Storytelling for Week 3: An Otherworldly Compromise

Everything is different now.    

Gone were the days that I was lectured on ends about wandering off too far or talking to someone my mother didn't know.  Gone were the times where I'd fantasize about what other people were like besides my mother and the forest nymphs.  I remember looking up at the clouds daydreaming about a new world where we had neighbors and friends. 

"Dear Persephone why do you always think such silly things.  This is the most beautiful place in the world to live.  There is nothing more perfect out there, only disappointments await you outside our valley."  Mother and I had many conversations like this and it only increased my longing for the world that was forbidden to me.  

But those days are in the past.  Today I awake in a porcelain palace in the majestic lands of Elysium.  It wasn't exactly my choice to come here but now I never want to leave.  For the first time in my life I actually have friends, and even a husband.  My new life terrified me at first.  However, now I could never imagine going back.  

"This can be your home now.  The first time I saw you it was like a fire lit inside me.  If I could do it all over again I wouldn't have acted so rash.  I'm sorry if I caused you any despair but all I ask is that you give me a chance," Hades told me after he brought me to this enchanted place.  I was sobbing in the corner of his chariot.  His words calmed me as I arose from the corner and surveyed this beautiful but foreign land. 

That was six months ago and it's hard to believe how much I've grown to love this land and its King.  This is far better than anything I imagined whilst daydreaming under a sky full of clouds.  

I look out my window at the blueish gray sky and my eyes spot a flash of gold in the distance.  Hermes?  The only god who can pass freely through all worlds.  I stare perplexed when Hades burst into my bedroom.  

"He's come to take you.  Demeter has practically destroyed earth to get you back.  I'm sorry my love, but Zeus decrees it," Hades told me as tears started to form in his eyes.  

"There must be something we can do."  I wanted to see my mother again but I couldn't imagine leaving this place to never return.  

Suddenly, Hades eyes sparked and he returned to my room with a ripe pomegranate.  "Eat this.  It will bind you to this world, eat the entire thing and you can stay forever."  

In that moment I heard the palace gates open, Hermes had arrived.  With the thought of never seeing my mother again barred into my mind I compromised.  I ate half.  

(Persephone Contemplates from Deviant Art.)

Author's Note:   If you are unfamiliar with the tale of Persephone and Hades click on this to read about it in depth.  But basically, she is kidnapped and taken to be Hades’ wife but after her mother pleads with Zeus to have her stay it’s decided she’ll divide her time between the two worlds.  And that’s is the myth behind the different seasons.  I wanted to give a different perspective on this old myth.  In the original Persephone is kidnapped and unhappily goes between the two worlds to her mother and husband.  There was so much I wanted to cover in this short story so I felt like I had to jump around a little bit.  This is just a "what if" idea I've had since I first heard the story in middle school.  Because "what if" Persephone and Hades were actually in love!  I wrote a storybook that centered on this idea last semester in Indian Epics.  I chose an image that I felt was a little ambiguous.  Is she contemplating whether she should stay or go while about to eat the fruit that will link her to the underworld forever?  My overall goal was for people to think of this story in a new light. 

Bibliography: This story is part of the Ovid's Metamorphoses unit. Story source: Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (2000).