#Retelling

[kdpartworks]

The Three Brothers and the Division of the Realms

After the battle, the three brothers decide how to split their domains: Zeus gets the skies (and the role of King of the Gods), Poseidon gets the seas, the land, and horses (sorry, I know that's not quite accurate, but it cracked me up), and Hades gets the Underworld.

Just know that I have no idea if I'll ever draw the Titanomachy — I'd love to, who knows — but in my headcanon, Zeus saves Poseidon first because he initially mistakes him for a woman. And honestly, I should draw it just for that scene.

[laurasimonsdaughter]

Red drops fell onto the frozen earth. Dripping off the knuckles of Demeter’s shaking fist, the pomegranate crushed between her fingers.

"You tricked her." Her voice was barely a breath, but it was in every howling gale sobbing in the barren trees.

Hades, lovesick, pained yet unrepentant, met her eyes without a word.

"So be it." The parched ground groaned under Demeter's feet, but she did not hear it, her eyes fixed on Hades' stoic face. "You took my child from me, then take all to keep her company. I shall not nurture earth she does not walk upon."

For the first time, Hades started back, but Demeter was turneding away from him already, casting her sunken eyes to the heavens.

"I will be deaf to their pleas, like you were to mine!" her voice screeched, and breaking, shuddered on: "And there won’t be a parent among them, even as they curse my name, who can swear they would not have done the same..."

Silence fell. And the wilting earth wept. Until a voice came from the dark like a song and Hermes, swift-footed, emerged from the mouth of Hades.

"Six seeds, dear uncle, sweet aunt of mine. Only six out of a whole fruit..."

His smile was winning, but his cunning eyes were wide. As wide as the as the vast fields, ploughed to breaking in human desperation, that stretched lifeless past every horizon.

"Six seeds...six months..." He looked from the lord of the dead to the mistress of the harvest. "Six months above, with her loving mother, six months below, with her faithful husband."

The very breeze held its breath as hope and fury mingled in Demeter's eyes and Hermes bowed, his knuckles pale around his winged staff.

Hades stood, silent, and then quickly stepped, allowing Hermes to pass. And behind him, led up the endless steps of Hades, came Persephone. Dressed in rayments as fine and dark as the night.

"Mother!"

It was a commonplace cry. Cried by every fledgling tumbled from the nest, every cub turned around in the woods, every child lost in the dark. But the whole world breathed as Demeter answered.

Hades averted his eyes, Hermes grinned at the sky, and holding her daughter once more, tears finally welled in Demeter's frozen eyes. Raining down upon the earth, where grass began sprouting between Persephone's feet.

[insomniac-dot-ink]

Demeter's Walking Days

Demeter sits in the ruins of herself, legs buckled, head bent low as if for executioner's blade. The earth gapes and it is a wound that should have bled. The crack in the soft soil should have wept ash and billowed smog, choking rivers and blotting out sun. Hecate, who stands between heaven and earth and does not balk, points. She need not. Her daughter’s last cry splinters through Demeter’s head, mind’s eye summoning all.

The thunder crack of hooves and eyes widening in fear. The other daughters bolting, skinny legs flashing and soles of their feet licking the earth. Flowers scattered. Golden tuft of hair disappearing beneath. Daylight bleaching over emptied fields and ravished earth.

Demeter wraps her arms around her belly and lets out a low braying moan. A breeze rustles the tall grasses, and the sun warms her cheeks. “Why?” she rasps. Unfairness is an eating thing, drilling down, down, down into the soft meat of the body.

“Why?” Tears stain Demeter’s cheeks and the crack in the earth remains dull and quiet. Salt wets her lips and the feelings stretch into an unbroken ocean. Oh, but she knew why. She could hear his voice before she even stepped foot into the court of the gods. Before she went to beg.

Because she was beautiful, her brother says, echoing forward and back, because she was there.

Demeter swallows her heart hand over fist, swallowing and swallowing. She stands.

-------------------

Before Demeter walks the earth under barren days. Before the rivers splinter white. Before the soil hardens, unsoft enough for even corpses–why should they get to bury their sons and daughters when she would not? She makes her petition.

“You know our brother,” Zeus addresses the air above her head and all who could listen, “a King in his own right and the only one of our thrones without a bride.” Zeus gives a wry little smile that lights the clouds. Deep and sonorous, his chuckle shakes through her ankle bones. “He’s complained enough, don’t you think? He has to be alone with his gruesome little kingdom while the rest of us fritter about.”

Demeter holds herself perfectly still and the court drones around her. “I did not know.”

“No, no, it was I who promised her,” the father says, despite how little that word meant. “We are lucky to have created such a beautiful daughter.”

“I am her mother.”–how little that word meant as well–“She is only a child.”

He rubs his whiskered face with one hand. “Is this not how girls become women?”

Demeter swallows. “My daughter, she will wither. No sunlight, no fields, no love. You, all of you, you know her. She’ll waste into a shadow of herself.” Silence spread like infection. Demeter’s voice rose, frantic. “She’s not eaten yet, I’m sure! Please, let me go to her, see her, kiss her tender cheek and stroke her hair–”

“You know as well as I there are far worse husbands than rich and patient Hades,” Zeus rumbles through his mighty chest. “Dear heart, you must have known you couldn’t hold onto her forever. You’re wiser than that.”

Demeter clenches her jaw and the Goddess of marriage, who hates her so, speaks. 

