In Which the Gods are Insane

The gods were crazy. All of them. Everyone of them. There was no dancing around this. Persephone knew it in her bones, and the flowers around her whispered it from the moment they bloomed.

The gods were crazy.

Their only salvation was the fact that Zeus hadn't fathered as many children as he thought he had. Sure, he'd had lovers...so many lovers. Lovers that could drown the sea and reach the sky with their numbers. By as for his actual children, the ones spawned from his own seed? Very, very few.

Hera had once told Persephone that.

Zeus's children were few enough that you could count them on one hand, if your hand had seven fingers. Sure, he'd had more than seven, but Hera had killed so many of them before or immediately after birth that in her eyes, they didn't count. Only seven lived, only seven were important.

But Zeus had to be the father of so many gods and goddesses, demigods and demigoddesses didn't he? Well, short answer: no. He was father of them all, but far more turned to Gaia or Oceanus or even Uranus in the sky. But still they were crazy.

The gods had blood, golden ichor flowing in mystical veins, and their bloodlines were all far too close to each other for them not to be crazy. But it was a sad fact of life. If they hadn't pure ichor blood in them, then they wouldn't be true gods. At the very least, Persephone was glad that she was not as crazy as the others.

She saw Zeus, how he had acted, someone who claimed to be her father in all respects. He was nearly insane. Persephone stayed far away from him. She stayed far away from Mount Olympus altogether, much to her mother's happiness.

She didn't want to make her mother unhappy, for her mother could make her life hell if she was displeased, but Persephone's true reason was that Mount Olympus was not a good place to be. Mortals could romanticize it all they wished; idolize that they all walked on clouds and drank the wine of the heavens and ate the fruit of divinity.

They did, somewhat, but no one knew how hostile it was up there. Far too many gods had been thrown from the mountains just for sport. They'd always get up again, dust themselves off, and then go seeking revenge.

Persephone was just fine wandering the forests. The nymphs kept her company, and she loved their company far more than she loved anyone else's. They were nice, kind, sweet. More than that. Their smiles were like the sun, and their voices like the rivers. They were as welcoming as an ocean breeze on a summer's day, and they were nothing like the gods.

She slept with them in the trees and in tall grasses and in flowery meadows. She sung their songs, danced with them in pale moonlight, talked with them for long hours.

Persephone was bored with them, sometimes. She had spent centuries with them. Three centuries to be exact, and she could only live the same life so much. The days were all monotonous, bleeding into each other, all a daze of the same old thing.

Same shit, different day, Persephone thought to herself more and more.

The nymphs were fine, but they could only entertain so much.

So when a flower of the Underworld sprung at her feet, whispering of dark deeds and the depths of Hades and the overwhelming shadows that fought the escaping spirits, Persephone picked up the flower and listened to its stories. It was nice to have this dark, whispering companion, and though she thought it somewhat frightening at times, she still kept it with her. If not, the flower followed her.

She told no one about the flower, and none of the nymphs noticed.