For who could ever learn to love The One who doesn't know love?
By Asso
Chapter Eighteen
And the evening came.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
And the evening came.
Persephone turned her gaze to the door.
And the evening came.
Demeter turned her gaze to the sun-chariot.
Persephone watched the high large ebony and stone double-leaf gate, inlaid with myriads of high reliefs that narrated the history of the world.
From the beginning until the last devastating war.
The one that had enshrined the supremacy of the current gods over the Titans.
The supremacy of Zeus. And of Poseidon.
And of Hades.
Demeter watched the glorious chariot as it was sinking away, disappearing beyond the horizon and colouring the earth with its last gold flame rays.
She observed the incomparable spectacle that had always happened.
Since the moment the world had arisen from Chaos by the force of Gaea and of her son and husband Uranus, the primordial Gods, from whom everything and everyone descended.
And which continued even now.
Under the dominance of the Gods of now.
Under the dominance of Zeus. And of Poseidon.
And… of Hades.
Hades.
For the first time, Persephone realized.
While observing in anxious wait that door, with eyes different from those she had looked at it with until then, she noticed it.
On that door, among those magnificent inlaid figures, he was not there.
Hades.
For the first time, Demeter realized.
While observing in anxious wait the sun-chariot sinking down, with eyes different from those she had looked at it with until then, she noticed it.
He had not been present at the consecration of Persephone. Nor at the last, infamous meeting, the one in which Zeus had basically abandoned Persephone to her fate.
Persephone lowered her head, thoughtful.
Why Hades, her captor, the absolute Lord of the realm in which she was now…
Hades, one of the three powerful Gods apportioning with one other the dominion of the world...
Why, unlike Zeus and Poseidon, well recognizable in those high reliefs, was he not depicted on that door, which narrated the history of how the world had become the lordship of the Gods of now?
Of Zeus. And of Poseidon.
And of him.
Of Hades.
Demeter lowered her head, thoughtful.
Why that name, in her head, just now? Why, the moment she was about to try to get the answer she needed, the answer about who could the captor be of her daughter, such thought appeared unwelcome and unexpected in her mind? Such name? The name of the tenebrous and hated God, the brother she would have never wanted to have, who held the current lordship of the world?
Together with Zeus. And with Poseidon.
The name of...
Hades.
Persephone perked her head up.
Enough!
Enough.
It was not... it was not the time for such questions.
That was the moment for another question.
A question of which she wanted to know the answer at any cost.
The question and... and the answer for which she... she had prepared herself all day.
That was the moment... the moment...
Demeter perked her head up.
Enough!
Enough.
It was not... it was not the time for such questions.
That was the moment for another question.
The mother of all questions. For her.
That was the moment... the moment...
Persephone looked at the door with such an intensity that her gaze seemed almost wanting to pierce it to peer into the weirdly captivating semi-darkness of the corridor beyond it.
Soon she would hear it.
As every evening.
Hade's unobtrusive knocking.
Demeter looked at the darkening horizon with such an intensity that her gaze seemed almost wanting to go beyond it, towards the fiery chariot that was being hiding beneath it.
Soon she would know.
With the nightfall.
The most opportune moment.
The moment of Helios' quiet rest.
The moment when he would have never expected to be woken up from his well-deserved rest. The moment when no one would have ever dreamed of disturbing him, after the trouble of driving his chariot through the ways of sky.
The moment when no one would have ever dreamed of thinking that anyone could do it.
As, instead, she would do.
He could see everything.
He had the answer.
And she would know.
She would know.
Persephone felt a tremor within herself.
Something...
Excitement?
Excitement?
Or… or fear?
Or both?
Fear...
Fear of him? Of… of the answer he would give her?
Or... or...
Or fear of herself?
Of the... of the excitement she felt?
Of the fact... of the fact that she would have liked to have from him an answer...
An answer that made her quiver inside!
With a forbidden... delicious... excitement!
Oh stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!
She... she needed that answer!
She needed to know if he...
And...
And if she...
IF SHE…
And she would know!
Yes! She would know.
Demeter felt a tremor within herself.
Something...
Fear?
Fear...
Fear of the answer Helios would give her?
