🌸 Coming To A Head

L&W18: Kore's mother confronts her about that clandestine little outing.

Previously on 6 LITTLE SEEDS:

The Queen of the Earth flicked a disapproving glance at Ares’ warlike daughters, then blinked in surprise to also find Harmonia and Iris there. But she turned the cool shoulder of dismissal upon them. Her arms squeezed again as she petted and kissed and crooned and cooed. “Kore! Where have you been? What are you doing out here with the likes of…them?”

Kore cringed out a grin and tried to bat innocent eyes, but she had no time to weave an elaborate explanation.

Iris stepped up to deliver it straight from her bottomless pouch.

Upon seeing what the Divine Messenger held, Demeter pulled upright with a sharp inhalation. For a long moment, she stared at that rolled scroll covered end-to-end with the marks of where it had come from: the Temple of War.

Kore couldn’t help but blush at the cheeks and aura, for she had no doubt that those marks matched what was scrawled all over her, too.

From: JAGGED EDGES

—Start at the beginning
—Mature Content Warnings for this series

Also. Nobody calls Persephone by her true name. They call her KORE, “the Maiden,” and it’s pronounced like “ko-ray” or “kora” not like “core of the planet.”

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Head to Head

KORE, BRINGER OF BLOSSOMTIME

✨🌸✨

“By the festering crack of Tartaros!”

Kore straightened up with a gasp. In the face of her mother’s brewing wrath, she wanted to grab that scroll and incinerate it, but there was nothing for it. Demeter flicked it open and pressed her palm to the large handprint that glowed there, for this was no mere written account of what had happened when the Bringer of Blossomtime had snuck out to the Temple of War. This was Ares’ undistilled memory, complete with every sound, scent, conversation, taste, and tactile sensation.

With every passing second, Demeter grew redder and redder at both cheeks and aura. Kore couldn’t tell if her mother’s rage or embarrassment was winning out.

Once finished absorbing the God of War’s message, Demeter crumpled the leather scroll inside her fist and shook it in the air. “How is it that Ares conducts himself more honorably than my own daughter? The Lord of Wanton Slaughter? The Whoremaster of Blood and Lust, and he is the trustworthy party in this debacle?”

Kore winced, wishing that her escort had lingered to temper some of the blast. Unfortunately, they had departed the Protected Grove the moment Demeter’s hand closed around the scroll, as had every living creature in the vicinity. Earth Mother’s booming voice shook the leaves from the trees and blackened bark like wildfire. Kore would have rather faced her father’s wrath.

On and on Demeter went, pacing furrows into the ground as she snarled and frothed, but Kore couldn’t hear her.

With every point her mother harped on, the reality of that scroll’s truths came to rest fully in Kore’s mind. Every memory, every embarrassment, and especially the pain of his rejection. All she could hear was the sound of Ares’ unyielding refusal to join his voice to hers—the sound of that adamantine cage slamming shut around his heart.

Shut it down.

I truly do not.

If only she could have gotten him alone. Just the two of them somewhere picturesque and beautiful, or somewhere more familiar to him if that’s what he needed in order to let down his guard and raise his voice in a melody so different from the one he always sang on the battlefield. And he would have. She’d felt it—had seen it. All that emotion colliding behind his eyes like the pair of clashing rivers he had sung about when it was just the two of them at the pool.

And yet...

He had singed her feet to silence her.

Demeter smacked the scroll in her palm with the force of a cyclone gust, jerking Kore’s attention back to her mother’s stormy face. “Ares’ ichor shows me the truth of this matter,” Earth Mother said. “Not merely assurances from his schemer’s eely tongue, but his imprint, branded right here in damning splendor, and sealed with the waters of the Styx! Have you any notion of what you’ve done, child? And right there in front of Eris? Of all the loose-lipped, conniving rumormongers to witness your shameful—and may I say—clumsy display of seduction.”

Kore hunched more deeply.

“And Hermes? Only the wheeling heavens know how he’ll slant this tale, after the way I had to reject him when he came courting. Oh, Kore! What were you thinking!”

The girl’s mouth worked as she rummaged through a myriad replies, some more dishonest than the rest. At last, she shrugged a shoulder.

Demeter grabbed her by the arms. A tempest raged in Great Mother’s gaze. “Answer me truthfully. Is this the first time you’ve snuck out of this grove?”

“N-no, mother.”

“Speak!”

“I—I snuck out a few times just to see if I could and...and to watch Ares fight. But that’s all, I swear!”