“She’ll make a fine bride.” Hera’s voice is smooth and melodic. “And will learn to make her bed where she finds it.”

Demeter’s gaze cuts across the throne room. “How do you know?”

Hera scoffs. “Don’t be naive.”

Demeter looks between their divine figures. The flame in her belly burns low, growing with every breath. Golden head dipped into the dark. Scattered flowers. Voice swallowed. Demeter’s long hair falls around her face. “I can’t allow it.”

“What does that mean?” the Messenger asks, not unkindly.

“You have misplaced your loyalties,” Zeus says, still laughing, tall above the clouds.

“You’ve misplaced your sense of ownership,” Hera tuts. “How many go to Hades willingly?”

Demeter snarls for the first time. “Not my daughter.”

Hera, cruelly, hating them all, laughs. Her lips curl back. “Yes. Her.”

“Hush! This is Hades. Hades!” Zeus raises his voice. “She’ll be taken care of.”

Demeter sets her jaw. “She was crying out for me.”

“Dear heart, I understand you must be feeling lonely now . . .”

The rushing in her ears replaces all murmurs of court. Demeter focuses on Zeus and Zeus alone. He, who loves the mortals more. “If you do this, if you won’t give her back,” Demeter gnashes her teeth, “I will take what you care about in turn.”

They protest. They call out her name. They offer her comforts and consolations and promises. The drumbeat in her ears drowns out all sound. Demeter puts down her sickle.

---------------

The nymph's howl in one voice, their rivers menaced to a standstill and trees unclothed piece by piece. The crunch of leaves as the crunch of bone under Demeter’s step. Helios grows dim. He, who watched fair Persephone gathering flowers and witnessed the silent one pilfer her away, did nothing. And he knew, even more so, Demeter carries a double-headed axe.

Snow falls like shooting stars bent for dying and the clouds transform the land into themselves, harvest buried and buried and buried again. Sunken eyes and wizened bodies. Hands dyed blue and given to tremors.

At first, they try to appease their hollow bellies. Wine into the fire. Slaves at the altar. Blood and beast and prayer. Demeter is not listening. Not to the people, crying out, and nymphs sobbing at the roots of their trees.

One by one, by hearth and forge and stone, they ask her to lift the curse. Could she not hear them in her own fields? It was not they that stole the girl. Did she not have her own divine purpose? And had she not known? Her daughter was beautiful after all, and she was there.

Hermes comes on lighted step, and begs her last of all.

“She’s already gone. Let her go,” he says, not unkindly.

“I did not know,” Demeter answers.

“You misuse your purpose.”

“If my daughter must live in lands of gloom and death, then so must all.”

“Let her go,” the people cry. “Where does this end?”

“I will freeze the world over,” answers Demeter. Hermes leaves to find a different, more listening ear.

---------------

Demeter strokes her tender face and kisses her lovely cheeks. She is taller, heavier, more womanly. Persephone weeps in her mother’s arms. She hadn’t meant to eat. She clings to her mother’s skirts. She hadn’t meant for any of it.

“I know, I know.” Demeter rubs her daughter’s back and bursts with it—alive and breathing, this girl of hers.

“I’m sorry mother.”

“It was not you.”

Persephone wipes her damp cheeks. “You sent so many down to us . . .”

Demeter sets her jaw. “It was not you.”

After Demeter carries her daughter home and sets the sun to rights. After she beds down the frost and unbreaks the rivers, teaches buds to push and birds to roost home, they do not speak of the six seeds. The half a year of hunger—that damnation of Persephone. The girl and the mother embrace as if not but a day has passed instead of the invention of ugly hurting mourning.

“Did he honor you?” Demeter deigns to ask.

She buries her face in her arms. “He will make a godly husband.”

“Does he treat you well?”

“There are worse ones. Far worse.”

“Did you ask to return to me?”

Persephone rises and blinks the tears from her eyes. “Of course. Of course, mother. I would not stay. I,” she swallows, “I love you so.”

“And he?” Demeter asks, petting her hair. Persephone opens and closes her mouth as if drowning. “Could you love him?”

Persephone wipes her cheeks with the meat of her palm. The question collapses around itself. Persephone cannot answer and year after year, she never can, and Demeter forgoes herself for the robes of despair.

---------------

How many times? How many lives lived? In Demeter’s walking days, she goes to the mouth of a cave. Black birds peck at the ground, eyes like liquid ink, and warm air leaks from the earth. A man sits, slumped inside, shrouded. He watches waves crash against a gray shoreline.

The crows peck at the ends of Demeter’s cloak—a trailing gown always scattering the tender seeds of next year. She has already begun to forget.

“You. You came back once,” she says through the fog of her own memory. The man’s lips pull apart like an opening wound.

“He is aware.” He has a warm voice, too big for his large body.

“You know the way. You’ve walked the path.”

His eyes glint from under his hood, bright as tiny suns, too sad for such a large life. “It’s not for you,” says the hero, shooing away crows. “What use would the deathless ones have for such a path?”

“He takes her,” she mumbles.

“What did you expect?”

Demeter’s hand clenches around her golden axe. “Step aside. I’ll visit him myself. At last.”

“The Hospitable One has no fight with you, lady,” he wheezes and gathers the shroud around his bulk.

“He will.”

“He is a fair lord.”

“Does a fair man need a strong grip and a chariot?” Demeter let her chin fall to her chest.

“You would have never let her go.”

“She was a child.” Demeter’s gaze unfocuses, remembering and forgetting. Her own failure sours on her tongue. “She was crying out for me.”

