The So Called "Kidnapping"

Look, I didn't thing that my life was this messed up until 3 years into my marriage. It's up to you to decide for all the mess in my life, but I'm blaming my mother, Demeter. If you didn't know, I'm Persephone, the goddess of springtime, and the Queen of the underworld. I kno0w what is going through your mind. Why is the goddess of springtime married to the god of the underworld? Yes, it is weird, because we rule two different things. But however it is weird, that's how we live, and we like it.

This is how the story began. I was resting and talking to some flowers when something caught my eyes. A crack on the floor that made me want to follow it just to see where it led to. Demeter was near, so I sneaked my way past after seeing that she was distracted. The crack went a long way, and by the end of the crack, it was already dark. When I looked up, I was by a lake.

The lake was breathtakingly beautiful. It was as clear as glass, reflecting its surroundings. The plants and animals around the lake seemed to be glowing, making the sight even better than it was.

But that wasn't all I noticed. There was a man (a king maybe?), dressed in expensive black robes, staring at me in a surprised look.

"I didn't know you were actually going to come," He said.

"Excuse me, but who are you?" I asked out of curiosity. Demeter always told me not to talk to strangers, but there was a familiar thing about the guy.

"You might have seen me sometimes up in Olympus," he replied, "I am Hades, god of the underworld, and I have been waiting for you."

"Oh," so he was the king of the dead, "wait why were yo-"

I was cut off in mid-sentence by a voice in my head. It was Demeter.

'Persephone, where are you?' she asked in a worried tone, which was scaring because I know how she gets when she really starts worrying.

Hades then caught my eyes while trying to get my attention. He had a startled face and was signaling me with his hands.

"Go…down…you…me…" I said aloud. Hades' face became even whiter than it already was.

'What did you say dear?' I had forgotten Demeter was still in my head.

"N-nothing Mother…could you please get out of my head now?" I uttered in embarrassment. To be worried by Demeter when I was already a fully grown goddess, especially in front of another god was one of the most embarrassing things that had ever happened to me.

'Dear, you know I can't do that until I find you' she sighed.

I looked over at Hades. He was signaling, 'no time! Quickly, go down with me. Yes, or no?'

And I said yes.

I couldn't really understand what "down" was until I got there…the underworld.

"This is where you bring me?" I said, getting angry as hades seemed to have no sense, "the underworld? You brought the goddess of springtime to the underworld? You know that I have no power here!"

Hades seemed shocked at the sudden outburst, the laughed a beautiful laugh, saying, "Then you should know that your mother has no power to the underworld. Not only does she not have power in the underworld, she doesn't have power in the sky and sea, too."

I then noticed that Mother was no longer in my head.

"How did you do that?"

"I told you already, your mother can use her power on earth, in the realm of Gaia."

He sighed, knowing that I didn't get it. "Your mother in not able to come to the underworld, so her powers can't either.

"So wh-"

I was about to ask why he brought me here but something caught my eyes. A tree purely made out of gold, silver, diamonds, and other rare and expensive jewels. The most surprising thing was that it was living. Something was living in the underworld!

"How did you do that?"

He smiled as if he was expecting the question, "That, my dear, is my gift for you," he couldn't stop smiling which made him look even better than he already was.

"This is for me?"

"Yes," he replied.

"Who's going to take care of it?" I asked, already knowing its life span is not long enough. Maybe a day of two.

"Well…you could, you know," Hades stumbled in his talking as he blushed. "You could come down here every now and then to put life into it."

As soon as I saw him blush, I found myself blushing too. Before I could say anything, he added, "at least until its fruits ripe."

Out of curiosity, I cautiously question him. "Exactly what fruit would it bear?"

"Honestly, I don't know," he said carefully waiting for my reaction. I thought it was really cute that he was being really careful of what he said when he was the king of the whole underworld, and that disturbed me. The blushing didn't help either.

Okay, I'm getting off track. I know what fruit it bears, but I won't tell you, at least for now.

Hades then showed me around his palace, which was nice in its own way. That was out first meeting.

As soon as I came back to the upper world, were it's full of life and plants and animals, Demeter came back into my head. The weird thing was, she didn't know I've been gone for a long time. When I asked Hades about that on my second visit he said that one day spent in the underworld is one minute spent in the upper world.

After that, I tried my best to stay in the underworld for less than a day because I didn't want Demeter to find out. I knew going to the underworld was dangerous, and that I shouldn't have done it, but I did anyways. Maybe it was because of the trill of going to a forbidden place. Maybe it was the constant pull I got from Hades that I longed for when I wasn't with him. But the important part is that as I kept visiting him, Demeter got more suspicious, and the fruit tree kept growing and was getting close to ripening. I didn't want my visits to end, so every time I gave the tree life, I took the life from the fruit, not enough to kill it, but enough to make the fruit not ripe.

A year passed by our lives while Demeter was still suspicious of me whenever I disappeared from her sight and Hades and I were getting closer than ever. I brought life into the underworld, and he seemed even brighter than he was before every time I saw him again.

And of course, because of these disappearing, Demeter had to put a spy on me. Since all things are spirits, Demeter used that to make a flower crown out of her loyal flowers and gave it to me.

I knew she had loyal flowers that she grew herself, but the flowers where so beautiful I couldn't resist. Plus, I wanted to show them to Hades. So I wore it down to the underworld, where Hades was waiting for me.

"I've been waiting for you," he murmured. He looked at the flower crown on my head and touched it. "Well this is new."