Because that answer… that answer… could be…
Fear had become her constant companion in those terrible nine days that had passed.
Fear of what had happened, of the fate looming over her daughter.
But that...
That was a different fear.
It was fear...
Fear of that answer!
Hades?
Hades?
HADES!?
No!
NO!
NO!
That… that was an answer that made you quiver inside!
With a horrible... awful... terror!
Oh stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!
She... she needed that answer!
She needed to know who had into his claws her adored daughter.
You can not fight what you do not know!
She needed that answer!
At any cost!
And she would know!
And the unobtrusive knocking made itself heard.
Persephone winced.
Then she swallowed. She composed herself.
She looked at the stole that lay far away.
She looked at herself reflected in the mirror.
At the provocative - provocatively dark - view that she offered of herself.
Her eyes, bright and...
Two deep pools of dark beauty.
Her lips. Dark of the dark purple shadow of the dark purple lipstick that painted them.
And the pure white whiteness of her bare skin.
Persephone took a deep breath.
She turned and went towards the bed.
She sat on it.
She crossed her legs, so that her dress would open and fall to show the nudity of her thighs.
She let her naked arms rest languidly on her lap.
She straightened her torso, so that her lush breasts almost leaped out from her robe.
Then she spoke.
Quietly.
But hoarse was her voice.
"Come in, my Lord."
And the splendiferous sun-chariot disappeared at the end, making the sky way free for Selene, for her enchanted silver light.
Demeter winced.
Then she swallowed. She composed herself.
She looked at the sky that darkened more and more.
She looked at the far horizon under which the sun-chariot had concealed itself.
The chariot. And its charioteer. The one who everything could see.
Who could know everything which happened under his dazzling flame.
Even, it was said, what was precluded to the eye of her mighty brother.
To the eye of Zeus.
Demeter took a deep breath.
She widened her arms at the azurine sky, in the silent quiet of the incoming night.
She lifted herself gracefully in it.
She flied, heading decidedly towards the horizon line.
She reached it.
She overstepped it.
She dived with an insuppressible sense of timorous inquietude beyond it, down, into the undefined and unknown dimension - neither day nor night - where Helios and his sister Selene, and they alone, were fully entitled to have asylum.
She floated slowly, awed, into the undefined haze of that world that was not part of the world.
She saw him finally.
Down there.
Or, maybe, up there.
Uranus only, or Gaea, and perhaps not even they, knew where, exactly.
The shining Helios.
He was sleeping.
Already.
On a bed made of diaphanous nothing.
Demeter knew she would find him like this. Helios' sleep began just after sunset and ended just before dawn. Tiring was his eternal task.
She landed slowly in the vitreous medium that surrounded her.
She looked fixedly at the handsome sleeping god.
Ancient god.
Looking young.
Yet much older than her.
Less powerful, far less powerful than her.
But holding in his hands the vivifying light of the world.
She straightened up, in all her tallness.
Then she spoke.
Quietly.
But hoarse was her voice.
"Wake up, Lord of the sun."
Slowly, gently, a leaf of the door half-opened.
Slowly it got completely open.
In its frame, he stood out.
Dark dressed.
As always.
And shockingly handsome, in the diaphanous whiteness of his mortally pale face.
But he did not advance, regally though respectfully, into the room, as he had always done in those evenings.
He stood motionless in the doorway, as if struck by lightning.
His otherworldly eyes wide-open in amazement.
Slowly, almost with difficulty, Helios' eyes opened.
For a moment they remained motionless and confused, as if trying to understand, to realize.
Then they opened wide. Completely.
And understanding was seen in them.
And - Demeter saw it - even fear.
Fear?
Why?
Yet it was fear.
Demeter was sure of it.
It was fear, what she saw in those gaping eyes that now stared at her.
Persephone stared at those astonished eyes.
Suddenly she felt ashamed.
What was she doing?
What was happening to her?
Showing herself like this to him, like... like a...
Persephone was unable to find appropriate terms of comparison. Pure was her soul and her heart.
And the shame overwhelmed her.
For the show of herself she was offering to him and... and for the reason for which she was doing it!
But even more because...
