🌸 The Most Beautiful Bloom
L&W20 - Kore picks some flowers. Yes. On the plains under the wide, sunny sky.
Previously on 6 LITTLE SEEDS:
“The Okeanids are holding a garland-making party on the day of half-moon,” Demeter said. “It’s been an age since we attended an event in such an exposed locale.”
“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. 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.
“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…
From: EYE TO EYE
—Start at the beginning
—Mature Content Warnings for this series
—Trying to remember who everybody is? Here’s the Cast of Characters.
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.”
KORE, BRINGER OF BLOSSOMTIME
✨🌸✨
It was so good to be out in the unfiltered sun, in the sweeping winds beneath the open sky. Her mother was right. It had been ages since they had visited such exposed locales. Kore hadn’t realized just how long. Hand-in-hand, mother and daughter set out for the Plains of Nysa as Helios’ blazing chariot crested the horizon.
They left dear, stooped Kalligenia to oversee the grove, and instead collected the triplets who served as handmaidens on all their long voyages. Thelxiope, Molpe, and Aglaophonos were the daughters of a river god and one of the nine Muses—the Muse of Music, Song and Dance—so holidays with them never lacked for amusement. They were a fount of wit, verse, and playfulness, bantering by day and lullabying the goddesses to sleep at night.
Headed east, the lively party linked arms and sang in honor of the Sun God’s dawning dance with rosy-cheeked Eos. The warming rays intensified by the minute, banishing the morning fog and casting golden light upon the whole venture.
Kore could feel it in the corresponding glow of her ichor. This trip would change everything.
Rather than flying in Demeter’s chariot pulled by her pair of winged drakons, they enjoyed the long walk, traversing hill, valley, mountain, and field. Although neither mother nor daughter uttered a word about the King on High or his schemes and legacies, they exchanged many a significant glance over the energy shifts of each topographical feature.
Now that she was paying attention, Kore could indeed sense it, taste it, even smell it in the places that were most often struck by her father’s lightning, the spots where its echo still hummed beneath her feet, the pressure shifts in the air and the varying cloud formations.
Her hair began to respond, prickling up like excited vipers, so she whisked it into a tidy coiffure and covered it with a veil that matched her ground-trailing chiton.
Demeter squashed her smile. “Very pretty,” she said, pausing to tuck in a derelict tress that kept sneaking out into the sunlight. “And so very appropriate for your growing maturity.”
Kore painted a blush across her cheeks and aura, turning her eyes ever-so-demurely downward. “Isn’t it, though?”
Earth Mother winked and popped a fingertip onto the girl’s nose. Then she led them onward to revel in the sights and scents of oak, cypress and olive, hyacinth, walnut, almond, juniper. With every step nearer the seacoast, the weight of salty moisture in the air grew. It wasn’t quite the season for fruit in many areas, but in the presence of two earth goddesses, no tree could resist plumping its branches with the most delectable delights. They breakfasted their way across the lands, plucking off nuts and a myriad sweet treats until they reached Poseidon’s Sea and could stuff in no more.
There they paused for a quick splash to cool themselves. “I know we don’t have time now,” Kore said with her eyes fixed on the watery horizon, “but do you think we could visit Uncle on the way home?”
Demeter glanced out across the sea and scowled. “I—perhaps. He’s got a wife now so he may be very busy, but…we shall have to see.”
Kore nodded, trying not to hunch and pout. In all her centuries, she still had never gotten to see a shark, an octopus, a hippocampus or dolphin, much less a sea monster or whale. She longed to see Uncle Poseidon’s coral palace and dive for pearls. His realm sounded so magical in all the bedtime tales, but the sea had always been as forbidden a place as open plains, mountaintops, caves, lusty gods’ temples, and any forest but her mother’s grove.
“You know what?” Demeter said, curling a lock of Kore’s wet hair around her finger. “On the way home, let us have supper with your uncle and his new family so you may finally meet them. While we’re there, we should arrange to have an extended visit so he can give us an official tour of his realm.”
The girl’s breast swelled and her eyes flooded. “Truly?” she choked out.
Demeter nodded. “It’s been a very long time since I visited my favorite brother, and he must be well-settled in his palace by now. It’s long past time we saw all these wonders I’ve only ever gotten to tell you about.”