The hero shrugs his vast shoulders. “She’s not the only one—just the one that gets to come back. Is that not enough?”

“No.” Demeter passes the ghost, strayed far from his home and given the leeway of heroes of old or a man so full of life it buoyed him above. She side-steps the phantom and his gaze returns to the sea. She goes to the crack in the earth.

Gloom thick as cobwebs covers the way. Demeter steps into the dark and the dark pushes back. She grits her teeth, and it clings to her, tugs like thorns, pushes back and back until her skin stretches like long rays of sun. But she is a goddess. The sun burns at her back and the crows peck at her cloak. She forces her way through, leaving hair and cloth and flesh behind. Golden ichor trails after her in the dark.

The road narrows and stones pierce the soles of Demeter’s feet through her fine shoes. Muffled voices whisper at the edges of the dark. Fog gathers along the path, ghastly and unlit and forever narrowing. Demeter walks until her head pounds and the way forks—one into the caves and the other into ever-distant black hills.

Ahead, always ahead, a figure turns and pulls down her hood. Her face is the color of bony moonlight, and she wears her crown of thorny branches. A dog bays at her heels and at the crossroads, she holds up her lantern.

“I heard you might be wandering. Do you know where you are?” Hecate goes to Demeter, pushing back Demeter’s tangled hair and rubbing her bare shoulder. “You don’t belong here.”

“I can hear her.” Demeter looks everywhere the girl is not. Voice swallowed. Flowers scattered. Demeter gnashes her teeth. Because she was beautiful. “I can hear him.”

Hecate gentles her. “You can’t be here.”

“But I am.”

“It will cost you. Keep costing.”

Demeter laughs, a throaty sound of puking dogs. “Pay me then. Bribe me. Make me an offer of something worth having that I don’t already make.”

“Have you forgotten? She’ll return to you. Have patience.”

Demeter shakes her head over and over again. Her voice is diminished in the cold and the black and the blood leaks freely from her ankles. “You too?”

She kisses her cheek. “I heard you were wandering.”

A goddess of magic and doorways, Hecate takes her by the hand and turns Demeter. Her shivering is violent, violent enough to come apart, and Hecate’s grip is firm. They walk. There is slim light ahead and the ghosts are murmuring, forgetting more than they will ever remember. The goddesses take the higher path, hand and hand, and the fire drains from Demeter’s belly.

She holds her pounding head. “He’s here, isn’t he? He sent you.”

Hecate rubs her shoulder. “Knowing will not soothe you.”

“Or worse.” Demeter pulls away. “He thinks me impotent.”

“He thinks you lost. They all do.”

Demeter’s eyes flash in the dark. “And you? Hecate.”

Hecate peers over one shoulder and then the other. Her dog sniffs the air. The way is much as it was, dank and unlit and forever narrowing. The other goddess presses a cold metal ball into Demeter’s palm and folds her fingers around it one by one. She whispers an old woman’s whisper, gossip from the funeral pyre. “It can take generations.”

Demeter nods. She clenches her fist around the blunt metal. They walk and the dark shifts from inky blacks to browns to greys. A sliver of brightness breaches the wall, and Demeter jerks her fist up.

“Wait,” Hecate hisses but Demeter goes to the light.

She holds up her gift to the crack and squints. A silver whistle the size of her thumb twinkles between her fingertips. An etching of a wheel is pressed into the belly and time leaks out from inside, the tug of the fates.

She brings the whistle to her lips.

Hecate puts a hand up. “You don’t have to–”

No sound comes out. The ball is missing from inside and Demeter’s eyes water. She breaks from Hecate and runs from the road of the dead, dripping ichor, cursing the games they play. The earth gives her up, splitting like ripe fruit, and Demeter is pushed into a field of sunlight and frost. Her daughter is not there. And she breaks the world.

---------------

She forgets, in her walking days, and the same months play out in the rise and fall of lungs. The light will die along with Demeter’s hope and the gods will turn away. Demeter stalks the land, torch in hand, looking for the girl they cannot save and she will not let go. Remembering is for the muses and the bards and when Demeter runs into a group of mortals, they cower back, and she tilts her head.

“Where are you going, mother?” asks the bravest one, shivering.

Demeter searches her person. “Here,” she says and to her surprise, holds up a silver whistle. It is only in the pale light of the moon that she recognizes how the mortals huddle together with their bags bulging. They are fleeing something, she thinks, and they point her to the mountain. She thanks them in kind.

Between the naked trunks, a set of tracks is stitched into the land. Beams of steel and wood form a single unerring road. She would love that, wouldn’t she? The thought pushes Demeter to move. Iron spikes pierce the soil, and the wooden beams form a path that does not curve. Demeter follows the unbroken way, clutching the whistle, and listening. Smoke billows in the distance and a whistle like a hunting horn, leading her further into the night.

Glimmering like a fish scale in the water, a station waits on the side of the tracks. The building lies in the deep shadow of a mountain and windows glow faintly blue against the dark. A wheel is carved above the doorway and a large clock ticks from inside. Mortals and gods cover their faces and bustle in and out of the front door.

The night is still and unwatched. Demeter tilts her head back, inhales the frigid air that hits like puncture wounds, and climbs the steps. Passing mortals study her face and hurry in the other direction. The minor gods give her a wide berth and take their leave a few steps after. The station at the edge of the track empties.

