🌾 Eye To Eye
L&W19: Demeter & Kore face off.
Previously on 6 LITTLE SEEDS:
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. But…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.
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?”
~From: COMING TO A HEAD
—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.”
DEMETER, EARTH MOTHER, MISTRESS OF BOUNTY
✨🌾✨
As Kore bowed up, Demeter rooted her feet into the ground and clamped hands upon both of her daughter’s wrists. “No!” Earth Mother cried, sending wave after wave of comfort and love to ground stabilization into the girl’s body.
At such restriction, Kore’s eyes went the hue of the forest at dusk. Her skin zinged. Her hair crackled like sparks on rose-red. It fluffed up around her skull and coalesced into threatening points at the tips. The tresses writhed and snaked, far too reminiscent of a gorgon for Demeter’s liking.
Before the girl could explode, Earth Mother choked out, “No, you’re right!”
The hair paused, rearing back like vipers about to strike.
“Daughter, you’re right.” Demeter’s eyes closed and her head lowered, but she held Kore more firmly. “I—I should have faced this straight on instead of—” Her voice broke.
Instead of trying to bury it and hide from it. Hide from him. Perhaps I can do that, but Kore can’t.
Zeus was there inside her. He was half of the force that had created her, and Demeter should have known by now that there was no escaping one’s nature. All her life, she had battled her own father’s wrath and insatiable need to possess, not only while trapped in Kronos’ bile-filled belly, but during the war to topple him. The greatest fight she mounted was the one in her ichor and innards. She fought it every day—becoming like that Titanic tyrant—so how could the daughter of the Thunderer Highest and Best do any less?
When Earth Mother opened her eyes, she beheld the child she had made while falling through the heavens. Zeus’ eyes went dark like that when he was enraged. Demeter’s went blinding gold.
This was the moment she had feared the most of any in her life.
The Bringer of Destruction.
The Thresher.
Persephone.
It was all here in the girl’s quaking body. If Kore’s wrathful might wasn’t harnessed and channeled properly—if it was unleashed under the wrong influences, it would come exploding out those tiny hands in a way that had been long foretold.
Dancing, singing, overjoyed
All is nurtured, all destroyed…
Demeter bent over her daughter’s hands and kissed the left fingertips, then the right, then the left again. “My darling, the last thing I want is to stand in the way of you becoming all you were meant to be. But I will tell you truly, I fear it. Your father has always wanted you. He—”
Kore hissed and whisked her hands free. “Oh, blame Father like always.”
“No, please! Kore, listen to me. He has always wanted you. Wanted to you use you, groom you, maneuver you, show you off for his benefit. You might think that you desire his doting attentions, but you don’t know him. He will raise you up and exalt you, true. But only until the moment when you become a threat—and you will. Oh, my child, you have no idea the power that dwells within you.”
“No,” Kore snarled. “I don’t. Because you’ve never let me have any idea.”
“I know.” Demeter raised her hands in acquiescence. “You’re right. I haven’t. But only because I have never known how to let you explore it without calling you to his notice again. He has forgotten about you, and that is best—no, please don’t glower. I know it hurts to be discarded and placed so low in his eyes, but I assure you, that is a good thing. If he understood how much of him dwells within you… He would want to train you, use you. But he does not know you either.” Daring to edge forward, Earth Mother let all her enraptured affection shine through her smile. “He has no idea that you will not allow yourself to be used.”
“Won’t I.” The girl crossed her arms and slumped into a hip. “Isn’t that what I’ve been doing my whole life here in your grove?”
“No. Not used.” Halting several paces off, Demeter assumed a solemn stance with her garments folded humbly about her. “Unfortunately, quite the opposite of being used. And that is my fault. You have shown me…” She swallowed down yet another of Kronos’ bequeathals—her pride—in order to say, “Today you have shown me the error of my decisions.”
Kore’s head shifted, just the slightest gesture of consideration, but a crack was more than enough.
“The Okeanids are holding a garland-making party on the day of half-moon—” When Kore whirled away with a groan of disgust, Demeter darted forward, reaching out a hand. “No, hear me out. It’s been an age since we attended an event in such an exposed locale. I haven’t dared bring you in centuries. It’s on the Plains of Nysa, directly under your father’s eye.”
“Oh, honestly, mother. What do you think Zeus Almighty is going to do? Snatch me into thin air?”
“He’s tried to before, so do not call upon his name so casually.”
The girl blinked hard and stared at Demeter. “Tried to…? When? How?”
“You were very young. We lived in a cave deep underground. But not deep enough. He found us. Tried to lure you with his double-edged, honey-sweet tongue.” Demeter’s heart gave a trepidatious pound before she dared ask, “You don’t remember?”
“I—” Kore’s folded arms compressed, more to comfort herself rather than to barricade. “I don’t.”
