his palace-home, and made it glow amber in the dim light of a sunset. No; then, his world (now their world) had truly been a place of death.
And then he chose her. He chose her, and he took her – he had not been taught to pay heed of others in his pursuit to get whatever he wanted. Later, he would discover that he hadn’t just stolen a young goddess with honeyed limbs and flowers in her hair; no, he stole spring itself. Zephyrus and Eiar, the wind and fruit of spring, had no true influence other than that given by Kore’s dainty hands – the world above withered as his flourished.
He had been wary, of first, of the new light that seeped from her fingertips. The sun was unfamiliar, and so incredibly bright. It made his eyes ache and burned his face and bare chest; his white, dead skin became obnoxiously red, peeling and blistering as if he was no more than a common human. He had been ill at ease with this new, scorched flesh, but it triggered a change in his young wife. Spring was designed to nurture, after all; and so she tended to his burns with cool water and quick, warm hands. He didn’t mind the sunlight again after that.
Still, though, he hadn’t understood the flowers – or rather, their significance. Kore had been picking flowers when he’d first seen her, and again when he caught her up and stole her from the bright world above. But her presence in the Underworld forced winter to release its grasp on his kingdom; spring instead drifted across the barren wasteland, blowing hot air on fertile soil, sprouting seeds, making animals rise from their eternal hibernations.
In a way, then, Kore was responsible for her own entrapment: nothing grew in the Underworld before he claimed her as his bride, and if that nothingness had continued, how would pomegranates have grown?
He knows though, now, not to remind her of this. She doesn’t respect the importance of flowers – overhead, some call it polysemy. Signs have different meanings to the living and the dead, to a young maiden of spring and the lord of the dead. The narkissos sprouting around their marital bed makes him smile and think of their early good days, when her touches were few and far between, and all the sweeter for it; but the flowers make his Persephone (not Kore; never again Kore) weep for earlier days, for a life without the dead. A life, then, without him.
He holds her to him when she weeps, and smoothes her hair away from her pale, pale cheeks. It is these small acts of kindness that make her heart warm to him more than he could ever know; and in the early hours of grey dawn, with the scent of flowers lingering in the air, she smiles softly and kisses him.
Author:
skinthief.Fandom: Greek Mythology: Hades & Persephone.
Prompt: 095. Thoughtful on 100 Moods; 154. Polysemy on Taming the Muse.
Rating: PG.
She’s never wondered why flowers sprout in the world of the dead. She’s never wondered, and so she’s never asked. Her husband doesn’t wonder either, but his lack of curiousity is due to another reason: he already knows. The Underworld is him, and he is it – nothing can happen without his knowledge.
Before he stole her away from the sunshine of the world above, his domain was cold, dark; lifeless. The ground was empty, and nothing grew in the hard, icy mud. Sun never filtered through the faint cracks in his palace-home, and made it glow amber in the dim light of a sunset. No; then, his world (now their world) had truly been a place of death.
And then he chose her. He chose her, and he took her – he had not been taught to pay heed of others in his pursuit to get whatever he wanted. Later, he would discover that he hadn’t just stolen a young goddess with honeyed limbs and flowers in her hair; no, he stole spring itself. Zephyrus and Eiar, the wind and fruit of spring, had no true influence other than that given by Kore’s dainty hands – the world above withered as his flourished.
He had been wary, of first, of the new light that seeped from her fingertips. The sun was unfamiliar, and so incredibly bright. It made his eyes ache and burned his face and bare chest; his white, dead skin became obnoxiously red, peeling and blistering as if he was no more than a common human. He had been ill at ease with this new, scorched flesh, but it triggered a change in his young wife. Spring was designed to nurture, after all; and so she tended to his burns with cool water and quick, warm hands. He didn’t mind the sunlight again after that.
Still, though, he hadn’t understood the flowers – or rather, their significance. Kore had been picking flowers when he’d first seen her, and again when he caught her up and stole her from the bright world above. But her presence in the Underworld forced winter to release its grasp on his kingdom; spring instead drifted across the barren wasteland, blowing hot air on fertile soil, sprouting seeds, making animals rise from their eternal hibernations.
In a way, then, Kore was responsible for her own entrapment: nothing grew in the Underworld before he claimed her as his bride, and if that nothingness had continued, how would pomegranates have grown?
He knows though, now, not to remind her of this. She doesn’t respect the importance of flowers – overhead, some call it polysemy. Signs have different meanings to the living and the dead, to a young maiden of spring and the lord of the dead. The narkissos sprouting around their marital bed makes him smile and think of their early good days, when her touches were few and far between, and all the sweeter for it; but the flowers make his Persephone (not Kore; never again Kore) weep for earlier days, for a life without the dead. A life, then, without him.
He holds her to him when she weeps, and smoothes her hair away from her pale, pale cheeks. It is these small acts of kindness that make her heart warm to him more than he could ever know; and in the early hours of grey dawn, with the scent of flowers lingering in the air, she smiles softly and kisses him.