A large desk takes up the middle of a room caged by bookcases and filing cabinets. An old god sits, rarely alone, always forgoing rest and carrying on. Her head bows beneath the clock and a train conductor’s whistle hangs from her neck. The scratch of pen against paper fills the room and they are alone.

Demeter tosses the whistle down at Nemesis’s feet. Nemesis frowns, a private motion, and raises her head. She wears a conductor's hat and holds a new kind of pen and new kind of parchment, like many times before, Demeter finds her silly. She has little appreciation for the other side of memory, the continuing. A goddess stuck in her own gyres staring down a goddess wearing man’s hat and man’s jacket and man’s unending problems.

Nemesis opens her ledger and trails her finger down a list of the dead propped up against a ledger of deeds. She glances up, eyes like silver coins at the bottom of a well. She clears her throat.

“You aren’t here for me, are you?” Her tone is clipped, professional.

Demeter opens her arms, mourning shrouds spread like wings. “Has it been long enough?” Nemesis narrows her gaze. “How much longer must I wait for your services?”

Nemesis folds her hands. “I don’t set the terms.”

Demeter darkens, rising to her full height above the smaller goddess. “You don’t know what I’ve been through.”

“I do. Spare my house your cold fronts,” Nemesis says, who was born immune to grief. “I am a busy woman.”

“We have much in common.” Demeter takes a seat across from her.

Nemesis scribbles calculations on the side of her ledger. “What punishment would you see fit for the lord of the dead? We can send him more subjects he takes little joy from. Deprive him of wealth he has little to do with.”

“Fair Hades, generous Hades.” Demeter’s lips peel back. “They have been charitable. Granted him room enough to fall.”

Nemesis snaps her book shut. “Be at peace, goddess. You forget your daughter will return soon.”

“That’s all you have to say? Betrayal and violation and the goddess of vengeance—”

“You have been injured.” Nemesis stands and a train shouts in the distance, a long baleful cry. “You carried out your own justice.”

“You are not my brother’s creature.” She exhales a long breath. “You need not be.”

Nemesis looks out the window to the shadow of the mountain. “I am a busy woman.”

“Here. An offering.” Demeter reaches into her pockets. “For your books.” She scatters hay seeds and wheat stalks and bits of golden pods. They clatter in waves across the open pages, landing on the scrawls of her endless notes.

Nemesis’s eyes glint, cold and implacable. A bird crows and Demeter gives a small smile. They’ll come soon, harvest always does, to pull apart the worms and seeds and work of yesteryear. To undo the seams of books and words and let the eating begin. A new world still bends to the rules of the old.

“He is not here,” Demeter whispers furtively and Nemesis sighs. She pushes herself away from the desk.

“Stand.” Nemesis, who was born immune to grief and carries on, rises. “Walk.” Nemesis, without looking back, leads her through the stacks. They pass the mountain outside. Behind the many cases, is a tucked-away door, boxy and dark and opening inward. Demeter has to duck her head to enter.

The furniture within is covered in sheets and surrounded by stacks of scrolls, weaponry, and animal pelts. Demeter sniffs the air, and the dust is thick and generational. She steps to the side and Nemesis goes to her knees.

A train whistle sounds once more and Demeter’s heart thrums. She feels a foreign thrill and pumps her hand in the air. “We’ll master the first injustice.”

“Hardly!” Nemesis throws her arms up in turn. The room is lit by scattered brass lamps, a bridle on the wall, and sword on the floor and the scraps of good bedding in the corner. Demeter privately thinks it sad. Nemesis rifles through her piles.

“We might slay him,” Demeter offers, eyeing the sword.

“Yes. Your daughter will make a perfect sole hostess of the dead, solitary lord of all she touches and rich beyond means.” Demeter frowns and rocks on her heels. Nemesis lets out a tiny laugh. “You cannot undo it.”

She adjusts her mourning cloak. “You’re wrong.”

“I have heard that before.” She laughs again.

“You’re wrong,” she repeats, louder, and Demeter adjusts her sleeves. “She’ll go where she pleases at the very least. She can grant herself that.”

“Will she come back to you then, my lady? Is that where she’s going?” Nemesis pauses. “Do you know where this leads?”

She begins to fold Nemesis’s stray bedding. “I do remember. I have taken . . . steps.” Nemesis nods, shifting a scale aside and digging up molded books. “I have not been idle over these long years. Grown food more richly than ever before, more of it, hardier. Would that not be fit for a dream? To tempt him. Tempt her with fruits rich enough to topple the halls of gloom.”

Nemesis shakes her head. “Sounds like you have little use for me.”

Demeter wrinkles her nose. “You see better than me. Then almost all of us.”

“Flattery will not change my nature nor make it true.” Nemesis dusts off a box no bigger than a hare and lifts it high. She turns over a box of metal and wires, over and over in her hands.

“They made this. It won’t turn things back but may make a difference.” She holds it out, and the same sense rushes from inside: fate, blowing her cool breath.

Demeter finishes making the bed and turns in a circle. “Have you eaten?” she asks all at once.

Nemesis blinks and looks at the window, the mountain, and back. Demeter turns on her heels and waves. “Come. Before the sun rises.”

Nemesis carries her metal box to the other room. The kitchen is smaller than the bedroom and poorly stocked, but Demeter works her small miracle. Bread and wine and grapes. They dine and talk and have little use for past feuds as they are old goddesses and know how to carry on. The wine is good, and time is late.