Because she found an immense, ineffable pleasure in realizing that in the amazement of his gaze there was also - clear, evident, powerful - admiration.
And ... - Oh father Zeus! Father Zeus! - desire!
DESIRE!
And that desire in his eyes ... - Oh father Zeus! FATHER ZEUS! - …that desire filled her with pride!
And amplified her pleasure out of all proportion.
It made it such as to overwhelm every shame sense.
Every.
EVERY.
And with a soft, languid, regal gesture of her little hand, she invited him.
"Please, my Lord." - She did not recognize her own voice. So sweet. So… so hot! So inviting! - "Come in. Do not ..." A moment. Just a moment of hesitation. - "... do not make me wait."
"What…what do you want from me, my Lady?"
And there was fear in that voice.
It trembled slightly, that voice.
For fear.
Fear...
Amazement; surprise; irritation too, why not? Definitely and totally admissible. She, Demeter, was doing something that should not have been done. Waking him, Helios, from his sacrosanct, just started off, rest. Breaking into, in such a way - unexpected and intrusive - his exclusive and secret dwelling. Whatever it was the reason, it was a gesture that defining rude sounded really as a deliberate euphemism.
But fear...
Why fear?
And fear of what? Or... maybe better to say ... of whom?
Fear because Helios knew the reason she was there for?
Because... because he knew she wanted to know from him what he knew and he was afraid of making her know what he knew?
Yes.
Demeter frowned.
Yes. It was like that.
This was the fear that crawled in Helios' eyes and voice.
But... but was therefore so terrible the... the kidnapper of her daughter?
Who? Who could be so terrible as to cause fear to Helios, the mighty lord of the sun? Who could make the eyes and the voice of the light-bearer tremble at the simple thought of having to be pushed to reveal who he was?
Who could...?
And like a maul that name stormed on Demeter again.
No!
It could not be!
It could not be true!
That name... that name...
That unmentionable, abhorrent, loathsome god, grown up in and fed of Cronos' gelid darkness...
That god she was ashamed and… and scared!... of having to call brother...
That god who by grace of Destiny had sunk into and got concealed forever in his horrid, gelid realm of death after the long, hard fight against the Titans, the war that had fully shown the chilling darkness of his black, gelid heart...
It could not...
It could not have been him!
He could not, her hideous brother, have thought to envelop her daughter's light in his darkness!
It could not be!
And... and even had he thought it, Zeus - her brother and lover for more than one only night; the mighty Zeus, Lord of heaven and earth - would have prevented it!
Never! Never would he have consented...
Consented? And now why such a term in her mind?
Zeus had not consented to anything! He had said - he ... he had asserted, to be honest! - that he had seen - or understood or guessed, or whatever Destiny wanted! - what was happening and had happened and that he had had no way to oppose the tragedy that was taking place, thing which - his words - had been at the basis of his huge outburst, that because of which storm and darkness had wrapped the world.
Indeed, Zeus had even said he had not even been able to find any trace of the kidnapper.
But who - who! - could ever be so powerful as to kidnap the daughter Zeus adored - of this Demeter was certain - without him being able to do anything about it?
Who could be so powerful to evade Zeus' search?
Who could be so powerful - and scary! - to push Helios to having fear - patent fear! - of revealing his identity?
Who?
WHO!
Who could be so powerful and terrible, besides Zeus himself and Poseidon, who certainly had nothing to do with this horrible story?
Who, if not...?
The purest terror; the terror that grips; the terror that obscures; the terror that chills.
In the heart, in the soul of Demeter.
No! This no! THIS NO!
Not him! Not him, not him, not him!
Destiny could not want this! It could not allow Persephone's new light to perish, not even fully blossomed yet, in the dead gloom of...
OF HIM!
Destiny could not want this!
Destiny could not decree such an atrocious iniquity!
No! NO! NO NO NO!
It could not have been him!
It was not to be!
It was not possible... it hadn't to be possible that...
Demeter's gaze was vitreous as she addressed Helios.
Vitreous, her voice.
"Helios, tell me. Has it been ..."
It trembled, that feeble voice. Perceptibly.
"...Hades? '"
"Persephone..."