"You like it? Demeter gave it to me." I smiled.

"Yeah, but I like the person wearing it even better."

I blushed out of embarrassment.

"I need to show you something," Hades said, grabbing my hand. He led me deeper into his palace, stopping in front of a big door. The door opened, and inside was my pomegranate tree. But that wasn't the only thing. It was surrounded by flowers and plants, and those flowers and plants where not just normal flowers and plants, they were made out of gems. Beautiful gems in all colors as petals, leaves and stems.

My mouth just kept opening and closing, not saying anything. "How…did you…"

"Same way I made the tree."

Then we hung out in the room full of the flowers where we later decided to call it the garden of the fruit it bears. And I still won't tell you what the fruit is.

When I arrived to the upper world, I went back to my normal hang out area where I knew Demeter was. She was sitting on the ground, having a worried look on her face. But when she saw me, her smile came back to her face, making me doubt I saw it at all. She welcomed me to her side, and I sat by her. As we had some mother daughter time, my flower crown fell off, and Demeter picked it up

That's when it happened. Her face got red, looking down at the flower crown, with an angry expression on her face. "You! How could you! How dare you go to the underworld and be with Hades! I will not see to this!"

"Wha…what do y-" I stammered as I was thinking it through. The flower crown must have told her everything!

I was about to call on Hades to take me to the underworld when Demeter shouted "you both will not be safe once your father knows!" and disappeared into the sky to tell Zeus about me and Hades.

I quickly went down to the underworld to tell Hades about my encounter with Demeter.

As soon as he heard, he jumped out of his throne and came up to me. He shouted, "Then you need to hurry!" with his hands on my shoulder and started pulling me to our garden. When I arrived, I noticed that the fruit was ripe.

"I've been taking the life from the fruit and putting it into the other plants…"Hades confessed, hanging his head, "because…I wanted to be with you even if it meant not letting the fruit ripe forever."

Cautiously, I stepped toward the tree and picked the fruit closest to me. It was a pomegranate, red and ripe, every single part of it beautiful with a sweet aroma so strong that I was sure that even gods up in mount Olympus could smell it.

"Take it," Hades whispered. His face was down, mixed with sadness and guilt.

I put my hand on his face to face me. "Hades, please, listen to me. It's not your fault. To tell the truth, I-"

"Excuse me."

I was cut off by Hermes, who seemed to have barged into the underworld because Zeus had something to say to Hades.

"Sorry, but I need to take Persephone away." Hermes said.

"Just one more second? Please?" I begged, holding onto Hades like he was my life, which, he is.

"No can do," Hermes replied. "I can't decide anything. Zeus is the one that ordered this."

I looked at hades, begging with my eyes to stop this, but all he said was "eat the seeds, Persephone. That's all that I can say."

I cried, one hand on Hades, the other on the pomegranate, while I was being pulled out of the underworld by Hermes. As we were nearing the entrance to the underworld, I gave up in escaping, and, as if Hermes knew, he let go of me and said, "Let's take a break. I'm going to go around to see if there is some water around."

Of course there wasn't, and Hermes knew that already. I knew he just wanted to give me some space to collect myself for when I see Zeus. So I weakly nodded my head silently telling him that I heard him.

When he left, I looked down at my hands. One held a piece of black cloth, and the other held a half crushed pomegranate. Laying the cloth onto my lap, I opened the half crushed fruit to find that the crushed seeds had turned into a deep red juice, and was all over the uncrushed side. Even though some was crushed, it was still so beautiful, just like all the other thing that came from that garden.

'Eat the seeds…' Hades' words echoed through my head. Why was that the only thing he said? Out of all the things he could have said, that was all he said.

If this disaster didn't happen, I would have listened to him, one hundred percent. But now…I started doubting him, thinking of all the time I was with him.

One last time. I decided to trust him one last time. I took out three seeds from the fruit and popped it into my mouth. And the last thing I saw was Hermes coming towards me, shouting "NO!" with his hands out.

When I woke up, I was in a bed of flowers. Not the normal ones, but the ones in the underworld that Hades grew. I looked around, and, sure enough, there he was, walking in circles with a worried face. When he noticed that I had woken, he rushed to my side, taking my hand.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yes, I'm fine, Hades." I replied. "What happened?"

"You passed out after eating the seeds." Hades looked down, then looked back up with a different expression on his face. "How many did you eat?"

"How many?" I echoed, not getting it. "Oh! You mean the seeds? Um…three."

"Only?" he sighed, looking disappointed. "Wait here. I'll be back in a while."

"Um…Okay…"

And he didn't come back for a month.

Turns out he was only up there for 30 minutes, but it was a month down it the underworld. He went up to not only the upper world, but Mount Olympus itself to talk to Zeus and Demeter. Normally when you eat food from the underworld, you can never leave it, but since I am a goddess, Zeus agreed to let me stay in the underworld for three months, the same as the amount of seeds I ate from the pomegranate. Demeter was not happy, but she agreed.

Not only that, Zeus ordered us to be married, so that I have a title down in the underworld. When Hades came down with these announcements, I forgot the fact that I was stuck in the underworld by myself for a month and clung to him, full of joy and happiness.

The end

Well, that's the end. We got married, had some kids, and I would always go back up to the upper world to entertain Demeter and give the humans spring time. Now I don't even remember how old I am because I lost track after my 352nd year on this earth. Anyways, I hope you learned through this to not be a mother's only happiness, because it can lead to something like this. It would have been even worse if Zeus cared a lot about me too.

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