Nemesis only offers again, once, only once, her box of metal and wires, of lightning and glass and mortals. Demeter stands, paces, and faces the door. The other goddess checks her watch. “You are the one that came to me, mistress.”

Demeter stares down at her own hands, her feet, over her shoulder, awash in bile in the back of her throat. “Would you also have me let this go? You. Of all of them.”

Nemesis folds her hands in her lap, never hurried, never squeamish about the ugliness or beauty in a heart. She waits.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Say,” Demeter swallows around the fist in her throat. “Say I’m like them, like any of them. Say you’ll have me too.”

Nemesis crosses the room, a head shorter than the Lady of the Golden Blade, and darker. “You were wronged.” The Implacable one lifts herself up. Her hat crooks backward and her breath smells of cold iron and rain. “Perhaps it is too early. But what is early to you? Here. Take it.”

Nemesis kisses the Mistress, hard on the lips and Demeter breathes in what there is to take. She cradles her small frame and pushes her down to the sad bedding newly made. A small goddess, always carrying on, and another filled with need that towers over cities and topples over fields. Demeter begins anew.

---------------

They cannot say why Demeter walks or why she wakes, and the years spill past. On one twilight, Demeter’s feet carry her over ravished lands. The fields are caked in frost and frozen blood and small metal apples that are prone to burning. She passes a city opened like a ribcage, and an orchard she once knew.

Hot cider, she thinks in her own deadness, hot cider for the long night. There is a low brown building among the rubble and a note of perfume in the air. She follows the scent all the way to the door. The men inside are not soldiers, leftover grandfathers and teens with bum knees and cowards with better lies, all greet her as fellows.

“Good evening, Mother,” says a man with his jacket undone. “They have taken the last of the meat, but the drinks are strong, and we have a good lady upstairs. Come, get warm.”

Demeter nods at the drunk men, far too many, stuffed into this tiny post office. They cheer and watch the skies, singing about morning—and who knew what morning meant! The space is dim and the perfume strong and Demeter climbs the stairs away from the men’s unwatchable merriment.

A woman lounges on top of a stack of burlap sacks. She is resplendent in nurse’s white; and wears her hair loose and long. Aphrodite is in her prime, reclining as only a goddess can, and flips through crusting yellow letters. She beams at Demeter.

“Look at you, lone little dove!” Aphrodite cries and sets down the letter. “What a pleasure it is for you to stop by.”

Demeter furrows her brow, jostled from the depths of herself. “Are you occupied?” Her mind sparks. Buildings smolder outside, the trees blackened, and skies red. Demeter takes a step back, looking above and below. “Are we alone here? Is he coming?”

“You’re safe with me.” Aphrodite’s smile stretches wide. “You know, the others speak so ill of you when you’re in this way. They have no imaginations. I like you better in your blacks.”

Demeter stalks the edge of the burlap sacks. “I cannot say I like you better in pinks or whites, good lady.”

“See? Delightful.” She smiles even wider into something painful looking.

Demeter goes to the window and inhales.

“Do you know where we are?” Aphrodite asks, kicking her feet up.

“They used to grow apples here,” Demeter murmurs, running a hand down her long face. “You forget what they can do to themselves.”

“Must we talk of work? Tell me of your new lovers.” Aphrodite tosses her thick hair aside and squeals. Demeter needn’t answer. “You’re so predictable, really! The little grim goddess. But that's why I like this version of you best.”

“You shouldn’t.” The men howl a song from down below. Demeter presents her own dim smile. “But maybe you’re predictable too. Is he really not here?”

Aphrodite’s smile falters and she smooths out the note in her hand. “Aren’t they all? My husband is even in the skies if you listen.”

Demeter hums in return. All here. . . She takes out a little box given to her by the vengeance goddess.

“Do you know this?”

“Oh! Do I know it!” Aphrodite scrambles down from her perch. “I love it. I adore it. I am on fire just thinking of it. They invented it for me if you think about it.” She takes the device in her hand and turns it over and over.

“Help me,” Demeter begs, only just. “I do not know how I’ll ever be whole again, you must know.”

Aphrodite smiles, warmly, manic light in her eyes. “You are a testament to the best of us. Come. Let us kiss and make merry. We can invite the little goddess too, if you like, however dull she is. Or any of them, Themis, Dike, if you care for the likes of whatever justice gods come next.”

Demeter, for not the first time, and as much as she can bear it, stares out the window. “I do not think they are awake. Only you and War may even survive such a long night.”

“You are so dramatic in your walking days, kiss me, kiss me next and let winter end or last forever this time.”

Demeter shook her head. “How do I work this? Nemesis said I might.”

“Nemesis is quite busy right now. Quiet busy when she isn’t being devoured for it. Are you really still looking for this girl of yours? So single-minded. Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

Demeter meets her gaze. “Don’t you?”

“I know better than anyone,” says the goddess in her prime. “I am needed.”

Demeter snorts at that and Aphrodite scowls, both thinking the same thought: the mortals could live without the other, but not without her. Aphrodite relents when the sun begins to set, so early, so soon, and she must slip out the back. Aphrodite holds up the camera.

“Click, click,” she says, a bit like a child and Demeter loves her for it. She shows her how to aim the lens and press the button down. “That’s all, click, click. You’ll see.”

Demeter cradles the camera, and she must walk, and the skies must burn, and Aphrodite must slip out the back, carrying several letters with her. Letters that maybe, just maybe, will be delivered. Aren’t the dates off? they ask, nothing else made it out. Oh, but the mail system is unpredictable. These last ones must have made it out. Don’t think too hard, they must all carry on.

