The meadow opened before Kore like the welcoming arms of a long-gone friend. Strange, pale flowers tickled her ankles. They were so different from what she grew in her own Garden, under the warm sun, sprinkled by moonlight and gentle water. These flowers' petals felt smooth against her skin, like cloth, or silk.
"What are these," Kore asked, picking up a couple. Six leaves, thin and blade-shaped, sprouting from a central stem where they were all huddled together, like holding onto each other.
"This is asphodel," the Elder King answered. He passed his fingers through the flowers, caressing them lovingly. "The one flower I made here in the Underworld. It is edible, and sufficient food for the shades. Ah, do not eat it!"
Kore froze as the King's hand seized her wrist, where she was putting one of the leaves towards her mouth.
"I did not wish to eat it," she replied. Why would she eat a flower? She was not a rabbit. Or a nymph.
The Elder King seemed to relax. His wide shoulders had tensed for a moment and fell back like the sides of a mountain coming back into place.
"Good. I have nectar and ambrosia, in abundance in fact, for your needs. You must not eat any of the other food in my realm."
The question rose, unbidden. Old habits threatened to suffocate it, to turn it into a nothing, into a wheezing smoke that would disappear into the Underworld, never to be remembered. But something, this time, rose inside Kore. The Elder King had not rebuked her questions, only her tears. She was emboldened by the situation, as scared as she was.
"W-why?" She asked, the question hanging from her lips, tenuous like a falling leaf. "Why should I not?"
"Because," began the Elder King, only to hesitate, "because it is food fit for the dead."
He gently, but firmly, took the flower from her hands, holding it close to his chest.
Mother was really not going to come, was she? There really was no one who was going to rescue her, not from this place, not from this King.
She missed Mother. She missed Mother's hands gently braiding her golden hair, so that they seemed wheat ears. She missed Hecate. She missed even Mother's overbearing attitude. Had Mother found out about her absence? But if she did, why was she not here?
Then they passed a low hill, and a new sight appeared, and for a moment, Kore's heart was lifted: in front of her the meadow gave way to what under the sun above would have been green pastures. Here, under the silver light that seemingly came from all around, they glistened mercurial, like the river Styx had. They seemed razor-sharp steel blades of grass, losing themselves to a windless dance. Powerful black horses played in the distance, around a large white marble mansion. Hounds howled at the sight of the King, and they rushed towards him.
The King laughed as they all jumped at him, fighting to be the first to get a caress, a scratch, a pat on the head.
The King laughed again, and it was such a rich, mirthful sound, that some part of Kore's heart sowed down. She had heard Zeus laugh, and his laughter was surely more powerful and boisterous, but there was not such a clear joy as in that now springing from the Elder King's mouth.
"Here, here," he said, crouching in front of the dogs. He took Kore's hand and pulled her towards the pack of dogs. "This is Kore. You will have to treat her kindly, just as you treat me, and even better, for she is going to become your Lady, my friends."
Kore couldn't stifle a giggle as one of the largest dogs, a huge black hound that would have instilled fear in any mortal, pushed its snoot against her fingers and gave it a lick. Soon she was as surrounded by dogs as she had once been with leaves, and roots, and the gentle rays of the sun.
And that was the first moment in the Underworld when Kore would be truly happy.
It did not last long. As the dogs played with her, not as eager to be petted as they had been by the Elder King, he clapped his hands, his face once again stern.
"Now, friends, leave us be. I will have to show your Lady our house."
The dogs bowed and scattered, chasing against smell trails. A few howled and barked as they passed by Kore, and were once more black and brown blots of colour against the silvery gray of grass.
"My… our house?"
"Yes, dearest Kore. Here, allow me to show you."
He offered her his hand, and Kore hesitated once again.
But she had promised not to cry again, and Mother had taught her a daughter of Zeus does not cry.
They passed under a tall arch of marble, and through another tall black door, and then entered the house of Hades.
It was all built in black, and white, and silver. It shone like stained glass, light echoing against itself in different arches and coiling in arabesques, so that it seemed to never rest. Kore, passing under a window, saw her own shadows run in circle around her, like the corolla of a flower widening and closing again at the end of the day.
Whereas her own Garden had been littered with plants, the House of the Elder King was a collected place of shapes and arches. It reminded her of the temples built by mortals, but at a much grander and deeper scale. Everything was either obsidian or marble or silver or glass. As the more hallways they passed through, the starker the light became.
Until they passed under one final arch into a large circular hall: and there, Kore gasped.
Light poured in from above. Silver and white, but scattering into all sort of tinges as they touched veils of stained glass… no, wait. That was not glass.
Those were…
Kore had seen them. Had known about them. She had seen gemstones already. They glittered, inviting, on the clothes and jewels of Immortals. And even mortal women used them to enhance their charm.
But these veils were… whole gemstones, floating in mid-air, and casting the hall under slowly-shifting tones of green, blue, red, yellow and purple, all shifting into each other like the gentle currents of a river.
"This, dearest Kore, is your new home." The Elder King passed his finger through a lock of her hair. "I do hope you like it."