And there was something, in that voice.
Something...
It trembled slightly, that voice.
As much as this could be incredible, it trembled. Perceptibly.
And wasn't able to go further.
Persephone felt a shudder, a shiver, making his way inside her.
What was she doing?
What was happening to her?
Why, how could it be possible for her to find herself saying - and with that voice, that voice so warm and allusive! With that attitude, that attitude so provocative and inviting! - "Why do not you come in, my Lord? Why do not you come to me? Do not you find me to your liking?"
"Persephone..." There was amazement in his uncertain voice. "Your... your dress..."
Persephone looked intently at him.
Something was happening inside her that she would never have thought could happen.
Something she liked!
Something that led her to speak in a calm and quiet voice.
"It's one of the clothes you wanted me to wear, different, every night. Why do you find it strange I show up myself to you dressed with one of them? With the last one you gave me? The most beautiful, if I must tell the truth."
Persephone was sure of it. Hades had swallowed. Visibly.
He advanced a step. Then another.
With uncertainly and clumsy doing.
The door closed behind him with an unexpected thud and he jumped at the noise.
He! Hades! He who harboured no sort of fear!
He took another step forward and then, finally - his pale face even paler, if possible - he managed to speak.
"It's... it's true, Persephone. You wear one of the clothes I made for you prepare on these evenings. But never have you shown yourself to me like this. You've always concealed yourself under that..."
"Under that stole, I know." Persephone got up slowly. The robe fell down around her, but she moved, twirled gracefully on herself. And the revealing dress twirled together with her. And it rose. And disclosed tantalizingly her beauty, for the little it wasn't in display already.
Then she stopped and looked at Hades with a sprightly look. Like her voice.
"But not tonight."
And her voice became serious. Like her gaze.
"Tonight, my Lord, I wanted to show me to you as you want me to show me to you."
Hades swallowed again.
"Persephone..."
Persephone approached him.
Wiggling prettily her hips.
Magnificent and splendid.
"Is not this what you wanted, my Lord? Tell me, did not you want me to be like that for you?"
"P... Persephone..."
"Are not you glad? Do not you appreciate I've in addition made it so to make my aspect more consonant with you? With what you appear and are? Do not you find be to your liking the dark purple colour of my lips? And the icy whiteness of my skin? Do not you cherish the scent of the essences I have made use of, just in order to be liked by you?"
She came closer even more.
Her aroma, the fragrance of her skin, at all perceptible under the aura of the soft and exciting perfume veiling it, enveloped him. Intoxicating.
"Do not you like me this way, my Lord?"
"Persephone!"
She was on him. Her beautiful face turned upwards, towards his.
Her warm body against his.
"Why do you hesitate, my Lord? I surrender to your will, do not you see? Take what you want."
And Hades retreated. Abruptly. And he turned around.
Stiff and immovable, he stayed.
Without speaking.
With his back turned to Persephone.
With his arms stretched along his hips.
With his hands clenched in fists.
Livid, in the strength of their close.
Persephone remained motionless, confused and puzzled.
She stood silent, without understanding, until finally she made up her mind to speak.
A whisper of unquiet incomprehension.
"My Lord..."
And he continued to remain motionless, his hands still clenched in fists. Without speaking.
"Hades ..." It was an uncertain and confused murmur, her low voice.
"But do you want me?"
Persephone jumped at the violent strength of his voice.
He turned around.
His eyes of ice and fire stared at her with shattering force.
Those eyes pierced her.
Like his voice. An otherworldly whisper.
"Do you really want my darkness to penetrate inside you?"
Persephone was silent for quite a few moments, her confused gaze fixed in his flame eyes.
Then she snapped.
Vehemently.
"And you, my Lord? Are you ready to be wrapped by my light?"
Those words burst loudly in the motionless air of the great room.
They also broke into Persephone's mind.
Her eyes widened.
Her breathing became laboured.
She realized.
Suddenly and with terror, she realized.
But... but what was she doing? What was she saying?
That one was Hades! HADES!
He... he could not be challenged with impunity!
It was inconceivable to address him the way she had done, with words like those she had told him!
