For who could ever learn to love The One who doesn't know love?
By Asso
Chapter Twenty-Three
The dawn of a new world.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
A long night.
Long.
A night to be forgotten.
Zeus was alone, now.
Helios...
Eh! He had hurried to go away.
Gone off without saying nor being told goodbye.
Right after Demeter was gone. In that way. With those words.
Disturbing.
He had to admit it.
Disquieting words.
And Hera, his wife... well, she knew when it was time to leave him alone.
To think.
Dawn was rising.
Evidently Helios had recovered. Enough at least, judging by the fact that his chariot had risen in flight again.
In fact, the light of day was rising.
However...
What a strange light!
Cold.
Lustreless.
As if something...
And it was cold.
Yes. It was cold.
But world was never cold. The world he reigned on.
Cold was not part of that world.
Demeter always kept it comfortable, cosy, warm, pleasant...
And... fertile.
Luxuriant.
Zeus frowned his thick eyebrows.
He looked up into the strange, livid light of that cold dawn.
Demeter.
Her power.
Her power over the world.
The power that was hers.
Only hers.
And not his.
A power over which he had no power.
Sinuous and insidious, a shiver ran along the spine of Zeus' mighty body.
A chill of cold.
A long night.
Long.
And marvellous!
A night to be remembered.
Forever.
Now, it was dawn.
The strange, livid, unmoving dawn of that world.
His world.
Maybe... hers, too?
Persephone turned in his marmoreal arms.
Marmoreal.
Yet so warm in their embrace.
So comforting.
So welcoming.
So sure in supporting her, during love.
During… their making love.
Persephone let her sleepy eyes run over his diaphanous, fine face.
Was he sleeping?
Or, again, was he alert?
As lurking.
"I'm not sleeping, my flower."
Again, he caught her by surprise.
Her bright eyes snapped to his obscure eyes that were smiling in their obscure, uncanny way.
"I was waiting for you to wake up."
Those dark, hypnotizing eyes narrowed under the white eyelashes.
"I was waiting for you to wake up to take you out there."
That look beyond the worlds almost seemed to wink.
"As you told me you wanted to do, Persephone. And still provided that you want to do it yet."
Persephone smiled. With warmth. To him and to herself.
She stretched, voluptuously, in his arms.
And her smile grew stronger, feeling his body stiffen, at the voluptuous getting arched of her naked body against his naked body.
She clung strict to him, perceiving with impish satisfaction the increasing heat of his body.
"Of course I want it yet, my Lord."
It laughed, her voice.
It sounded sleepy, yet it laughed.
"I want to know. I want..." And, suddenly, Persephone's voice no longer laughed. "...I want to perceive your world!"
No. Her voice no longer laughed.
"I want to know... I want to know..."
"You will know, Persephone."
His grave voice gave body to her unexpressed words.
"You will know."
And to his inexpressible hope.
"And I will know too."
Zeus moved slowly past the columns of his palace.
His gaze ran along the lawns.
Along the slopes of Olympus.
Above the white candour that was slowly getting covering them.
In the whirling of milky flakes that were stirring in the cold of the air.
His voice burst out. Trying to counter the loud angry hiss of the wind.
"Demeter!"
Then it lowered.
It became a thoughtful murmur.
"Demeter, my sister..."
A soft breath in the virulent breath of that unknown thing.
Of that storm of gelid, impalpable white flakes, never-seen before.
"What are you doing?"
Persephone moved slowly past the majestic portal of his palace, the same portal she had adventurously and inconsiderately crossed to enter his dark, immense manor.
Her gaze ran along the…were they lawns? Could it be possible? So black and dark? Without anything green that could make them sound such? Without any stain of colour that could even remotely recall a flower?
Her gaze rose, ran far away, along the steep, craggy slopes that, far beyond that gloomy, ashen semblance of meadows, fell darkly towards the distant, blind horizon.
It ran beyond those gloomy meadows, to the far mountain reliefs that surrounded and delimited - immensely distant - that dark world, livid of a light that light was not.
They were the rugged mountains, the steep rocky walls, shining with myriads of flickering lights, which she had caught with her trembling, astonished gaze, when his chariot had brought her in a precipitous rush downward. Towards his regal, dark dwelling.
Now she saw them from afar, those rugged reliefs.
And their huge bulk, even at their incommensurable distance, made her grasp the immensity of that closed, yet immeasurable world.
His world.
Immense.
And dark
And empty.
Just as...
Her gaze ran upward.
Just as...
Where was it?
Where was the sky?
Was...
Was that the sky of that world?
It was that?
A huge emptiness far, far, far away?
Without sun?
Without...
Without anything?
A whitish void, reverberating with an opaque, ashen light, without body or substance?
"This is my world, Persephone."
Low, his voice.
And gloomy.
Behind her.
Behind her back.
"This is my kingdom."
And sad.
"The kingdom Destiny has wanted to bestow upon me."
Gloomy and sad.
"And that I accepted."
Gloomy and sad.
"The world I have always been in."
Gloomy and sad.
"My world."
And suddenly, Persephone understood.
She understood his dark grandeur.
Only he - ONLY HE! ONLY HIS IMMENSE STRENGTH! - could withstand such an empty solitude! Such a gloomy emptiness!
But she would fill that void!
She would...
She would illuminate that dark world!
She would lighten up his world and his heart with her light!
She felt his cold hand resting on her shoulder.
Slight.
She heard his voice whisper in her ear.
Slight.
"Are you sure, my flower? Are you certain? Do you really want to know this world? My world?"
Persephone's warm hand ran to rest on his cold hand.
She leaned back to his strong, cold body.
Sure, her voice.
Low and soft.
Yet sure.
Yes.
Sure.
Because she had understood.
For real.
And once and for all.
She wanted and needed to know his world.
But not because its knowing would allow her to understand if she really wanted that world to become also hers.
She wanted and needed to know that world because she wanted and needed to know what would be her own world from now and forever.
The world she would bring her light in.
Her… spring.
"Let's go, my Lord. Let your woman know her own world."
And then she laughed.
Her silvery laughter filled the void of that empty world.
And, under the perplexed and questioning gaze of Hades, she laughed again.
She laughed.
At the thought of what her mother would tell her if she had been there at that moment.
"Persephone ..."
Persephone stifled her laugh. But inside herself she continued to laugh.
"... what are you doing?"
End of Chapter Twenty-Three
TBC
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
The dawn of a new world.
But Destiny is always at work.