🌾 Fingertip Stroking
6LS2 - Demeter, Earth Mother, receives yet another marriage proposal for her daughter
Last time on 6 LITTLE SEEDS:
—Mature Content Warnings for this series
—EROS DIPHUES (Love of Two Forms)
Eros, Love Primordial, tires of toying with little gods and mortals when he doesn’t know the joys of bodily pleasure himself. Upon incarnating—now with wings!—he is gifted a cherub-sized bow and arrows from his father, the God of War. The first heart Eros shoots is that of Persephone, Bringer of Blossomtime. The arrow’s name? Fated Love. The arrow’s target?
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.”
792 years later…
DEMETER, EARTH MOTHER, MISTRESS OF BOUNTY
✨🌾✨
Her gaze hardened at the young god standing so boldly before her.
Apollo didn’t notice. Edging closer, he crooned, “Majestic Lady, I know what the oracle foretold at your daughter’s birth as well as you do.” His arms spread wide. As he prepared to recite, his upturned palms glowed with golden light. His voice deepened like a booming echo in a canyon around the sinister words Demeter worked each day to banish from her mind. “‘And she to rest her silver’d head, where oath-making stream is fed. Where souls—’”
“Enough.” Earth Mother snapped her face away from the God of Light, Music, Poetry and—yes—Prophesy. Apollo’s theatrics had never impressed her.
Neither did his unabashed nakedness, and at a formal interview with a First-Generation Olympian, no less. It was to be expected. Apollo’s mother could feign modesty all she liked, and his father could call himself the Master of Order, boasting restraint, dignity, wisdom. Hah. That windbag brute had needed to devour the Goddess of Wisdom to obtain a shred of that quality, and he only displayed restraint and dignity when he was on display.
Offspring always revealed the truth of the inner workings. As such, Apollo’s twin sister ran wild and unchaperoned, while this golden godling ran wild and…
Nude.
Demeter’s lips pursed as she speared her gaze into the depths of the nearby fig grove.
Apollo slipped into her line of sight and gave his corona a subtle pulse to recapture her attention. “Bountiful One, you know of what the prophesy speaks. ‘Oath-making stream’—well, that’s obviously the Underworld’s River Styx. And ‘silver’d head’? An immortal’s locks do not turn—”
“No. They do not. I simply must find Kore a husband she will go to enthusiastically. If she is a willing bride, the prophesy will be broken.”
“Precisely my point. Dear Lady, she must be sheltered in the light, lest some villainous deed render her ravished, mortal, and extinct.”
Demeter flinched at such a calloused delivery of those words.
Little Lordling Light didn’t notice that either, just straightened back up into his prognosticator’s attitude. “‘Sky shall turn his head aside, as violent-made the maid ‘comes bride. Chained and—’”
“STOP reciting that.” Shockwaves quaked around Demeter’s feet, silencing Apollo as well as every living thing in the vicinity. The sunlight woven into the girdled layers of her silky garments threatened to shoot sparks. Her conical headdress grew in height until she towered over him. Her veil billowed in the gust of her ire. “Just because you slew the Great Python and usurped the oracle at Delphoi—”
“Great Lady, I usurped nothing. I See at my father’s will. I am his prophet, and as such—”
“Oh, yes. You certainly are that.” Never a complimentary thing, in Demeter’s opinion.
Light flared inside Apollo’s nostrils as he huffed out his affront. “That scaly, fiendish monster harried my mother all through her pregnancy and was a menace to all who draw mortal breath. It needed to be put down, and a proper oracle installed.”
“Proper.” Demeter sniffed. “Indeed. My daughter’s birth prophesy is more ancient than you are. Just because you now possess it, that doesn’t mean it needs to be flung as far and as whimsically as you fling your arrows, your pretty golden beams, and everything else you inherited from your father.”
Apollo’s eyes slammed closed and he drew in a swift breath. He pushed it out his mouth in a loud, measured stream until he could look once more upon her with composure. A surprise, for he had always seemed reactive and rash—another inheritance from Zeus On High. “Glorious Queen of the Earth,” Apollo said in a voice woven from honey, sunbeams, and zeal, “only when dark things are brought into the light may they be addressed and healed—and this prophesy is dark, let me assure you.”
“Callow child, you have been installed at Delphoi for—what? A few centuries now, and you think to instruct me on this matter? Do you think I am unaware? For nine-hundred-and-seventy-six years, those words have occupied my every thought. They sway my every decision.”
After Kore’s birth, Demeter had secretly beseeched a new prophesy from Astraios in the hopes that the Master of Stars and Astrology could confirm that the girl’s ill-fated omens had been misread. Or perhaps that the Fates could somehow be swayed into spinning another texture into Kore’s life thread.
Instead, the astrologer had delivered worse news.