---------------

A young mortal man meets a mother and daughter. They live in a farmhouse that spans a small neighborhood. Endless parlors and bedrooms and closets, and the two seem to occupy two rooms—living room to kitchen to living room and back again. His lover does not bother to knock and hurries them to the living space. The walls are painted yellow as dawn and the carpets are a thick cream color. A girl lounges on the couch. She wears a tank top, blonde hair piled on her head, and phone on her lap. The young man wonders what she could possibly be looking at.

“Hello, dear!” His lover strides forward. Nicholas gives a weak wave from behind. “Good to see you again.”

The girl looks up from her phone. Her expression is endlessly blank, and Nicholas must shrink down to the size of two pins. They had met before, back when he was touring and being shown off as a prize and he would like to say he hated it. The girl sticks out her bottom lip.

“Mom!” Persephone’s voice splits the air. “Your appointment is here. He brought a guest.”

“Does she know me?” Nicholas mumbles to his lover and Apollo squeezes his shoulder.

“It’s been a season,” Apollo says in answer. “I’ll be right back, love. Won’t be a moment once I finish up.”

Which is a lie because his lover is never done. He leaves him. Nicholas goes to the edge of the room, eyeing the golden-haired, golden-eyed girl. He had been surprised at her features when they first met, rough-hewn, prominent, clifflike cheeks and sturdy nose, beautiful and strange. Her eyes are the most unnerving part. Their golden color feels natural, yet they are so deep-set in her face to the point of shadow. Most of all, she is young, and younger when she looks up.

“Mom!” she shouts again. “The guest.”

“Send him to the kitchen, dear!” a matronly voice calls, and Persephone groans and throws her head back, ponytail flopping.

“It’s your house. He’s your guest!” She lurches to her feet in the same breath.

Nicholas puts his hands up, face heating. “It’s fine, really. No need to get up. We’ll only be stopping by a moment,” he says, though he knows he’s lying.

“Come on.”

The little goddess takes him to the kitchen and fills up a tall glass of water.

“Here,” she says, and he has to stop himself from staring.

“Thanks,” he says, holding the glass but not taking a sip. “Do you two live alone?”

Persephone raises an eyebrow, stuffing both hands under her arms. “The farm hands . . .” she mumbles and turns away from him. “But we’re not here year round. Mom can’t stand an empty house.”

Her golden eyes blaze against his cheeks and Nicholas realizes too late, she’s expecting conversation.

“Mine too,” he says, chuckling awkwardly. “My mom’s an empty nester and she says she can’t bring herself to turn my room into a home gym even though I’ve been touring for like, what? Almost a decade now.”

He has no idea if this makes sense to her. He’s met Persephone before, but she was different then, even more golden, laughing.

She chews on her bottom lip. “We have a home gym, but I hate using it. I’m a runner, and I dunno, I feel like it doesn’t count if I’m not doing it outside? But my mom hates that too.”

“Sure.” He watches the way she slow-blinks like a person, like she’s forgotten she’s something else as well. He rotates the cool glass in his hand. “Is your dad around?” he asks, because he’s curious and never met the man, thundering and awful as he might be.

“Of course not.” Persephone leans in conspiratorially. “She hates him.” She snorts. “Aaaaand his wife hates her even more.”

He joins her in a small laugh and speaks into the glass. “I can only imagine what she thinks of your husband.”

Persephone’s face goes blank and impassive. She turns and leaves him there. 

Nicholas will spend two weeks in the farmhouse, their errand never done, and wonder at the golden-haired girl and the mother. Demeter plies him with more food than he can eat and has him play songs with “no curse words.” They share meals and jokes and even watch TV. The harvest goddess is taller than he could imagine and has long wavy salt-and-pepper hair. Her lined-eyes crease when she smiles, which is a lot.

During their tucked-away moments in the guest room at the end of the day, his lover feeds him bits of story. How the girl will fall soon, like she always does, and after that long silence, she will run. She will run like it’s the first time and the only time. They’ll wonder if she really means it, but it won’t matter because Persephone cannot answer.

Nicholas, though, is young and mortal and raised to be cherished. And oh, this goddess has long salt-and-pepper hair that falls down her back in bushels. She wears it in twin long braids sometimes along with gardening boots covered in mud and it makes Nicholas want to cry. His own mother would never turn his room into a gym.

Nicholas cannot help himself. When he digs out a camera in one of her long hallways, in one of her deep closets, he dusts it off and brings it to her for inspection.

“Do you want me to develop these?” he asks, and Demeter squeezes his shoulder.

“Only if you want to, honey. I know you must be getting bored. I’ll bother Apollo to take you on a proper date with less old ladies present, I swear.” She chuckles.

He smiles. “No, you’ve been the perfect host. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The mortal develops the photos and before Persephone falls and Demeter walks the earth, before the gods avert their eyes from another long season, he hands her a stack of photos. He must have seen them, must have known, but the images disappear like water through a sieve the second they leave his hand. He never will know what the goddess sees in those pictures, only that she stops smiling.

It’s summer then, perfect summer, and Demeter’s head falls forward like a ragdoll. 

“Is this true?” Her lips tremble and she brings the photos to her chest. She doesn’t wait for him to answer. Demeter crosses her own neighborhood-length farmhouse where she and her daughter orbit each other in two rooms. Persephone is in her chair. Demeter enters, cradling the photos. “He takes you.”