Much as could it be true and real that he wanted her and much as had he proved he had respect for her, one couldn't address him that way!
Persephone drew back abruptly and quickly, her hands on her mouth, as if to prevent, vainly and too late, those words, that had already come out from her lips, from hovering free; her wide open and trembling eyes locked on the wide open and amazed eyes of him.
And then it happened.
Those eyes - those tremendous eyes of him - softened. They smiled.
Really.
Like his mouth.
Like his voice.
"I now understand fully why Destiny has chosen you to be my woman."
But those words triggered Persephone's reaction again.
Her impetus.
Which did not allow restrictions.
Her eyes flashed as she spoke.
Her words flashed.
"Your woman? I'm not your woman!"
"What?"
"Your captive! That's what I am! Certainly, not your woman!"
"But... but if you..." Could it ever be possible? Hades... Hades who stammered? "... but if you... you... a moment ago ..."
"And you refused me!"
Hades recoiled, struck deep down, as if physically hit, unable to find words.
He tried.
"No, I did not say that! I... I just wanted to make sure you really wanted..."
"Ah, you wanted certainty, my great Lord? And for this you've humiliated me?"
"I have...?"
"Yes, you did it!"
"But... but Persephone!"
Persephone put her hands on her hips and looked at Hades as if she wanted to incinerate him.
And he shrank back again.
And he raised his arms on his face.
As if wanting to protect himself.
And it is not a simple way of saying, because Persephone's words - their vehemence, their fury - could really hurt.
"I spent my days and nights alone, waiting for a sign from you. A nod, anything, good or bad it were. But you did not do anything. You just kept me a silent company during my dinners and let me find those skimpy clothes, to let me know that you wanted me. And how you wanted me! "
"Persephone! I..."
"And the moment I decided to comply with your wishes and to allow you ..."
"Allow me?"
"...to show me your true intentions ..."
"My true intentions? But I've already... "
"...you have wrapped yourself in your mantle of superior greatness and you have questioned my intentions!"
Hades was certainly not used to feel slip away from his hands the control of the situation. It was him the one who always had control!
But now he felt that he had lost control, that control was in the hands ... but yes! ... in the hands of the woman who was supposed to be a sweet and tender girl who could have anything except claws!
Wrath and irritation!
Wrath, irritation and annoyance!
Inside him!
A gesture... a simple rising up of his eyebrow... and that daring and impudent girl would be reduced to ashes.
But he did not do anything like that.
He did not even think about it.
His wrath and irritation and annoyance got trivially translated into an angry and irritated and annoyed protest. And not even too convinced, in truth. And, if we really have to say it all, even with the unpleasant feeling of appearing rather silly.
"It's me the one who was supposed to be the seducer, not you!"
"Ah, nice seducer, in truth! Nothing but an unsubstantial presence at dinner time! A seducer whose only moves have been those of making me understand, by means of those skimpy clothes, that you would have liked me to show myself more or less naked to you! To do what, however, I do not know! You've never moved a finger to induce me to get rid of that stole! You've never even tried to prompt me to do it! And you knew – you knew! - I wore those clothes under the stole!"
Is it possible that a God can be so confused that he does not know what he is saying? And is it possible that this God could be Hades?
Can a woman - a girl, a maiden - be able to make such a thing happen?
Was it really Hades - the tremendous, obscure Hades - the one who responded in that flimsy way to the angry, irritating words of Persephone?
Flimsy.
But sincere.
And sincerity pays off.
Not always.
Ma sometimes it does.
"Yes, I knew it! But I..."
And Hades looked down.
He could not let be it put in display. The ashamed frustration he knew that was in them.
"...I did not know what to do, Persephone."
Persephone was dumbfounded. Her anger vanished instantly.
There was something - in the words, in the attitude of Hades - digging in, deep in her heart.
She approached him again.
She did something unheard of.
She took his face in her hands and held it up.
Gently.
So that she could see his eyes.
And she saw them.
Beautiful and distressed.
"Hades ..." The sweetest of whispers. "... what do you mean?"
Hades was silent for long moments.
With his face…
Oh his face, held, softly, between the hands of a woman!
Of that woman!
Of that invaluable, unrivalled, marvellous maiden!