“Oh, reckless girl, if you were curious about the gorier aspects of the life cycle, why didn’t you come to me? I would have taken you to see one of Athene’s battles myself. But no. Ares? Oh, thundering chariots! Your father would split the sky before seeing you in that lecher’s clutches.”

“And you?”

Demeter balled fists on her ample hips. “What about me?”

“You said yourself that the God of War conducted himself honorably, that he has no reparations to make.”

“No, he has none to make.”

Sidestepping the insinuation, Kore tried a bat of long lashes. “Then if he wished to court me, would you—”

“Certainly not! The Brainless Butcher only offered his ingratiating apologies to save his own hide.”

“He is not brainless! He is passionate and valiant and—”

“Oh, passionate. Yes, so is his father. Banish the notion from your fool head, girl. The Lord of Lust—bloody and otherwise—has no intention of marrying anyone, least of all you. If Ares didn’t wed Aphrodite the moment she split from the Limper of the Forge, he certainly won’t bind himself to an artless, unworldly neophyte.”

Kore drew herself into a sullen ball on her charred rock and snapped her burning face away.

“Oh, what? Did you think your perky, glowing breasts, your batting eyes, and your inexperienced hands bungling what a thousand others have stoked to a blaze would be enough to convince him to drop the Goddess of Lust and Rod Polishing? You think painting yourself in Aphrodite’s slutty flowers could convince him that you could ever compete with her?” Demeter scoffed. “Worse for us all if you could.”

Kore glowered. She should have banished those foolish roses from her skin before arriving back at the Protected Grove. But doing so had seemed like publicly admitting defeat—something she hadn’t been capable of stomaching when said public consisted of Ares’ sniggering daughters and chortling warriors.

Demeter’s scoff was the most condescending one yet. “And what of Eris? You didn’t think those two merely battle at each other’s sides, do you? No, when that twisted pair ruts, entire forests are leveled. I heard he had to rebuild his temple one time.”

The smolder descended from Kore’s cheeks to the pit of her belly as the memories flashed through her mind. The lusty gleam in Ares’ eyes. The way his face had gotten so close to Discord’s as they argued. His erection had grown with every word they hurled at each other. Naturally. He was the God of War. Conflict fed him like nothing else. And Eris was the Queen of Conflict.

Demeter snickered. “Do you imagine that he’ll give all that up just to tumble eternally with you through the violets? You don’t think you could ever slake him, do you?”

Kore’s eyes flicked at her mother, smoldering with insult. “Perhaps there are sides to me you don’t know about.” Sides that you don’t want to know about.

“Oh, I know, child." A flash rippled through Demeter’s veil and wound up in her eyes. "I know all about the undeniable thirst and the dark cords that dwell within the heart of every goddess. We have within us—each of us—the powers of creation and destruction. It is simply a matter of which half we feed. You were not born to the shadow path of Eris or Enyo. Caustic discord and raging war. The lust for blood and burning ichor. That’s all this is—just the inebriating effects of the Temple of War. Trust me girl, I’ve been in that place. You simply got caught in its potent spell. In his spell.”

“It’s more than that. It’s—”

“If you wish so badly to hone your destructive power, then perhaps it is time I taught you. I’m sure Athene and Artemis would only be too happy to help you discover the weapons that suit you best. But not until you learn responsibility. Discipline. I will not stand for this wanton, wrathful lashing out, this sneaking about, and I will not stand for you to learn it by associating with Ares and his nasty brood. You’re lucky he didn’t rape you right there on his altar just to satisfy the appetites of his warmongers.”

Kore set her jaw. “He could never do that to me.”

“He very well would. He’s a ruthless brute.”

“Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you, mother. One cannot rape the ecstatically willing. Ares and I are Fated.”

A squawk of laughter shot from Demeter’s mouth. “Fated?”

“I know it. I felt it—”

“Oh, girl. You are so young. You know nothing of romantic love or sexual lust, and you are ignorant of how the Fates work. I suppose that is my doing.” Earth Mother clasped hands behind her back and strode across the grass with thudding, measured footfalls. “Perhaps I have sheltered you from the realities of the world for too long. But with a slight course-correction, we may yet steer this mishap into a positive direction. He certainly roused to what you instinctually manifested in your touch. It’s only natural that you would take so well to administering sexual pleasure. You’re a fertility goddess. We can use this to our advantage because he’s had many hands and kisses to compare. Yes…yes, this might be the best thing to happen. We only have to spin it correctly to win notice of the perfect match...”