Persephone glances up from her phone. She blinks. “Who?” 

“It’s never going to be over.” Demeter shuts her eyes against the world. She remembers, and how she remembers. Tears fall in long dull streaks and a braying moan escapes Demeter’s body. “You never come back.”

Persephone leaps to her feet. “Mom, I’m right here.”

“No!” Demeter snaps, backing away one wobbling step after the other. Her back hits the wall and she takes tiny panicked breaths.

“What have you done?” Apollo asks the mortal, though he need not. Nicholas’s mind is thrashing against itself. What was it he saw? Demeter turns from her daughter. She’ll goes to find her two-headed ax and don black. Persephone’s voice cannot reach her. When Demeter bends her head to Apollo’s ear, she hisses.

“I have another errand for you.”

His sun, this sun too and all of them, watching and unmoved when Persephone is taken. The same song played in different notes. Time spins forward on an axis of freezing and burning and growing, and Demeter is given the knife of memory to plunge down into herself. The unheard plea to let her stay. The answering of many gods that this is how it goes.

It would be her, of course. The mother at the side of a casket that she is unallowed to close, because shouldn’t she know better? Time lurches forward. Soon, summer, perfect summer, begins to hurt. Temperatures rise. Oceans boil. Demeter burns the world.

FIN

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[sarafangirlart]

You ever get the feeling that retelling writers might not even like Greek Mythology? Sometimes even outright hate it? Bc I’ve seen such random nonsense lately that I doubt they even skimmed through these figures Wikipedia pages.

It’s even more apparent when they view their retelling as “fixing” the myths.

[fluffielox]

the story of the first spider

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[henry-fox-biggest-stan]

Favorite niche book genre

[belovedapollo]

guess I do have favorites after all 📚

reblog is ok, don’t repost/use

[shasivyy]

Some of the main characters from my Frankenstein retelling.

{When darkness shines}

Adam. (Victor Frankenstein’s creature)

Dew. (An original character created by me for a big role in the retelling, which includes being the love interest of Adam.)

Victor will be the next to introduce 👀

[the-belial]

Ipin and Lambo redesign!

I decided to give Ipin a real name and i though Min was really cute

I also made them a bit older because I wanted them to be a bit conscious of what happens around them! I also included the tyl versions because why not?

[simplydannie]

New Under Rageous AU Idea: The Retelling of Trolls

What if….

It wasn’t Bergentown the Trolls escaped from….

It wasn’t Chef clutches (though she’ll be a major part of the story).

It wasn’t a Troll tree they escaped from… but rather a Troll Farm…. A forest kept inside a diamond dome… owned by no other than Vaughn Montegue.

In this retelling, King Peppy finds a way for a number of Trolls to escape the Troll Dome (what they call the farm) before he or his daughters are taken for “extraction”… but the escape causes a rift, a separation amongst families:

As they run, they are pursued by Under Rageons and Vaughn himself. Some get recaptured in the process, including Viva, Clay, and Floyd, while the rest escape deeper into Under Rageous.

Does this mean they are safe? Free?… No. Not entirely.

Twenty years after their escape, the Trolls find themselves taken in by the community of what they “Pauper Trolls”, these Trolls have escaped the clutches of Under Rageons and Under Bergens alike, settling around Under Rageous and living the life of a borrower. The trolls have no idea how to escape the under-city, but for years have planned.

Poppy rules over her own little settlement of Pauper Trolls as her father was in fact a king at one point. She tries ruling over them with a pep in her step, attempts to make the most out of the borrower life they are living. Though secretly… she’s been planning a way to get back to the Troll Dome in hopes to find her sister still alive…

Unknowingly, another Trolls has been planning the same thing… Branch.

(Though I am still deciding whether to keep true to the original story where some of Poppys friends get captured basically forcing her and Branch to go back, or, she decides to team up with the gray troll and venture out to find their lost siblings��)

Meanwhile: On Floyd’s point of view. He along with Clay and another handle of Trolls are recaptured and taken back to the Troll Dome.

Unfortunately, Vaughn has been made aware of the escape and makes the Dome unescapeable…. For now.

As years pass, Vaughn has children of his own: Velvet and Veneer. Vaughn tends to keep this side of his business a secret from his children, but they grow curious and eventually come upon the Troll Dome where they venture inside. Seeing Rageons, all Trolsl go into hiding, except for Floyd, who’s ill at this point.

He is taken in by Veneer who nurses the little Troll back to health and eventually befriends him….

Unfortunately Floyd is there when the Montegue Manor is broken into and witnesses Vivian’s death. He also sees the change in Vaughn…

Flash forward, the twins are now seventeen… and about the same time Poppy and Branch return to the Troll Dome.

Without going to much into detail since I do want to make this into a story:

At this point the twins have ran away to Mount Rageous, and Branch returns to the Troll Dome to hear how his brother was taken by the Montegue twins years ago….

Somehow, someway, he discovers his brother is now being used by the twins and now his mission is to make it out of Under Rageous to the city above…. While Vaughn also has the same mission in mind as he discovers where his children are and who has them.

While Floyd also has a plan of his own to escape, and bring the twins with him…

Because it’s not them he’s trying to escape, but the Mistress…

…. To be continued (as a possible story :3 )

[olliewrites-stuff]

In Which You Play Orpheus

In which you play Orpheus,

And you are broken-hearted and desolate.

The loss of your Eurydice for the

Second and final time

Carves your soul into

Mourning lyrics in a language

Only the bereft can decipher.