Well, the travesty of Astraios’ prophesy had come to pass just before Kore’s second Century Feast, so Demeter refused to stand idle. She had to find an ecstatic marriage for her daughter. Immediately! Only the power of Fated Love could hope to combat such a ghastly destiny. Chained and splayed upon his wall, dragged to unrecovered—
No. It will not come to pass. It cannot.
But Earth Mother was running out of time. She could feel it. Kore was ready to mate. She had been for centuries. A goddess of their lineage should always mate and procreate, bestowing bounteous blessings in every fashion possible. Kore was Demeter’s only child, descended from the Queen of the Earth, the Queen of Titans, and from Gaia, Primordial Earth Her Very Self, so she bore great responsibility in the types of offspring she created.
And oh, the offspring that girl would bear! The light she would bring to all the Cosmos amidst the making of them! Kore was an irrepressible vortex of creation. She was also loveliness incarnate, a ripe, luscious treasure.
Such a dangerous commodity for one so sweet and impressionable.
Her very scent wafted waves of, “Take me, kiss me, deflower me, empower me!” It grew stronger with every day. Therefore, so did Demeter’s protective warding around their grove, for the girl knew nothing of gods and their lust. Their lies. Daily, they clamored closer, drawn in like bees to clover. Demeter could lecture and warn Kore all day and all night for eternity, but the child could never know.
Not until it was too late.
Apollo had his sire’s perfect, shiny smile and his perfect, glowing pectorals. He’d also inherited Zeus’ gilded tongue, his bed-hopping reputation, and that responsibility-shirking, heavy-fisted arrogance that drove Demeter into a fury every time they spoke.
But she was running out of options as quickly as she was running out of time. That’s why she had made herself take this audience, why she had sworn to give the boy a chance instead of judging him by his lineage. Well, now face-to-face with him, she feared that he was little more than a spark off the old bolt.
As Earth Mother’s countenance darkened and loomed over Apollo, he cringed and rushed forward. Palm to heart, he knelt before her and dared to take her hand. “Magnificent Lady, Gift-Giver Supreme, Light-Bearer Divine, let me ease your burdened mind and troubled heart. Bind your precious Kore to me. I can protect her. Your daughter need not make the Eternal Descent. I implore you, let me make her mine and I shall adore her for all time.”
As inviting currents flowed from his hands into hers, Demeter snatched her fingers away. “I will arrange a meeting between you. Should your interest prove amenable to her, I shall consider your offer.”
“You will not regret it. Long have I heard tell of your daughter’s laughter and wit, her spry grace, her unparalleled beauty that is said to even rival the Goddess of Love and—”
“Yes, yes. Kore is a dove amongst ducks, and a considerable step up from all your nymphs and mortal princesses. I know very well that Hera laughed in your face when you expressed interest in her daughters, and that Eris threw more than laughter in your face.”
Apollo's cheeks flashed as crimson as the blood-nectar that had been splashed there when he had once flirted with the Goddess of Discord.
“Save all your honeyed words and your fingertip stroking, APOLLON.” Such a sharp invocation of his formal name made him flinch and brought his gaze snapping up to meet hers. Irritation flashed white through his eyes before the disgruntlement struck: no, his renowned charms had not won her over. Demeter bared her teeth. “Kore is a powerful goddess in her own right, the granddaughter of Titans, descended of Gaia. She is your equal, and in many ways, your better. Never forget that.”
This time, the boy's cheeks glowed with a ruddy smolder. He rose up with a lofty chin and barbed glare. “I, too, am of Gaia’s line, Lady, son of the King On High. And I am not merely the grandchild of Titans. My mother is one. Just because you all shunned her—”
“We are not here to discuss your mother’s worth, but yours. Prove it, and I shall grant you union with my daughter for her protection. But she will never be ‘yours,’ a possession to flaunt and dominate, while you creep about, stabbing your woody shaft at anything that rustles in the shrubs. True, Kore is the ray of dancing sunlight that inspires the trees to flower and the babes to open their eyes. But should you try to yoke her, I swear to Nemesis, I vow upon the Styx, you will wish you had instead bound yourself to the flaming wheel of Tartaros.”
Apollo buried his glower in a deep bow. “Great Lady, I would never be so foolish as to provoke your wrath.”
Demeter’s eyes flashed like a spark upon parched wheat as she smirked. “I wasn’t referring to mine.”
Next Time on 6 LITTLE SEEDS:
We meet the Bringer of Blossomtime in THE ACT OF BATHING
This novel is a work in progress. As such, sometimes I invite you behind the scenes into some of the bugs I’m still trying to work out. This prophesy Apollo keeps quoting is one of them:
For your constantly updated bookmarking ease:
The entire playlist of songs that I put on broken-record mode for inspiration while working on this series:
—On YouTube
—On Spotify
© 2015 Hartebeast