He...
He...
He - yes! - he would remain silent forever, if he could have had his face held forever so, between those small, gentle, delicate hands.
But...
But he had to answer.
He had to say something.
And he said it, finally.
While his cold, diaphanous hands went to rest almost by their own will on those of Persephone, to feel, to taste - with hesitation, yes. And with embarrassment - their sweet warmth.
While his eyes were getting flooded with something - the reverberation of a feeling that he did not know - and with that feeling, never felt before, they were staring at Persephone.
At her wonderful bright eyes that gazed anxious at him. On hold.
"Persephone, I am a violent God. I was born in violence and on violence I was fed. I am the most violent of the Gods. I possess the violence of death. Blind violence. Violence without escape."
Grave were Hades' words.
Grave and powerful.
Persephone felt as if being d by them, by their strength, by their power.
By their truth.
And even more because she felt, understood, realized that he, Hades, was opening himself to her. That he was revealing to her things about himself... things that no one else knew!
And that she - SHE! - instead would know!
She! Persephone!
And only her.
She did not move, her eyes fixed on his. She gave no sign, her hands under his and on his cool face.
She held her breath.
Not one of his words - not a single one! - had to elude her!
"I was born while dying, Persephone, swallowed in the abyss of my father's stomach, the same fate that touched my sisters and my brothers, except Zeus, your father. But I died much more than my sisters and my brethren. I was for a long time wrapped up in the cold and evil flow of my father's deaf and blind violence, much more than it touched in fortune to my siblings. I sucked the filthy sap of his violence as if it were the milk of the mother I had not known. My father's dark violence marked me forever. My brothers and my sisters lay in his stomach, far from his black heart. I was enveloped in his darkness and that darkness, that violence, has enwrapped me forever. I was born while dying..."
A sigh. Was it a sigh, that one?
"... and death was my destiny."
Was...
No! Impossible!
...Was a sob?
Persephone felt like her heart as caught in a vise.
Hades... the dark, tremendous Hades... had known nothing but darkness and violence.
And death.
From the moment of his birth.
And even more, in a far more bloodcurdling way, than his brothers and sisters.
That was why...
That was why he...
"That's why I'm Hades, Persephone."
Sharp, pointed stones... arrows that hurt... his bitter words.
"I, and I alone, can be who I am. The…"
How were cold, his hands over hers!
"… the dead King of the dead."
How doleful were, those timeless eyes in which it was impossible not to get lost.
"And for whom I am, Persephone ..."
His hands detached themselves from hers, with difficulty.
With difficulty he subtracted his face from her small, delicate hands.
With difficulty he turned his gaze away from hers, as he talked.
With difficulty
With painful bitterness.
"... for whom I'm, what do you want it can be, a miserable kidnapping? The abduction of an innocent and naive maiden like the one it's you?"
Hades turned around. He turned his back to Persephone.
He could not look at her while he was saying what he was saying.
"Nothing, Persephone, just nothing, in the sea of blind violence of my life of death. A kidnapping ..." His bitter sarcastic sneer let itself be heard. "... more than justified, as I told you and explained."
Then his voice became as grave as a grave.
"But still a kidnapping."
More than a grave.
"And I do not have the olympic indifference in regard to the violence that the other Gods follow with so cheer nonchalance. I do not have their self-assurance in regard to what is lawful to the Gods. Mine is an uncertain world. There are no certainties in it. Except that of death."
Hades turned around towards Persephone. He stared at her with a dead look.
"Zeus, your father, Persephone, would not have hesitated. And you know it. He would have made be his own, without thinking twice, what he had taken. Just as all the other Gods. All. But not me. "
Persephone felt the beating of her heart.
She physically perceived it.
A thing supposed not having to happen.
"I am forever condemned to live in the impartial violence of death. Persephone. A violence without hope, but not unjust."
Persephone's heartbeat grew almost violent in her chest.
Almost unbearable.
"I had promised to Zeus and, above all, to myself, that I would have made you mine only if you had wanted to. The kidnapping was the means - violent, of the violence my life is soaked with - which would have allowed me to bring you to me, by snatching you from the blind and violent - Yes. Violent. - protection of your mother. But…"
And Hades turned again. Again he turned his back to Persephone.