“Good.” Demeter’s hand flicked as though swatting away the entire incident. “It is not a pleasant memory, so I’m glad you don’t carry its burden.”
“Why have you never told me this before?”
“I didn’t want to plant my own opinions in your mind about the god who sired you. I have always…I’ve tried not to do that. And I know I have not always succeeded.”
Kore’s brows flashed in agreement. “You could have informed me of what he did without coloring it with an opinion.”
Demeter shut her eyes with another regretful nod. “I know. I…I was afraid that if you remembered the lengths he went to in his quest to have you, that you would seek him out. That you would try to rekindle that affection. I know now, I should have trusted your ability to see him for what he is. But he is so…” Earth Mother huffed out a hard, shaky breath. “Convincing. They all are. All three of them with their perfect, bulging bodies and their adoring gazes and their sweet, lying lips. Can you not understand why I brought you here? Why I warded this place and why I have kept you so tightly guarded? I have always feared that your father would try to take you from me again, either by force or by wooing you and turning you into another of his creatures like Athene.”
“And here you were just singing my sister’s praises. I thought you admired her.”
“I do. Greatly. But in the end, she will always do his bidding, and he has never let anyone’s best interests outweigh his own. You know what he fears most. That he carries the same cursed fate as his father and his grandfather—that of being overthrown by one of his offspring.”
Kore’s head drew back. Tight-lipped, she nodded.
“Everyone on Olympos sees you as an adorable flower goddess, especially His Majesty On High, and that is to your advantage. The moment you are truly revealed…”
Kore glanced skyward. Her brows twitched and she scowled. “I would stop being an asset in his arsenal. I might become a threat.”
“You are a threat. Your father simply does not realize that. Yet.” Thankfully the clouds remained innocuous today. Most of them were elsewhere. Good. Let’s keep it that way.
“You…you fear he would harm me?” Kore asked.
“I know he would. If he can’t use your powers to his advantage, he will make sure that no one else can, including you. So please, my darling, if I take you to the party so you may dance with your friends and play with the blossoms, will you help me keep your secret until you and I can figure out—together—how to develop your gifts without attracting his notice? Not yet. Not now while you are still too unschooled and vulnerable. Will you play the sweet maiden a little while longer?”
The girl drew in a hard breath, then released it in a huff. But she nodded.
Demeter’s heart glowed with relief. She let out her own exhalation—hadn’t realized she had been holding her breath. She clasped her hands before her, coming to stand before her daughter with an exhilaration she hadn’t experienced since being handed that doomed birth prophesy.
Zeus’ lightning bolts were one of the only powers in the Cosmos that could destroy an immortal. Not kill, per se. Divine essence could never be completely unmade. But it could be altered to such extent that the being was no more. He had done it to the Great Drakaina of the Underworld, blasting her into ash so fine it could be inhaled.
He was also the only god in existence who could banish someone from Olympos and the Mortal Realm, so when Kore’s stars had been read and she had been named The Destroyer—all that talk of her falling into Eternal Night “where souls have no need of sleeping…”
Demeter had always thought that the way to prevent Zeus from harming their daughter was to ensure that Kore remained unthreatening and out of his sight, giving no reminders that one of the very offspring in his own doomed prophesy was Persephone, the One Who Strikes Down.
And so he had forgotten.
That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to use her as bait or leverage in his schemes. Kore was too tantalizing, and too many gods were interested in wedding her. Zeus had to have noticed that by now. Earth Mother had always hoped to break Kore’s curse with an ecstatic love-match before the Thunderer could make his own betrothal arrangements.
Or before he overlooked someone else’s misdeeds for the sake of greed and power.
Sky shall turn his head aside
As violent-made the maid ‘comes bride
And once that happened…
Chained and splayed upon his wall
Dragged to unrecovered fall
And she to rest her silver’d head
Where oath-making stream is fed
Demeter had always feared Ares, Apollo, and their ilk for just this reason. Ravenous, relentless sons of Zeus. The God of War would outshine any other in the job of violent bride-making. If Ares got his hands on Kore again, would he restrain himself this time?
No doubt the Thunderer would look the other way—just long enough for the girl to be ravished so he could demand a marriage that would give him more control over his wayward eldest son. Would Ares be so upset about being shackled to a bride that he would rid himself of such a burden the only way he could?
One did not, after all, simply divorce and discard the daughter of Zeus, the way Aphrodite had left Hephaistos. If anyone else could figure out how to send an immortal to the Underworld, it was Warmonger.
And now, after that awful clash with Haides, Demeter couldn’t even appeal to the King of the Dead to return a soul that did not belong to his realm. Haides had always been cutthroat, ruthless, unyielding. But he had also always been fair.
