• A little something I scrawled yesterday:

    Song birds flew across the verdant field adjacent from a palace as grand as any ever built. Their song was sweet. It flitted to and fro, as if mirroring their bodies in flight. The birds sung of a peaceful spring day filled with gay laughter and leisurely flower-picking. A perfect day it seemed. Surely Helios was smiling down upon Demeter's palace and the surrounding area.

    As if birds themselves young maidens skipped through the tall grasses. They were carefree in their meanderings, occasionally pausing to pluck a low-growing flower that tickled their fancies. Rough woven baskets held lightly in dainty hands carried around the green hauls. The young females were all companions of Persephone, charged with entertaining the young springtime goddess by her mother Demeter. Demeter had picked out the most friendly, the most exuberant of girls to play with her daughter. To even be considered for such a position was deemed a momentous honor.

    Above the squeals of feminine joy and gentle taunting could be heard an oddly discordant rustling of sorts. Jangling jewelry and an over-pronounced shambling of feet mingled together terribly to fill the air. The source of the cacophony originated around Persephone herself. But of course an angry clambering more fitted towards a war drenched battlefield and not a sun-draped valley couldn't have come from a goddess known for her simpering and swooning. Could it?

    Oh look, another bloody flower, Persephone thought bitterly as she yanked the offending plant up roots and all, thrashing it into her splintery basket where it then rested with its other unfortunate comrades. Earlier that morning Demeter had insisted that Persephone go out and play. "You look rather pale today dear," Persephone mocked snarlingly under her breath. The young goddess always looked pale and as a result Demeter sent her out to play a lot. Persephone truly hated how her mother treated her as if she were still five.

    "I'm twenty seven for Gaea's sake!" Persephone growled, scaring away a terrified sparrow. Any mortal women her age would already be well into raising a family and running a household, not picking flowers everyday of the week. Not that those occupations thrilled her anymore than the intolerable heat or unbearable boredom surrounding her. But any change at all would have been acceptable.

    The now sullen Persephone resumed taking her rage out on the flowers that blanketed every scrap of land the eye could see. Unfortunately, her violent weeding held no satisfaction for her. Anything she plucked would still live on, as long as she was nearby that was. Wilting flowers made a trail from her current position to the palace looming half a mile away. Persephone felt she could just die like those disgusting flowers she had cruelly abandoned. The tranquility and whimsy of Demeter's land was torturous. Persephone's goal in life, instead of accomplishing something befitting the grandeur of her family, was to merely escape the smothering clutches of her mother.

    Persephone heard a light crunch, and smiling evilly she lifted her foot. She had stepped on a narcissus. The small pale flower looked miserable, its glory defeated by the dainty foot of a flower goddess. The irony of it all caught Persephone up in a gale of harsh laughter. She remembered the tale of Echo gazing onto the flower's namesake. There was another woman cursed by a selfish goddess. Fate seemed to weave a reoccurring theme.

    "I would just die for a chance to leave this verdant Tartarus," Persephone sighed out.

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    (more to come, this time from the Hades' POV