In which you stand there, frozen,

Mourning the first and only time

Turning towards your lover

Has ended in heart-break.

In which you play Orpheus,

But this time,

The Gods decide to make you

Suffer

Instead of ending you.

In which you are Orpheus and

You have just lost your Eurydice,

But also,

In which you have been granted

Immortality

Until reaching an age the Gods decide

Your existence on this plane

Without HER

Can cease.

In which you are newly-immortal,

And your immortality is certain -

And you refuse to disclose just how

You know it to be fact.

In which those pages of your book -

With the screaming and the

Crying and the

Desperate clutching,

Are stuck together never to be read aloud,

And that's how you prefer it to be.

In which you are Orpheus,

And you can't escape Her.

She whispers through the trees.

She cries desperately for you

In the thunderstorms.

The cheeky quirk of Her lip is

Reflected on other people’s faces …

And it HURTS.

By Gods,

It HURTS.

The absence in your life

And soul so profound that you

Cannot breathe.

In which you attend the group sessions,

Just like your friends suggested,

But the way in which the facilitator

Says Her name makes you

Clench your fists and

Refuse to make eye-contact with

Anyone.

This suffering is overwhelming,

But sharing it would be like

Sharing what little of Her

You have left, and -

You're not strong enough to let that go.

In which you lose control one day,

Throwing a chair across the room

When the soft-spoken woman

To your right,

Who is wearing her hair like She used to,

Speaks your name in Her timbre.

In which you become a cyclone,

A Category 5 descending on the home

You used to share,

Snatching up all of Her things and

Hurling them into a space

Never to be seen again.

Everything seems to pause as you

Come across a picture of

The two of you.

Everything gets deceivingly quiet

As the eye of Cyclone Orpheus

Overtakes you.

Your eyes dart from smiling eyes to

Lovestruck smile,

And all of a sudden,

The storm is back in action.

Smashing,

Crashing,

Banging,

Screaming,

Crying -

Your rage is

s u f f o c a t i n g

and

t e r r i f y i n g,

But FUCK

Does it feel good to cause damage,

Even though the chaos you can create

Is no match for the damage

She caused YOU, and -

...You've ripped the picture in half

And are suddenly human again,

Kneeling in the centre of your carnage

As you realise what you’ve done.

In which you quietly and reverently

Pack up the rest of Her belongings,

Vowing to actually attempt

Living

The rest of your life.

For Her if no-one else.

In which time passes and

You lose track of it;

Surviving one day becomes

Surviving two,

Then three,

And soon,

Years,

Decades - maybe even centuries -

Pass,

And it’s only after you catch yourself

Smiling as you think of the sweet

Grecian girl with the dazzling smile

You’ve bumped into a few times,

That you realise you’re not

Occupied with thoughts of

Your Eurydice.

In which you graze your shoulder as you

Scramble to where you’d left all of Her stuff

To collect dust.

Light floods the space as you scurry to

Surround yourself in Her presence again,

To prove you haven’t stopped

Thinking about Her,

That you haven’t given up on Her,

That you haven’t

f o r g o t t e n

Her.

"See? See!

I’ve still got that scarf you wore every year,

And that photo album from that one time...

And see, see?

Look at all the SHIT I have that

Proves I can’t live without you!"

You stop.

Breathe in and out deeply…

In which you play Orpheus,

And have lost your Eurydice.

In which you realise that between

Forcing yourself to be busy

So you didn’t have time to grieve,

And doing your best to live

As She would have wanted,

You had found a way to grieve.

To move on.

To live without her.

In which you no longer grieve,

But can still hear Her

Softly whispering through the trees.

You can hear Her in the thunderstorms.

You can see the cheeky quirk of Her lip

In people you’ve since befriended.

And you are okay.

The reminders bring back

Fond memories, now,

Reminding you of the time you DID

Get to spend with Her,

And the happiness you felt then

That you can recognise again now.

In which you play an immortal Orpheus who

Has lost his Eurydice,

And you realise She is gone,

But not forgotten.

© O.M.A

[laundry-and-taxes]

This novel was so horrible. I demand financial recompensation. Why was Malcolm a half English man named Lisander? Why was Lady Macbeth a teenage French girl?? Why are all Scottish men described as brutes who are dishonorable, violent, and misogynistic? Moreover, why is it even a retelling if the author has gone off the rails with characterization and plot and chosen to do whatever they wished with a brilliant play? Retellings have become a buzzword in the increasingly consumerist publishing industry for authors to drive up sales. They don't want to critically engage with the themes of the text they're meant to be retelling. They want to be praised for being subversive and feminist by people who haven't ever engaged with the original text.

I was even more disappointed because I enjoyed Reid's earlier novel 'Juniper and Thorn' but the issues I had with that novel were highlighted even more in this novel. Scenes of gratuitous sexual and physical violence piled upon each other which serve no purpose except for shocking the readers with half done characters who shame their original counterparts.

I need authors to stop writing feminist retellings. Madeline Miller I think you've done irreparable damage to retellings.

[oh-my-wolfstar]

If you want tension, if you want dark academia, homoeroticisam, fucked up found family, murder, tragedy, passion, and a literary masterpiece whose poetically tumultuous narrative is as brilliant as Shakespeare himself, you have to read If We Were Villains. Do it. Do it now.

[the-readragon]

Who’s Knight who’s Queen ?

Who’s Black who’s White?

You choose.