She sniffed down her nose. So much for that. Now he had his own reasons for encouraging Kore’s demise. That would put the girl right down there in his clutches—something he was incapable of managing for himself.
For the first time since the Titanomachy, Demeter found herself grateful for Zeus’ heavy-handed policies of segregation and keeping things where they belonged.
Things like the Fiend of the Pits.
She wondered if it might be prudent to let a rumor leak. Yes, yes, during this afternoon’s invasion of her grove, the Lord of the Underworld had hinted at plotting against Olympos. You know how he is, yes…
But if the Thunderer was ignoring Haides’ marriage proposal, it meant they still weren’t speaking. The last thing she wanted was to alter that. The Notorious One would deny any scheming, Zeus would believe him like always, and they might even reconcile this standoff that had kept them estranged for centuries.
I will be doomed and damned before I allow that to happen.
No, perhaps the wisest course would be to help Kore become so powerful and prominent that Zeus didn’t dare move against her, and that no other gods would so much as contemplate violent bride-making. To put the power into the girl’s own hands, to work arm-in-arm with her—that was so much better than keeping her vulnerable while relying on fickle Eros, Aphrodite, and whichever phallus-laden braggart they might find to ensnare the girl’s heart in a love-match.
Demeter set her jaw. This was the way. She could feel it in her bones.
She held out her hand to Kore. Her veil and garments had begun to glow, as did her aura. Before anybody might notice, she tamped it down. “Daughter, come with me. There is something I want to…explain to you. Only not here.” Her gaze flicked at the sky.
Mouth tightly shut, Kore placed her hand in her mother’s.
In a flash, they were inside the girl’s warded treetop bedchamber, on the cloud mattress with the canopy closed about them. Kore’s eyes glowed a brilliant leaf-green as she stared up at her mother, waiting to hear what was so important that it needed this secrecy.
Demeter leaned forward. Her heart raced in excitement, but even here she dared not speak the words too loudly. “There is another reason I wish to take you to Nysa besides the pretty flowers,” she whispered. “Out there on the plains, you will be able to feel it. You are like the lone tree in the field. You are like the peak of the mountain. Yet you are not solely a goddess of earth. Although you posses my touch of generation and proliferation, you are also a child of the sky. You are the conduit between them.”
Kore gasped at the thought—something Demeter had always hoped she wouldn’t realize on her own.
No longer.
“I do not know what you can command from your father’s realm, and I will speak to you as the maturing goddess you are. I have no idea how to allow you to discover that without His Gloriousness taking note.” With an exaggerated look of innocence, Demeter laid down on her side, propping her head up in one hand. “Perhaps it is time we attended some of the celebrations up high on Olympos and had nectar with Aunt Hera, Queen of the Heavens…”
Kore caught the volley Demeter lobbed with the impeccable timing they had always displayed while dancing and gardening in tandem. Lying down in a mirrored position, the girl batted her eyes. “And I will behave myself with all the decorum and elegance befitting a lowly, sweet flower goddess.”
Demeter’s eyes pulsed with light.
Kore’s gave an answering pulse. They were as two lone fireflies lighting the canopy, glowing in silent communication.
“Out there on the plains,” Demeter said, “I want you to take special note of your father’s essence within you and in everything around you. I beg you not to play with whatever you discover. Not yet. Not there.”
Kore nodded. “I understand, mother.”
“Your task, Daughter of Earth and Sky, is to seek, to discover, and to report back to me your findings. Then we shall trek deep underground to devise a strategy whereby you may begin to experiment with these things you have inherited from both your parents.”
When the girl’s eyes darkened this time, a mote of blinding golden light remained in the center.
Demeter’s brows flashed. “I also think it’s time you learned about all the delights of maize, far away from this place and its watchful eyes.”
As well as its dangerous, blood-nectar temptations.
“Well,” Kore chirped, “you know how I have always wanted to help you trade fig leaves for cornsilk.”
“I do know, indeed. Next moon is their harvest time, so I think foreign lands would be the perfect place to help you understand just how expansive your powers are when they are set free from the bit and reins necessitated by…” Her lips quirked up one side. “The fragile phallic stiffness of Olympian dictates.”
Kore snorted out a guffaw. “Mama dearest!”
Demeter’s smirk grew into a full-blown leer.
With matching sighs, mother and daughter snuggled down together with their faces turned toward the canopy. Their minds each whirled with what they saw painted upon that blank canvas that their auras illuminated.
After a long moment, Kore’s voice broke the silence. “Ares wanted to slaughter bulls over my head.”
Demeter glanced at her. Since the girl’s face was screwed up in uncertainty, Earth Mother allowed her laughter to flow. “Well, it is an ancient rite. The worshippers of Earth Her Very Self do no less, and you are an earth goddess…”
“Umph. Does that mean I have to stand beneath them as they’re killed?”