Unable to squeeze words through her throat, Kore beamed and nodded her vigorous enthusiasm.
It must have been contagious, for Demeter suddenly cast off her veil and drew the hem of her gown up from her feet. “Catch me if you can, young ones,” she taunted, words unheard in centuries. Not since their days of hop-skipping boulders across raging rivers when Kore was first learning to spring.
The Queen of the Earth took a running leap out over the sparkling water. She landed on the nearest island.
Kore gasped and burst into applause, along with the handmaidens. Her stately garments vanished. Her short chiton appeared as her hair blew free. “I’ll beat you all!” she challenged, then chased her mother from island to island with the triplets groaning, laughing, and lagging behind. The two goddesses reached land well before the nymphs and waited for them, arms draped around each other’s waists, Demeter’s ear on Kore’s head as they drank in the beauty of the coast.
They played hide and seek across the wheat and barley fields, they played tag as they skirted several deserts, and finally settled back into a stroll as the landscape changed once more.
“Oh, Mama, look!” Kore darted to the first coconut trees she spied.
“Yes, honeysuckle, your favorite.” Demeter followed more slowly as the girls shimmied up the trees to pick new treats. Kore chose two. Once descended, she grew three of her fingernails into long, piercing points. After stabbing them into the eyes of the nut, she turned it upside down until she had drunk every sweet drop from within. The triplets also brought their nuts for piercing and hunkered down on a fallen tree trunk to drink and sing toasts to the glorious coconut. Kore speared one for her mother and brought it to her. Once finished guzzling, they all took aim at the sharp ridge of a rock. The coconuts flew and cracked open so they could scoop out the flesh.
Demeter’s throw produced two perfectly halved pieces, which set her to gloating and set the girls to sticking out their tongues as they skipped south along the coastline. They had left Poseidon’s Sea behind and now followed a deep inlet of the River Okeanos, that great body of water that embraced the circumference of the earth. The familiar sights of oak, cypress, and olive were replaced by teak, laurel, black plum, fig. The forested mountains popped up from shrubby grasslands, home to great cats, strange bison, gazelles, and elephants.
The air was thick with overlapping birdsongs that competed against the Daughters of Music to produce the most captivating tunes. The birds gracefully admitted defeat and rewarded their nymphal vanquishers with sprigs of the finest tree blossoms. With every inhalation, the scents of cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, and cardamom produced euphoria Kore hadn’t experienced in centuries. She drank it in and exhaled rapture.
As evening descended, they made a fire on the beach and fished for their supper. Demeter also whisked restorative helpings of divine nectar and ambrosia through the aither for the two goddesses. As always, the triplets begged for a helping, and as always, Demeter came up with a myriad creative punishments, should they ask her again. Which, of course, they did. Tonight’s transformational threats included gadflies, spotted geckos, and blue-gilled mushrooms. (Not that anybody ever got transformed.)
(Well, not for long.)
The songs, dances, and adventurous tales went later into the night than usual. Kore shared another glance with her mother as they watched the star nymphs whirl overhead. She couldn’t feel their vibrations the way she could feel the old lightning in the ground. Neither could she sense the nuances of the winds like she could feel the distinctive resonance of each type of stone, soil, sand, and vegetation.
She could, however, discern the distinctive scents of death that permeated every living realm, so she cursed Ares and his damned, alluring, irresistible, infernal song for awakening her to it. Suddenly, all she could think about was that grinning skull motif on his wall and how glorious he had looked, standing next to his gruesome altar. How glorious he would have looked laid out upon it beneath her. How glorious his ceiling would have looked from her back, if only...
Where the salt chokes off every sliding chunk of ice…
You are there.
And that’s where she needed to leave him.
After Demeter stomped the fire and led them all to a cave that overlooked the Okeanos, Kore curled up with her head on the bountiful swell of her mother’s breast with her feet tangled amongst those of her handmaidens. Closing her eyes, she let the song of crashing waves lull her as she forced herself to meditate upon the spiraling rainbow hues of life sparking from seed. Tomorrow would be full of flowers and sunlight. There would be no room for armored gods with dark eyes and intoxicating voices, so she breathed methodically until reverie finally claimed her.