As Kore tracked her mother back and forth, something in her breast cracked like the fracturing of rock. It was the slipping of a cliff face and its crash into the sea. The Queen of the Earth was pacing. Her eyes were focused in that unswayable, single-minded stare, and Kore knew what that meant. Demeter would hear nothing now, except that which confirmed everything she had already decided.

It’s over. If I thought she was watchful before…if I thought her reins were tight…she will never let me see him again, and if I can’t get him alone, if I can't touch that place inside him where he is gentle, loving…I know it’s there! Harmonia was right. I know what true union—what harmony feels like, because I know how perfectly his song fits inside mine. But if my mother has her way…

Kore’s bottom lip quivered. Tears welled in her eyes as she scrambled at that cliffside, desperate to find one last crevice upon which to cling.

When Demeter saw it, she flung her hands up in exasperation. “Honestly, child. Ares is not worth all these theatrics. Is he truly the extent of what you desire from mating with a god? To crash together ferociously for one night and then be abandoned with a swollen belly?”

“Like you?” Kore hurled back through a grief-choked throat.

Demeter’s eyes flew open as she sucked in an audible breath. Slowly, intentionally, she huffed the air back out, then said, “Yes. Precisely like me.”

Kore shot a triumphant huff through her nostrils.

“Well, I can smell the Warluster’s toxic effects upon you from this single encounter. This is precisely why you are to have nothing more to do with him. Any of them. Is this the way I raised you? Insolence? Combativeness? Spite?”

Kore couldn’t help a scoff. “Whenever you speak of anyone with a phallus and at least half of the females on Olympos? Yes.”

Her mother’s veil whisked smartly about her as she pulled up with a haughty frown. “You do not know them. I have spared you from that, and you’ll thank me if you should ever be forced to know them as intimately as I do. Trust me, girl, when it comes to the God of War’s spear and the female half of Olympos, Ares is his father’s son. Don’t think you can change him, not with those pretty lips of yours—above or below. Certainly not with some glorious illusion that if you can only love him enough…” Demeter rolled her eyes, making a mockery of her words. “If your love could just be pure and expansive enough, you could hold his interest for eternity. Hah. That’s impossible. This is simply his nature. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but at least Ares has the decency to own what he is.”

“Oh?” Kore shot back. “And what is that?”

Demeter’s exhalation was as controlled as her face was set. “Some creatures mate exclusively for life. Many do not. Only those who lie about it and sneak around, breaking promises of fidelity and monogamy are despicable. So let’s not force poor Ares to also follow in the Thunderer’s footsteps where marriage is concerned. Do you truly wish to become like your aunt?”

Kore snapped her face away.

“You will be. If you insist upon this course of pursuing gods like Ares, you’ll either wind up pregnant and discarded like me, or you’ll wind up like Hera.”

With a disgruntled huff, Kore found herself less and less able to refute her mother’s arguments—what she had discovered firsthand by meeting Ares in the flesh. He had told her exactly how it was with him, and she hadn’t been able to believe him. She still didn’t know how to wrap her mind around it. Not with the echo of their intertwined songs still caressing her throat and her ears. What kind of husband would he make? Really?

Demeter snarled out a laugh. “Oh, how my baby sister dangled it before our new King On High. She’d seen what he did to me, to other goddesses, and she wanted none of that, so she rejected him, which of course he couldn’t resist. He chased her over mountain and sea, swearing his fidelity—that not only would he forsake all other lovers, but that he would make her Queen On High. He promised to unite with her in the raising of their children and rulership of the Upper Realms, together for all time. Hera knew your father was a liar, especially after he lured her close in disguise so he could take her by force.”

Kore blinked hard. She had not known that.

Demeter let out a derisive sniff and nodded. “Yet he had spouted everything she had ever dreamed, so she made the God of Law engrave all those promises in stone before she would marry him. And so he did!” Demeter’s fist punched the sky. “Ah, dear fortune-kissed Hera.”

Kore curled more tightly about herself on the rock. Her chin landed on her knees.

“So then?” Her mother towered over her, hands on bounteous hips, demands in her eyes. “Is that what you want? To be sworn to a god who has no intention of keeping the vows he mouths in your direction? Constantly lied to? Having your heart torn out by watching him chase after newer, shinier little things? Watching him spawn a myriad offspring when he doesn’t even care for the ones he already has?”

Mashing her lips shut on all the things she longed to fire back, Kore shook her head. Sounds like you’re still talking about yourself more than Aunt Hera or me.

