Dolls lined up on shelves around the room staring at him. The hero looks around in slight wonderment of how many there are. Hundreds and hundreds lined up, all different skin tones and hair colors, variations in the facial structure and size of the full doll.
"They're crocheted for the most part, before you ask. I made them. They represent people I've met in all the years I've been alive. So many people. Some are gods and goddesses, some are mortals, some are even demigods," the girl, no woman, she's been through too much, by the sound of her voice, to be called a girl, despite her young appearance, says. Her hand drifts across the edge of the shelves, stopping at a pair of dolls. One bigger than the other. A male and a female by the looks of it, the female was the smaller one, a child perhaps, with dark skin and bright emerald eyes that match the goddess in front of him.
"Does that mean they all have stories with them?" The hero asks. She looks at him in shock. It takes her a moment to answer. Maybe no one has ever asked that question before. Maybe no one had taken the time to.
"Yes, they do. Would you like to hear some of them, young hero?" He responds that he would faster than he expected himself to and takes a seat in one of the chairs in the room.
There are several chairs, all different styles, and colors. A motley of chairs really. Only one of them has a lamp on a stand next to it, while there's a coffee table in the middle of all the chairs. A comfy looking chair in bright yellows and oranges, something you could spend hours in and not be motivated to move. The chair he took was across from it, similar in style, but a complete opposite in color scheme with dark blues and reds.
The goddess's answering smile was worth coming here despite it not being the hero's reason, or maybe it is. Only the Fates can tell. She found him soon after he entered the Underworld, impressed that he made it past Cerberus, and then brought him here, into her home, in the opposite direction of Hades's castle, the direction he was originally heading. The prophecy echoes through his head. Short, sweet, and of course, a riddle.
To save you need truth.
For truth is buried under
The corruption above.
Her hands drift across the shelf once more before settling in front of one and picking it up. A doll with rich brown yarn as skin and a bright green, cotton dress, definitely Greek in style. It's almost equally brown yarn hair long and loose down its back somehow curled to look like the real thing. Next, she picked up two more that were next to each other, a male and female. The male has pale peach skin, dark brown eyes, and pitch-black hair slicked back and ending at its shoulders. The female looked similar to the first but the eyes were strikingly different. Green embroidery for eyes stares out from the second female doll, while the first has brown. The eyes on all of the dolls look so real. Like they were staring into your soul.
Sitting down at the chair with the lamp, the goddess sets them down on the stand, the green-eyed female between the other two.
"First, let me tell you how my parents met and the struggle they faced, still slightly face with my grandmother and Zeus. This is the true story of how Persephone's abduction, really was an adventure of curiosity, love." She looks at the hero, staring into his eyes, reading his soul. "And of lies."