Unfortunately, Morpheos plagued her with dreams of that confounded, haunting voice, but this time he was not singing. He was not humming. He was murmuring. “My Kore,” he called, over and over as he gazed up at her from the unfathomable depths of a sacred black pool.
When she felt herself tumbling into it, free-falling with no strong, safe arms to catch her, she awoke with a gasp. Her mother was also awake, sitting upright and watching her in the pre-dawn glow. All the lightheartedness had vanished from Demeter’s eyes. “What were you dreaming about?” she asked.
Kore hid her face in an over-exaggerated yawn and a stretch. “I-I’m not sure. Why? Was I speaking?”
“No. Just…tossing. Turning.” Earth Mother’s eyes narrowed. “Moaning.”
Kore’s heart raced. “Moaning? Wh-what kind of moaning?”
“That’s what I wanted to know.”
“Oh! Well…” The girl’s laughter shot out, piercing and nervous. Thankfully, it woke the handmaidens, which allowed her to brush off the subject. “I don’t really remember.”
Demeter’s head lifted and then fell. She set the triplets to rolling the blankets back up so she could sweep them off into the aither. After a refreshing bath and a breakfast of more coconut, they set off again. This time, the glances that mother and daughter exchanged spoke of other things besides clandestine plotting against Fathers On High—things Kore wished they could both forget.
Other things she didn’t ever wish to forget but needed to.
It was why she had decided not to tattoo anything upon her skin for today’s momentous occasion. Demeter had chosen sunbeams and curling, burbling rivers—a common sight as Earth Mother, Mistress of Grains set her mind toward the nurturing elements necessary to cultivate another healthy harvest season.
But try as she might, Kore hadn’t been able to decide what she wanted. She finally determined that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. A blank canvas then. A fresh start. It was long past time for one of those.
At long last, Mount Nysa came into view, which broke the gloom that even Helios’ ascent hadn’t been able to dissipate.
Kore had always thrilled to see that familiar peak, for it meant they'd nearly reached the plains. But today, something thrummed outward from the base of the mountain. The wave shot up through her feet and into her spine so hard it jerked her around, orienting her toward Mount Nysa like iron to lodestone.
The place looked different from the last time she’d seen it. It was darker. Not quite ominous. A strange cover of vines had overtaken the slopes. Ivy and some other twining plant, heavy with clumps of hanging fruit. Each tiny globule was as dark as night. Nothing else grew there. The mountain itself seemed to be listing a bit toward the west.
“Mama?”
Demeter’s footsteps halted when she realized that Kore had stopped to stare with her handmaidens grouped behind her. Silently, Earth Mother came to stand beside her daughter.
“Does…does someone live there now?” Kore asked.
“So it would appear,” Demeter grumbled. “I was wondering where your father hid his newest bratling.”
Kore winced at the term her mother had twisted. No doubt it came from the nickname Aunt Hera had bestowed upon all of Zeus’ illegitimate children. The Bastardlings. Kore technically wasn’t one of them, since she had been born before the King and Queen of Heaven had wed, but Aunt Hera had always held her at arms’ length, in spite of the girl’s attempts to cultivate affection.
“What a fiasco,” Demeter said. “A perfectly good royal priestess blasted to ash because the Thunderer can’t help threatening your aunt with replacement every time he thinks he’s spawned a wonder-child. And off a mortal this time. One of those demigoddesses.” Earth Mother’s lips smashed up in disgust, speaking more clearly about that too-familiar subject than her words ever could. “Even before the child was born, Flighty Almighty was already talking about deifying it the moment it had fully matured. What was he thinking? Right at the end of the pregnancy, Hera duped that poor idiot demigoddess into making the King of the Gods swear that he would reveal himself in all his thunderous glory.”
Kore gasped.
Demeter sniffed off a nod. “He had to salvage the child’s heart from the ash pile and sew it into his own—”
The handmaidens giggled and blushed.
“His own what?” Kore said.