“I didn’t think so,” Demeter said. “So let us snip the thread of this Ares business once and for all. I know he is spectacular and exhilarating, and you think that’s what you want. My darling daughter, my most cherished one, my beloved child, please trust me. He is not.”

Kore’s arms squeezed more tightly about her folded legs. One of her shoulders twitched up. “Fine,” she grumbled.

“I hear no sincerity in that word.”

“It’s fine, mother! No more sneaking out to meet Ares. I’ll just stay in here, spinning and weaving and painting the world with pretty-pretty pea blossoms.”

“This is not the way to convince me that you are remotely ready to grow in your responsibilities and freedoms. Disparaging your powers of creation? Shirking your divine duties? You could have spent the dark moon learning this day’s sacred arts at my side. Instead, you chose treachery, lies, warmongering, and wasting the most precious assets you possess—your sacred touch, your life-sparking kiss, your most fertile, intimate self. You display such an utter lack of discernment and wisdom when you choose whimsy and your so-called ‘passion.’” Demeter scoffed. “Reserve your passion for the creative arts, my dear, and for a loving union with a worthy god. Not for places like Ares’ Fortress of Blood and Lust.”

Demeter pulled up tall and resolute with all her garments untouched by a single breeze. “I shall take you to a true Temple of War, where combat is married to wisdom. Then you’ll see. In destruction, one must be level-headed. Cool in heart. Focused in mind, lest the darkness and thirst take you down with it. That is the quickest way to wreak wanton obliteration upon the innocent, and I taught you better than that. You need to watch Athene and Artemis when they wield destructive power—”

“Oh, yes! I was wondering when we would come to that.” Kore tossed her head and rolled her eyes. “Maybe I should just march up to Aunt Hestia’s temple and swear my own vow of virginity on her eternal flame like my perfect half-sisters. I’m sure you wish they were your daughters instead of being stuck with useless, ornamental me.”

“No! I do not.” Earth Mother took a step closer. Her hands clutched tightly around her veil and her voice came out nearly as choked as Kore’s had. “I do not wish that at all. If you desire a life of eternal chastity, that is your choice. Given the available options for mating, I wouldn’t blame you. But you are not ornamental, and you are anything but useless. You simply have different gifts from your half-sisters, and you have taken your time blossoming.”

Demeter shrugged. “I admit, the Queen of the Earth casts a large shadow. But our lineage, our responsibilities are paramount. All of life depends upon us. In order to know what should receive annihilation, and when and how, versus what should be allowed to thrive, what should be given extra care and nurturing, a responsible goddess must possess discernment and wisdom above all.”

Kore snapped a glare onto her mother—cool in heart, indeed. Cool in voice. “Very well. Let us proceed to all the responsibility and discipline.” She held her first two fingers up like the Fates’ open shears. When she closed them, she said, “Snip! Let us put an end to this business of anything I might think I know in my heart. Let us acknowledge that I possess no discernment or understanding beyond that which you have instilled within me.”

“Kore—”

“All is well, mother. The fact that my song intertwines with his as though they were woven from different fibers in the same thread? That is nothing.” Her head swiveled sharply left and she stared off into the prison of the trees. “Neophyte that I am, I know nothing.”

“I never said that!”

“You don’t need to. Your lack of faith in me speaks the volume of our waterfall. After all, songs are nothing more than the twitterpated nonsense of a childish, unwise ninny.” As Eris’ words filtered back, Kore snickered. “A daft, goggling tyro who is not ready for the responsibilities of creation any more than she’s ready to learn destruction.”

Demeter’s shadow fell upon the girl. Her eyes were immense, her face pale. “Daughter, what song are you talking about? Where did you hear it?”

“Everywhere,” Kore murmured, suddenly so close to tears that she could scarcely speak. Her hand pressed against the rock beneath her, as her legs slid down to mold against the side of it. “I hear it in every indrawn breath, and in every breath that ceases. In every shoot that battles to rise from the ground, vying against its sisters for sunlight and moisture. In every creeping, soaring, darting, crawling thing that wages eternal war against the inevitable, I hear him. I feel him…”

In the remaining space at the end of her breath, she left the rest to the winds. I know he is mine as I am his. She had voiced enough of the truth, and she refused to lose that one last connection to him. If she confessed to hearing him in the pool, no doubt Earth Mother would forbid her from returning there alone ever again.

Demeter must have sensed it, for she grabbed Kore’s chin and forced the girl to meet her eyes. “What are you not telling me, child?”

