#buckle in folks im about to give demeter the modern retelling she DESERVES

[newbornbabygiraffe]

Searching for Persephone, Part One

There is something comforting in the sound of shrieking children.

High voices splitting the air, shrieks of delight that grate against the eardrum and tug at the corners of the mouth, sounds of life, of joy, of discovery. It can be alarming to the uninitiated, but those in the know can discern the sounds underneath it that render it safe: the squeal of metal against rusted metal, the tumbling of rocks, the thumps of small shoes against cheap plastic and old wood. The swing sets and gravel and play structures that make up a child’s kingdom. Demeter knows them all well.

Which is why she lets herself relax for a moment.

Just one moment.

Demeter is sitting on her favorite bench at her daughter’s favorite park, the one with the little field where the children like to pick weeds- sorry, wildflowers- and chase one another in endless circles, playing at nymphs and adventurers and queens. She knows this place like she knows every acre of her farmland, like she knows the sway of sun-bleached wheat right before harvest, like she knows the halls of the family home that her brother built with the insurance money when their father died. Demeter and her kid aren’t here alone; Hecate is sitting beside her, keeping an eye on the young ones she babysits for the rest of their sprawling family. She’s a second cousin (maybe a third? Or perhaps twice removed. Demeter can never remember), but their family has always treated everyone like brothers and sisters for better or for worse and Demeter trusts her with her life. Hell, she trusts Hecate with her daughter’s life.

So Demeter closes her eyes and lets her guard down for a moment.

Just one moment.

Demeter lets the sound of children playing roll over her as her back finally relaxes into the worn wood of her favorite park bench, in the shade of a large olive tree that gave scores of plump green olives every fall. She lets her worries slip away from her, the upcoming tasks for the harvest that will feed their small community in the coming months, the mistakes her ambitious brothers have made to piss their neighbors off, the pesticides locals kept using to damage the pollinators essential to her work. Demeter sets them all down on the bench beside her and closes her eyes. The shrill voices of children comfort her.

But she knows the difference between joy and terror.

And she knows her daughter’s voice.

Demeter’s eyes snap open when the cry reaches her ears, not one of joy, not one of flowers picked or adventures pursued, but one of sheer panic. She is off her favorite bench so quickly that the world threatens to spin around her. Demeter shakes off the vertigo, the hair she’s just a little too in love with the hack off whipping across her face as she frantically scans for her daughter.

“Demeter?” Hecate asks. Her eyes are wide, her fingers stilled on her knitting, her voice shaking slightly because she had heard it too.

There are children darting from attraction to attraction. Athena is kneeling with some new neighborhood kids, pointing up at the olive tree and explaining how it’ll grow fruit once it starts getting cold. Artemis is racing against a long-legged boy she’s beat a hundred times before. Calypso from next door is playing with the water fountain even though she’s been told not to time and time again.

Demeter looks and looks and looks, voices shrieking in her ears, rocks tumbling and crashing and world falling apart, until she feels Hecate’s hand on her arm. Demeter looks down at her second or third cousin possibly twice removed, her heart pounding in her chest.

“Where’s Persephone?”