Stories

Taylor woke up and got ready for classes, as if nothing had happened the day before, trying to avoid looking at the door, somewhat uneasy with the thought that if she did, she might not see it there anymore. The first day was filled with the trepidation of adjusting to new settings and finding her way through the maze of buildings and hallways, and in all the excitement she almost forgot about the “class” that was supposed to start...

“Taylor? Taylor Bradford?” a voice called from behind the counter, with non-dissimulated boredom. 

Taylor fumbled with the paperwork and rushed to the counter to finish registering for classes before the four o’clock deadline. The clerk handled the documents absentmindedly, while she watched the clock and switched to a more leisurely mindset in anticipation of the get together she had planned with her friends later at the bar on th...

“Persephone, darling! What a joy to have you back home!”

Demeter welcomed her daughter effusively at the mouth of the cave of Cumae and presented her with the traditional sheaf of barley.

The oracle of Cumae bowed deeply to both goddesses, concealing a resentful glare, while Demeter performed a critical assessment of her daughter, staring her up and down in search of things that required attention.

“You look thinner, Persephone. Ar...

Persephone was careful about lifting her torch, to avoid scorching the healthy roots which poked through the vault of the cave, drawn by the sound of the small stream running through it. Plants can hear water from great distances.

Plants can hear water from great distances and extend roots to capture it. They are a lot more sophisticated than people know.

A delicate root tracery was covering the entire vault, surrounding the larger...

As spring approached, Persephone started getting restless.

She was startled from her sleep, shaken by the feeling she forgot something important, whose absence had consequences which were now piling up out of sight.

Her daydreaming trips to the gardens got shorter, as she spent more and more time with Hecate preparing for her trip.

Most of the hard work of spring was happening underground, quietly. While the dirt was still frozen, ...

Hades always felt empty after Persephone saw the returning souls off into the world. To allay her sadness, she went to the Hall of Scrolls, to reread what the Moirae had in store for them.

Hades’s palace was vast, and not many people knew that, because very few had been allowed past the sumptuous rooms at the front, which were intended for receiving visitors.

It had libraries and vaults, salons and dining halls, and since his marri...

Life doesn’t change.

Sure the technologies advance and the day-to-day gets easier, but people aren’t fundamentally different from how they were centuries ago.

The same emotions and drives push them on their paths, and the same disappointments sour their spirits.

Persephone tended to her souls like a gardener tends to his or her plants, watching them get born, live and die, forget their experiences and come back to life the next tim...

Every four years in the middle of summer, the mortals gathered to celebrate the muses in a gentle valley at the feet of Mount Helicon.

The nine daughters of Mnemosyne, they weren’t your usual goddesses; they were a gift to humankind. Nobody talked about them as such, out of fear these wonders that fired the human mind to create masterpieces might be taken away, to leave mankind only the toiling and the wars, a drab existence made o...

Those blessed with the gift of prophecy form a small but very special community.

They instinctively seek each other’s presence, they are drawn to those who are similarly blessed.

If they are mortal, they become oracles and seers whose wisdom is sought and revered, and people travel from far away to seek their counsel. They are the living vessels of the gods, who speak through them in cryptic messages, which are only understood in r...

On the westernmost edge of the Oceanus, which spans the vast distance between the world of the living and the underworld, there is a splendid garden, constantly bathed in the glow of the sunset.

The garden belongs to Hera, a wedding gift from her grandmother, and wonderful apple trees with golden fruit grow there, under the jealous guard of the dragon Ladon, an offspring of the Typhon, and the rather distracted oversight of the Hes...

Persephone stood tall on the bow of the ship, against the breeze. 

Behind her, the fortune’s chosen, the ones who managed to navigate its treacherous waters through three lifetimes in a row, without reproach, were gazing towards the islands in the distance with apprehension and awe, not yet able to believe their luck, eyes moist for what they left behind. 

Lost for words, they feared the promise of this new and wonderful existence ...

There was much sound and fury in Hades’ chambers the next morning, the clamor of many people speaking in anger, and above them all Persephone recognized the voice of Zeus.

She got dressed in a hurry and sneaked into the anteroom of the large conference hall where Hades was involved in some very heated negotiations with an entire delegation of Olympians, which, as an extraordinary circumstance, included Zeus himself.

“We’re doing ev...

When she wanted to take a break from her daily activities, Persephone wandered along the banks of the Lethe, under the slender branches of the willows, which arched to touch its waters, and walked all the way to the cave of Hypnos.

She went there mostly to pick poppies, whose flowers surrounded the quiet realm of the god of sleep.

The bright red blooms glowed from afar in the perpetual sunset, a bucolic image whose beauty was worth...

She rushed home, crossing the bridge over the Acheron, past the elm of false dreams, through the mucky banks of the Vale of Mourning and the orchard to get home faster, so she had to stop and shake the pumice dust off her sandals before she entered the palace.

Hermes was waiting in the loggia overlooking the gardens, impatient, as always.

“Great! You’re here.”

“Good morning to you too, cousin.”

“Aha. Yeah. Listen. The cave of Cumae...

Hades is a water realm.

Surrounded by Oceanus, it’s crisscrossed by rivers and streams whose rash and unsettled currents can be heard in the background almost everywhere.

From the quiet Lethe meandering between boulders in Hypnos’s cave, careful not to awaken him, to the echoes of the Styx, muffled as it flows through underground caves, the sights and sounds of water are everywhere, sometimes soothing, sometimes unsettling.

The rus...

Persephone sneaked out into the gardens the next morning, grateful to have a few quiet moments to reconnect with her plant companions.

Everything had spirit in the Underworld, even the rocks and the streams, and her beloved trees were the goddess’s most trusted friends.

The poplars flittered in the twilight, their gold leaves shimmering in ways which would have gratified Demeter, who always thought her daughter’s attire too plain f...

She said goodbye to her mother at the mouth of the cave of Taenarum, crumbling under the weight of her sorrow and tears, and harboring guilt over feeling relieved when she finally stepped into its dark depths and its silence.

Hecate was supposed to meet her and lead the way, but Persephone had walked that path so many times she really didn’t need the dark goddess to guide her. 

She grabbed a lit torch from the wall and started her ...

To say that everybody woke up the next day nursing a headache would be an understatement. The wine and the herbs left a parting gift - a vicious nausea, amplified to epic levels by the main part of the ceremony.

The Antleriai, the wailers, descended into the Megara pits, specially outfitted with snakes for the occasion, to retrieve decomposed pieces of the pig sacrifices, which were then placed on the altars to be blessed by the go...

A mournful song and the unmistakable scent of winter filled the mist the next morning, when the festival attendants woke up to an eerie landscape.

The meadow grasses were covered in a thin dusting of ice, and their dried flower heads, which the freezing rain had pounded relentlessly overnight, were encased in transparent globes of ice that acted like magnifying glass to enhance every detail of their intricate structures.

The most b...