This one is mainly worked out of Ovid's Metamorphoses, but I've included details from my own studies of Classics.
And I had this finished a few weeks ago, but thought people would murder me if I put up an interlude and not the next chapter of the story.
A STORM OVER BLOSSOMS
INTERLUDE 3: SPRING'S DAUGHTER
In the green and sunlit glade on the shores of lake Pergus, Persephone, spring's daughter, is picking flowers. Her bare feet are grass-stained and the hem of her robe is brown with dust, but her arms are filled with shining lilies and a crown of purple violets rests on her glossy head, slightly askew. She sings a song that she heard at her mother's knee.
She is so absorbed in her play that she does not notice Pluto until he is almost upon her. When she hears his footsteps, she starts and turns to face him. He seems out of place in this spring-time field, like a shadow when everything else is sunlight. He wears a robe of funeral black, his skin is maggot-pale, and he smells of rot and the grave. The grass yellows and withers around him.
Looking into his eyes, she feels something inside her die, although she has no name to give it and no way of telling what it is.
"You are given to be my queen, Persephone," Pluto tells her.
She stares at him in amazement, "My mother has said nothing of this to me."
"It was your father's doing," Pluto steps forward to seize her by the arm, and rips off her light robe. It falls to the floor with the lilies, and he forces her down on top of it.
Weeping, the goddess calls out to her mother, but her only reply comes from the swans on the lake. They rise into the sky in broken circles, beating the air with their great, white wings.