Kore jerked free. “There’s nothing more to tell. Ares’ message seems to have covered it in greater detail than I ever could have described.”

“Yes, he was contrite, honest, and explicit, but I want to hear it from you. What other secrets are you hiding?”

“I’m not!”

“You’re quite certain? Because if there are other…clandestine activities that are going to come seeping to the surface, then I need to know them now. I need to know what other messes I’m going to have to clean up in order to salvage the slightest chance at acquiring a decent husband for you. Young one, you have no idea the magnitude of disaster that one false step could—”

“I haven’t done anything else!” Trapped between that towering figure and the rock beneath her, Kore snarled up at her mother with bared teeth. “The moon and sun and stars all know I’m tethered to your skirts every moment of every day, so how could I ever do one single thing!”

Demeter eyes flew open again. Then they narrowed.

For leagues around them, every chirp, croak, buzz, and rustle silenced at the storm that brewed between the two goddesses. They had argued before, but never like this. Kore’s frame trembled as she debated whether or not to stand up.

Suddenly it was no longer her mother before her, but another goddess of the realm, standing there with so much threat in her stance, in her eyes, blocking the girl from everything she knew in her heart was her destiny. The Queen of the Earth was taller and more sizable. Her experience was ancient, her battle-prowess proved long ago.

But Kore’s ichor boiled. Something twisted deep within her. Something dark and volatile. It had been festering down there for too long.

Like the Titans in their cage.

The Temple of War still lurked in her ichor and in her hair. And smoke. The scent of charred meat. The heady lusciousness of blood-nectar. The taste of it lingered in her mouth. The taste of him. She could still feel the weight of his hands landing upon her shoulders. Those fingers gripping her one by one by one. And the way his phallus had felt in her hands—his spear, indeed. You like danger…power…

And the Temple of War liked anyone who was susceptible.

So did the Goddess of Discord.

Arising to her feet, Kore looked up into the face of this First Generation Olympian Goddess, the Queen of the Earth. Demeter’s head craned forward. Just the slightest movement, but a warning that matched the tremors rippling through the ground around her.

The dark veil came down over Kore’s gaze like it had in the temple. All her hair stood up on end. The stones that had pumped wrath and revenge, rage and battle-lust in through the soles of her feet…she could still feel it humming within her. The crouch of strong legs. The tightening of thighs and belly. The coiling of vitality. Her chin lowered. Feral heat blazed within her gaze.

Demeter’s head drew back. She stared at Kore as though the girl had transformed into someone else before her very eyes.

Kore felt like someone else. Someone fanged and ferocious. Someone who might wish to wear a battle apron made of diamond-hardened mercury. Someone who might want to lift that garment up and flash her most intimate invitation to the god who was hers. And I’ll be damned to Tartaros before I let my mother’s embittered prudishness stop me.

Demeter’s hand was as large as Kore’s whole face. Her arm was the size of Kore’s thigh. To defeat such a colossal force, she would have to catch Earth Mother by surprise. She would need to—

That thought caught her by surprise.

As soon as the vision began—what it would look like, feel like, sound like—Kore recoiled from it. The horror. The catharsis. The despair. The lust to at last thrash and bash and rage her way free of everything that had kept her bound for so long.

Demeter let out a little cry. Through clenched teeth and a strangled throat, she demanded, “Who are you?”

Kore’s breathing came out hard, tremulous. “I have no idea,” she said, barely able to control her volume. Her palms itched. So did the bottoms of her feet. Her pelvis thrummed as that thing at the base of her spine squirmed again. The air crackled with energy. It was positively electric—and negatively.

She had only seen her father hurl his bolts a few times. Demeter usually whisked her away too quickly. The air around her felt like that. Yet…different. It was more like the moment after the lightning had penetrated the ground—all that energy exploding into it, reverberating outward and into. Some of it was still down there. She could feel it through her feet.

It grinned up at her the way Ares’ temple had.

And that brought a grin to her face.

She could wield this. She was not only the daughter of Earth Mother. She had been sired by the Lord of Lightning.

Still panting, still full of quaking, she said, “I have no earthly or heavenly idea who I am, but I think it’s long past time I found out.” Although she had gained no height, her aura was nearly the size of Demeter’s when she took another step forward to stare up into that horrified face. “So tell me, Mother. Are you going to help me in this discovery? Or are you going to keep standing in my way?”

UP NEXT: Kore and Demeter face off, toe-to-toe, EYE-TO-EYE.

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