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Persephone watches her go, bare feet barely touching the ground, and turns to pass the Judgment Court. She has no need to visit them now.

Between a high craggy cliff and the side of the palatial edifice, she slips through a crack in the obsidian and finds herself at the far edge of the Asphodel Meadows. Gray wheat stretches for a seeming eternity, scattered with wavering souls stripped of their light. Her first time in these fields, she tried to walk around the edge so as not to disturb the dead, but found herself walking on and on, no curve or end in sight. So she learned to walk through the fields as she does now, arms outstretched, fingertips brushing the wheat stalks as souls part before her like the mist. 

Persephone still marvels at how her touch brings color to the gloom of this world, ruffling the wheat with a phantom wind and a shock of sun-gold before it fades with the absence of her touch. The dead drink the heat of the sun from her skin, bloom, and fade back to dust.

She always thought it to be a chilling irony.

The orchard marked the end of the Meadow, one of the few places she felt truly welcome outside of her grove and their palace. Though the fruits hang heavy on the branches, they do not bow or bend before their heft. Persephone approaches the smallest tree with the fewest fruits and plucks the largest from its boughs, pressing her palm to its trunk. Cold seeps into her hand and snatches at her heat, curling it into the bark and through the plant’s veins until two ripe pomegranates drip down before her. Smiling, she cracks the fruit in half and scoops out a small handful of seeds, opening her mouth and letting the tart red burst on her tongue.

The chill of Hades blooms from the bottom of her throat to the soles of her feet, a flush rushing to her cheeks as breath is pulled into her lungs. A laugh tears forth from her chest, a staccato chandelier lighting the dusky groves with tinkling glass and cloud-parted sunlight, and she spins, hands reaching for the unseen heights of the world, dress flaring as her feet dance grooves into the dirt.

Persephone buries the half-eaten pomegranate away from the rest of the trees and kisses the dirt. A shoot of green presses through to greet her.

In the waking world, far above her, the land begins to wither in her absence. Crops fail. Water freezes. People are easier to die. The light fades and the days grow shorter.

Because that is her name. Persephone. Destroyer of light.

But Hades, he takes what is left and makes a home of it. Souls find their rest. Fruit grows even in the most choking darkness. The Rivers are frigid but never frozen.

He lives in the echoes of her ruin and holds her hands when she tries to pick up the pieces. She doesn’t need to do that for him. He gathers them up, and the king of shoal and hoary stone smelts them into something greater than their broken shards ever were alone. She may help things grow, but Hades is a builder. They both rise in their own ways. She from her roots, and he from his foundations.

All that is bright falls before her, as she fell before him, her darkness, when he appeared before her on the other side of the river. She had flowers in her hair. He pulled her from her roots and she went all too willingly.

He brought her down and she pulled him under.

She blinks from her waking dream as she comes to the long path up to the palace. Their palace, he insists. A long time ago, when she was still young, he helped her grow nightshade and hemlock around the great doors that opened for none living but her, his wife.

This time, it’s different.

The great doors open, silent, looming, and the King himself strides out, alone, eyes bright as the sun under his heavy spiked crown. The only light she could never dim.

Without a second thought, Persephone runs into his arms, knocking his crown to the dirt, and buries her face in his neck. He was always so warm.

She feels his soft smile press into her hair.

“Welcome home.”

***

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