Homeworld Notes & Drabble

[springforth]

NOTES:

GOSSIPS
-Eros made Apollo leave and was the one who took her to the hospital.
-Artemis is in Demeter's bad graces and hasn't been allowed to visit her sleeping in the mortal realm. Though Eros is pretty sure she's snuck in when Demeter actually has to leave.
-Daphne dated Apollo for a little while until he got really weird about sleeping Persephone. She ended up hooking up with Thanatos and they've been a cute couple for a few months now!
-Minthe and Hades are still doing the on again off again thing much to everyone's dismay. Eros speculates that he just needed someone during all this. It's shook everyone up.
-Turns out falling asleep for a year makes the dumb paparazzi drama die down



Roses and Rot

Demeter rushed into the hospital room, authoritative and fierce, her eyes wild, her hair a mess. She interrogated, she pleaded, she demanded. And when it was all said and done, when no answers came, she sat down and waited. Days pass. Nothing changes. The doctors still can't explain it, no matter the money thrown at them. Kore sleeps and she will keep sleeping.

When the hospital proves fruitless, Demeter brings her home to the seat of her power. Gentle as a lamb, Kore is enshrined in her bed, eyes closed to the world. Most days, Demeter is at her side but there are always nymphs lingering beside her, sitting in a dim vigil as they once followed her to the fields. Daphne visits, but the god of death that trails her remains beyond Demeter's sacred lands. They all know that he feels like bad luck.

In the dim of night, when all is dark and still and quiet, sometimes there is the barest shimmer in the corner of the room. A pair of red eyes watch and wait. They never get closer than the edge of the bed, they never linger longer than a few minutes, but they reappear reliably for months. Until they do not.

The world stagnates around the pair, daughter and mother, the spring pushing on and on. Her daughter was born for spring, of spring, of the roses and the sky and the earth. Only spring will make her return. So nothing moves beyond a flower, a bud, a shoot of wheat green but never gold. The world lingers. The plants hold their breath.

Then the mortals arrive. One or two at a time at first. With flowers, with wine, with cakes. The first girl, young and bursting with hope, had ducked her head in respect and handed over a bouquet of roses to a confused nymph.

"For our lady who sleeps. May she smell them and wake the world to a glorious summer."

The offerings are laid in careful piles around Persephone's bed An altar to her daughter who hadn't many worshippers when she was awake and walking the fields but gathers them as a silent statue. Beyond them, beyond the quiet bedroom, the world in the damp green of spring slowly begins to rot.