Earth Mother squinched her face into the mimicry of a closed-lipped smile, then sneered, “His thigh. He carried the babe to term and gave birth to the thing himself. Fashions himself quite the prolific Sky Mother. First he squirts Athene out of his head, and now this one. I’m sure he would consider females redundant by now, but then who would he have to raise his next bratlings? He certainly can’t manage to be a good father to the children he already has.”
Kore kept her lips sealed tightly, for she’d heard this complaint about Zeus more times that she could count—and not only from her mother. It wasn’t false. It wasn’t even unfair. She had long ago given up the hope of seeing Zeus at her Century Feasts, much less her Annuals. (Well, she had officially given up. She still couldn’t help keeping one eye peeled for his glorious chariot.)
Demeter snarled. “This newest one is an unholy little terror. Wild hair, wild eyes. Ugh, horns spouting from his head.”
Kore’s eyes snapped onto her mother. “Horns?” Now that sounded fascinating. A baby godling with tiny horns? Something about that tugged at her heart—tugged her toward the mountain.
But Demeter called him, “Ghastly. I saw the creature when your father paraded him around Mount Olympos before sending him off to be reared by his dead mother’s family. Hera did them all in, too. Placed an order for the Furies to come up and drive them mad. Not like it would have taken much to do the same to that child. Ferocious, beastly little thing. At least the Thunderer’s true nature is finally beginning to reveal itself in the offspring he creates. He can’t hide what he is behind that shiny facade forever.”
Kore blinked hard, for she couldn’t help wondering what she had inherited of the Thunderer’s true nature. She also wondered how her mother would react to it once she started…
Playing with it.
Upon noticing the girl’s huge eyes, Demeter winced, then reached out a hand. “Forgive me, my darling. It’s wrong of me to put you in the middle like that. He simply infuriates me every time he spawns a new child when he can’t be bothered to attend your celebrations or remember to send so much as a gift—Hera administrates that—much less be a loving father to you.”
Kore nodded. If Zeus’ attention couldn’t even be held by a new son…
The boy hadn’t reached his first Annual Feast and already he’d been sent away. The King of the Gods always professed that he had his illegitimate children fostered in far-off lands because Queen Hera’s wrath burned too viciously. But Zeus didn't involve himself with his legitimate children any more than the illegitimate, so she couldn’t help wondering how much was protectiveness and how much was that he simply couldn’t be bothered.
The verdant mountainside gave another pulse, drawing Kore’s attention back to it. Now that she knew what it was, she could sense the deep familiarity in that presence. It was powerful and jagged. Wild, as her mother had said. Judging by how rampantly the vegetation had proliferated—it must have exploded overnight upon the boy’s arrival—she was pretty sure she knew what kind of demigod he was.
A demigod with thunder in his veins and an earth god’s touch.
She’d never met an earth god before.
Edging a few steps toward the mountain, she had to force her voice to remain steady amidst the sudden rush of exhilaration. “Can we go meet him? My…my baby brother.”
Demeter’s loud inhalation preceded a pat on the shoulder and a firm squeeze to draw the girl away. “We don’t have time for that today. Let’s just focus on meeting one new family member at a time, shall we? We’ll visit your uncle on the way home.”
Kore gulped down her disappointment. Compressing her lips, she nodded and allowed herself to be drawn toward the grasslands that stretched out beneath the foothills. She couldn’t help flashing one more glance over her shoulder at all those vines. Her yearning to meet her brother suddenly ran a thousand times more deeply than her desire to see a sea monster or race sharks with her cousins.
But then she caught sight of the multihued forms prancing across the plain. She gasped and cried out. “Oh, Mama! Oh, there they are!”
Demeter beamed and released her. “Go, my darling. Go play with your friends. It’s been too long.”
And, oh, it had been! Leaving her mother and handmaidens behind to arrange the blankets in the shade, Kore raced toward the other nymphs, squealing and calling their names. The moment they caught sight of her, they burst into a chorus of screeches and arm-waving.
The plentiful daughters of Okeanos, that Titanic lord of the earth-encircling river, were some of Kore’s oldest playmates. Only Athene and Artemis were dearer to her heart. She had so wished her half-sisters would join this excursion, but they had no interest in celebrating "such outdated, romantic twaddle." That’s what they called this festival.