And a desperate whisper was his voice.
"... but I did not know - I do not know - what to do. I... I do not know how to woo a woman. I do not know how to make me loved. I…"
Persephone clearly heard - and felt strongly deep down herself - his mournful sigh.
"... I do not know love."
"I did not see anything, my Lady! I DID NOT SEE ANYTHING!"
It was enough.
There was no need for anything else.
Those words were enough.
It was enough the blind terror vibrating in that voice.
Hades.
Him.
It had been him!
Her daughter, her sweet, helpless daughter... was in the hands… in the hands…
…of Hades!
OF HADES!
She had to... she had to free her!
She had to find the way!
Nine days.
NINE DAYS!
So many!
But... but maybe not too many.
Maybe...
Maybe it was not too late.
MAYBE IT WAS NOT TOO LATE!
If she...
If she had found the way, maybe...
MAYBE IT WAS NOT TOO LATE!
And, suddenly, at those melancholy words - at that wistful lament - Persephone understood everything.
She understood why that dark and gloomy God had entered her mind and inside... inside her heart since the day of her deification, even though she had never seen him.
She understood why she had headed - unconsciously, but perhaps not so much - towards the dark forest that marked the thin border between his world and the one... the one ... yes, the one that had been... HAD BEEN!... her world, the day when she had finally been able to enjoy a little of welcome solitude. Of freedom.
She understood why she had acquiesced to be brought by him into his dark world.
She understood why she had felt so strangely serene - happy? Yes, happy! - in that obscure world, though so far from and foreign to the light of her world, of the world that had been hers until... until her abduction. The most relished of abductions.
She understood what would really be the new light - the Spring - of which she was the goddess and bearer. She understood what it was. She understood that it was the light that would light up his world for the first time. His world. And hers. Her new world.
And him.
HIM!
She understood that it was him the one who would teach her the true substance of her deity, who would teach her how to make her light shine everywhere. The new light of Spring. There, in his Realm, as well as in his heart. And, from there, everywhere. In the Realm of the supernal world, in the Realm of the oceans and in any other Realm that could exist.
She understood why Destiny had chosen her.
She understood the tremendous and stupendous task that Destiny had assigned to her.
And she was grateful to Destiny.
She was grateful to Destiny for granting her the gift of being the one who would teach him love.
She was grateful to Destiny for granting her the gift of learning love from him.
Persephone understood.
She understood everything.
Everything.
She understood why she had prepared herself like that, for that encounter with him, that evening.
She understood why she had done it.
She understood - and she was happy of that - the incomprehensible licentious effrontery she had done it with.
She understood.
She understood everything.
And she understood - perfectly, lucidly - what she should do now.
"Hades..."
It was a call. An appeal. An invitation.
Marvellously sweet.
Something that resounded, suave, impossible to be ignored, in the ears, in the mind, in the soul of him.
Something that forced him to turn around, his heart in turmoil.
To see, to bask in the vision of her, who - slowly, smiling with a smile that was neither of his world, nor of her world, nor of any other world - backed away little by little, until to touch, with her breath-taking legs, the high bed; who sat on it, discovering her superbly shapely thighs with innocent shamelessness, her magnificent and erect breasts blossoming flippant from the wide and deep neckline; who raised to him her perfect visage, framed as a dazzling white diamond by the wild mass of her tawny hair, looking at him with an expression he would never forget.
To hear, as in a dream that he would never have dreamed he could dream, her soft, warm voice.
"Hades, I do not know love either."
A voice that was a dream.
"Let's learn together."
A stupendous reality.
"Let's learn the one from the other."
A dream reality.
"Take me, Hades."
Her voice. Her wonderfully husky voice.
And her eyes. Her gorgeous eyes. Which shone, which sparkled.
Which spoke.
Just as her arms. Which rose up, which thrust open wide to him.
Just as her turgid mouth.
Just as her succulent lips.
That mouth, those lips that called him, that invited him.
Which opened up to speak softly.
"Love me."
End of Chapter Eighteen
TBC
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
The evening came.
And the night.
And its spell.