“Of course not, my heliotrope.”
“I mean…all those poor bulls. I don’t want any of them to have to die before their time.”
“Were they sacrificed in your name, it would be their time.”
“Yes, but…I don’t want anything to die in my name.”
Demeter caressed the girl’s hair. “You are a goddess of life and death. It is the way. The offer of bulls is a deeply honoring sacrifice. For Ares to have said such a thing was a great compliment, but there are other ways for a god to ecstatically worship a goddess of your magnitude and status than bloody slaughter.”
Relief shone in Kore’s huge eyes and hovered at the fringes of her voice when she said, “There are?”
“Many, many other ways. The god who is meant for you will instinctually understand these things. His methods of making sacrifice unto you will be as pleasurable to you as your natural methods of worship will be to him. Once you have come into your own power, we will find him. Hmm?”
Kore lay down on her back with a satisfied nod, yet Demeter could feel the question still humming in the girl’s aura. She left her daughter plenty of room to finally put it into words. “Then why did I feel what I felt when I heard his song? I felt it so clearly. So certainly.”
Pain flared through the old wound that had been gouged into Earth Mother’s chest like a tree seared by lightning. She sank onto her back and laced her hands upon her belly. “Why did I feel what I felt when I first heard your father’s song?”
Kore’s head rolled sideways as she stared at her mother. “Did it feel like the Fates had just torn open the fabric of life and let you glimpse your destiny?”
That too-familiar lump wriggled up to lodge inside Demeter’s ribcage. When it began to squeeze everything upward, she clamped her throat around it and swallowed hard. Eventually, it lodged in her belly, swimming alongside all the other things that didn’t belong there. Yes, I certainly am Kronos’ daughter, aren’t I?
Carefully, as levelly as she could, she answered, “Yes, honeysuckle. That’s exactly how I felt. And I was correct. Zeus was my destiny. Only not in the way I had dreamed when I was too young to understand what he is about. Obviously the Fates meant for you to go to the Temple of War so you could show me that you are ready to discover your greater destiny. In this way, you were correct, too. You were Fated to be touched by Ares.”
For too long a moment, Kore continued looking at her. Demeter didn’t move. Didn’t so much as blink. Eventually, the girl turned away to gaze at the ceiling as well. “Ares is his father’s son.”
More bitterly than she would have liked, Demeter said, “Yes. He is.”
“And I am my mother’s daughter.”
Demeter mashed her lips closed and reached for Kore’s hand. I hope that is true, in every facet of life except this one. Because for all the hatred and revulsion she bore the father of her only child, there were still moments when it felt as though no time had passed since the day she had scampered up the spiraling staircase of starlight and clouds. Zeus had just constructed it beneath his new Olympian temple.
There in her best, most alluring hip-drape of sunlight, dew and spun honey, with her hair unbound and an array of flowers draped to frame her bounteously bared bosom, she had entered Zeus’ favorite garden to find him crafting stallions out of lightning for Hera.
He had done that just days before while wooing Demeter.
The tiny creatures had galloped through her younger sister’s star-bright hair to tickle the back of her neck. Hera had giggled and Demeter had known. She should have known all along, for Zeus had never stuck around with any of the others after seducing and impregnating them.
“Planning to spear every hole in existence and beget a new realm?” Haides had once sneered at him.
After the war, it had happened so quickly. Such rapid series of conquests. Metis. Themys. Eurynome. Mnemosyne.
Demeter.
Why should she have been any different? She should have known better—no. She had known. Everyone had known that Zeus was Zeus. “Oh, my darling, I’ve never felt this way before. I’ve always heard of this thing called ‘love’ and I’d thought its taste had found me, but how could I have ever known the truth of it before you?”
Liar.
Or worse if he’d been telling some sort of twisted truth, and then each time he ticked off a conquest…
The newly coronated Earth Queen’s hands had fallen to her belly—still steadily swelling from the seed Zeus had planted there the night before. Upon realizing that this was the only part of him she would ever get to keep, she had held tightly to that child.
Too tightly. When Zeus had tried to take Kore, clinging had moldered into constraint.
Demeter shut her eyes, refusing to let the tears slide down her cheeks. It was time to let go. She had to. She simply didn’t know how.
She prayed to Gaia that, by teaching her daughter how to tap into her greatest strengths and powers, she might teach herself the same thing. Zeus’ hold was a thing of inexorable might. He was the King of the Gods, after all, and she had never figured out how to fully break free of him. His unceasing attempts to reel her back in never helped.
The safeguarding of Kore wasn’t the only reason she had created the Protected Grove.
UP NEXT: Kore picks flowers with her mother and friends. On the Plains of Nysa. Under the wide, sunny sky. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BLOOM.
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