Kore had been yearning for three hundred years to return to the Okeanids’ annual garland making party in this far-flung land with its exotic blooms and intoxicating scents. This was an extra-special occasion, for the Divine Carpet only blossomed once every twelve years.
This had once been a celebrated event when the entire procession of gods and goddesses had made a journey to survey all the lands. In joy and welcome, a bluish-purple carpet had spread out before them. But after the Titanomachy, only a select few ever made this trip anymore. Demeter was the only Olympian who never missed it.
Kore determined to never miss one again.
When she reached her friends, they crashed upon her like surf upon shore, hugging, jumping, screaming, bawling for joy. Kore wept, too, and kissed each one over and over, holding tightly as though she would never see them again.
Eventually, they swept her into the old dances and songs, and it seemed like no time had passed since they had last frolicked together. As always when the Bringer of Blossomtime was elated, the flowers proliferated. A kaleidoscope of other hues popped up amidst the purple carpet, and the scents grew heady.
But something had changed. Now she could sense the energy humming within the circle of their joined hands. It tingled and zinged in her footsteps and in every breath. The air was not merely pungent with spices and flower nectar here. This whole place was charged. No doubt it always had been, but today she noticed it.
I beg you not to play with whatever you discover. Not yet.
Not here.
Oh, but it was so potent. She wanted to rub her hands together, scuff her feet on the ground, draw it into her, and zap. It was inside her already. She wanted more. The energy of the dances and her friends’ glorious smiles only intensified it. The clouds overhead coalesced into one dense, puffy mass. They were perfectly white, glowing around the edges like when the sun shone behind them, yet the view of Helios’ chariot was completely unobstructed as he blazed up toward the zenith of the sky.
Exposed.
Yes. She had never been more keenly aware of being out there beneath her father’s domain before.
Behind her, Demeter strolled the rise of plain, chatting with the triplets, but Kore could feel her mother’s attention riveted onto her, so she waved and blew a kiss. Demeter caught it and tucked it against her bosom. Yet the playfulness had not returned to Earth Mother’s eyes. That sharp, too-familiar caginess had taken its place.
No doubt Demeter could feel Zeus’ aura as well.
To set her mother’s mind at ease, Kore plucked the most beautiful bloom from the Divine Carpet she could find and skipped across the field to present it. Demeter had donned her formal vestments once more, truly the Queen of the Earth in all her overflowing glory. The girl brushed back her mother’s veil and shining tresses to tuck the flower behind her ear. The violet-blue petals stood out against all those golden, corn-silk tones.
Demeter folded the girl in her embrace and kissed her crown. “Thank you, my darling.”
“I just wanted to see you smile, Mama.”
“Then all you have to do is show me your smile, my blossom, my heart.”
The girl answered with a beam that matched Helios’ rays. When a flicker of mirrored joy came into Demeter’s smile, Kore popped up to kiss her cheek, hoping to extend this moment of joy for as long as possible. “Today I’ll make the most magnificent flower corona and garlands for the Queen of the Earth.”
“That would be lovely, my princess.”
The girl’s eyes swept over the triplets. “Help me find the best blooms among the carpet?”
They scrambled up, eyes alight and tongues a-flutter. As the girls scampered away, Demeter called, “Sweetheart, don’t stray too far. I sense a storm coming.”
Kore glanced at the azure sky, strewn with only the puffiest clouds. When they had set out, the expanse above Olympos had been clear and they had experienced nothing but the fairest weather for their whole journey, so she waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t worry, Mama. Father seems happy today.”
The comment only darkened Demeter’s expression. Kore thought she heard her mother mutter something about that “never being a good sign.” Rolling her eyes, she skipped off in search of blossoms. This day was too beautiful and the earth was too warm for such doomy gloom. Beneath her feet, it was as if every blade of grass and Earth Her Very Self were calling to her.
Come, run, frolic!
Seek and find.
Come…
So she did.
Above and Below
Above and Below
Bone, Bone
Dry and alone…
UP NEXT:
TEN HOURS AGO - They’re throwing a triumphant, celebratory debauch in the Underworld. They might say it’s just because they want to blow off steam, but rest assured. They have their reasons.
Curious to start at the first chapter now?
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