Stories

Door Number Eight - Door Number Two - Time

“I have to ponder this rationally,” Taylor thought and quickly put together a plan to address the current situation. Whether it was real or not, she figured all of this weird stuff kept happening to her around four o’clock, and if she managed to avoid her haunting ghost, hallucination, prankster or whatever he was around that time of day she should be fine. Since the thought of locking herself in the women’s restroom for an hour sounded a little bit like overkill, she moved to the next best option, which was spending every single second in Christine’s company. 
First, she wanted to assess whether Christine could see her “ghost”, or if he was a hallucination of her stressed out mind, and second, she was kind of hoping that a public setting would deter future kidnapping attempts.

Door Number Eight - Door Number One - Space

Taylor woke up and got ready for classes, as if nothing had happened the day before, trying to avoid looking at the door, somewhat uneasy with the thought that if she did, she might not see it there anymore. The first day was filled with the trepidation of adjusting to new settings and finding her way through the maze of buildings and hallways, and in all the excitement she almost forgot about the “class” that was supposed to start at four. She hadn’t had anything to eat the whole day and stopped almost without thinking at the cafeteria for a quick bite.

Door No. 8 - Chapter 1 The Beginning

“Taylor? Taylor Bradford?” a voice called from behind the counter, with non-dissimulated boredom. 
Taylor fumbled with the paperwork and rushed to the counter to finish registering for classes before the four o’clock deadline. The clerk handled the documents absentmindedly, while she watched the clock and switched to a more leisurely mindset in anticipation of the get together she had planned with her friends later at the bar on the campus corner. 
Taylor walked out the door thirty seconds after four, trying to avoid the clerk’s resentful glare and careful not to slam the door behind her. She was a shy person and, even if she didn’t want to admit it, she found this whole situation of being on her own a little overwhelming.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 10.3 Chorus

“Persephone, darling! What a joy to have you back home!”
Demeter welcomed her daughter effusively at the mouth of the cave of Cumae and presented her with the traditional sheaf of barley.
The oracle of Cumae bowed deeply to both goddesses, concealing a resentful glare, while Demeter performed a critical assessment of her daughter, staring her up and down in search of things that required attention.
“You look thinner, Persephone. Are you sure you’re eating enough in the underworld? I am concerned.”
“I’m exactly the same, mother. As you well know, we never change.”
“No worries. We’ll make sure to feed you properly as soon as we reach Olympus. I’ve made you a list of tasks, just to get you started on your duties. Dionysus wants to talk to you. Make time for a meeting with him as soon as feasible, will you?”

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 10.2 The Silent Kingdom

Persephone was careful about lifting her torch, to avoid scorching the healthy roots which poked through the vault of the cave, drawn by the sound of the small stream running through it. Plants can hear water from great distances.
Plants can hear water from great distances and extend roots to capture it. They are a lot more sophisticated than people know.
A delicate root tracery was covering the entire vault, surrounding the larger tap roots, which found themselves mimicking stalactites, and growing in thin air, no doubt managing to absorb the water droplets generated by the feisty little brook.
She couldn’t help imagine what a thicket this place became in the summer, when the root systems expanded to fill the entire cave. She was surprised to realize she never gave any thought to what was happening in Hades while she was gone; how different it was from the lovely winter home, which always welcomed her in pristine and splendid glory.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 10.1 Spring Fever

As spring approached, Persephone started getting restless.
She was startled from her sleep, shaken by the feeling she forgot something important, whose absence had consequences which were now piling up out of sight.
Her daydreaming trips to the gardens got shorter, as she spent more and more time with Hecate preparing for her trip.
Most of the hard work of spring was happening underground, quietly. While the dirt was still frozen, the seeds already started their labor of sprouting, and the old roots were patiently rebuilding their aerial parts.
The dark earth concealed this fierce struggle towards the light, which lasted for months before being rewarded with results.
All people ever saw was the miracle of spring, nature bursting suddenly back to life, happening incredibly fast, while Persephone, who looked young and delicate, like she’d never seen a day of work in her life, seemed too unlikely to be its enabler.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 9.3 - The Unreality

Hades always felt empty after Persephone saw the returning souls off into the world. To allay her sadness, she went to the Hall of Scrolls, to reread what the Moirae had in store for them.
Hades’s palace was vast, and not many people knew that, because very few had been allowed past the sumptuous rooms at the front, which were intended for receiving visitors.
It had libraries and vaults, salons and dining halls, and since his marriage with Persephone, interior gardens.
Since Hades didn’t have weather, half of the spaces were open to the outdoors, facing colonnades and atria, fountains of living waters and magical trees.
Everything had spirit in the Underworld, and Persephone often lost track of time talking to the trees in the open courtyards, or the flowers in her daffodil garden.
The latter was a gift from Hades, who worried she might miss the meadows of her maiden days, a garden bursting with daffodils perpetually in bloom.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 9.2 Joyfully Reborn

Life doesn’t change.
Sure the technologies advance and the day-to-day gets easier, but people aren’t fundamentally different from how they were centuries ago.
The same emotions and drives push them on their paths, and the same disappointments sour their spirits.
Persephone tended to her souls like a gardener tends to his or her plants, watching them get born, live and die, forget their experiences and come back to life the next time around, like seeds sprinkled on the ground.
It is human hubris to imagine there is a purpose to this repetitive endeavor. Just like is the case with plants, there is no purpose for them to exist other than to perpetuate themselves. Life wants to continue and slowly evolve.
If there was a greater purpose under Olympus, it was too high for anyone to understand it, and it most likely did not involve building mighty empires and fighting bloody wars, the empty vanities and illusions of power that die with their creators.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory, Chapter 9.1 Inspired

Every four years in the middle of summer, the mortals gathered to celebrate the muses in a gentle valley at the feet of Mount Helicon.
The nine daughters of Mnemosyne, they weren’t your usual goddesses; they were a gift to humankind. Nobody talked about them as such, out of fear these wonders that fired the human mind to create masterpieces might be taken away, to leave mankind only the toiling and the wars, a drab existence made of hopeless and uninspiring days, all the same.
The muses were born of the goddess of memory and the highest of the gods, a splendid metaphor for the mind’s union with the sublime.
And, just as happens with the human minds, their relationships and connections with other gods and with the mortals got complicated from there.
Unexpected friendships and mentoring roles emerged, and if one wanted to understand them, one had to know their whole family history.
Pegasus himself had struck the ground with its hoof to open their source of inspiration, the stream of Hippocrene.
Their mother, Mnemosyne, the keeper of the fount of memories in Hades, was Hypnos’s neighbor and friend.
Remembering is the opposite of forgetting, and therefore, it embodies the same concept. They are two halves of the same whole.
Every object in a universe of duality must have an opposite, and the two opposing elements are intrinsically the same essence. 
They are what is, reflecting itself into what it is not.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 8.3 Through a Veil, Darkly

Those blessed with the gift of prophecy form a small but very special community.
They instinctively seek each other’s presence, they are drawn to those who are similarly blessed.
If they are mortal, they become oracles and seers whose wisdom is sought and revered, and people travel from far away to seek their counsel. They are the living vessels of the gods, who speak through them in cryptic messages, which are only understood in retrospect.
It’s not that the gods were trying to make their teachings obscure, or that they even cared if they were. People can’t form concepts about things that don’t yet exist.
Immortal prophets like Apollo, Phoebe, the Moirae, doled their wisdom onto the world below, speaking through their official oracles, like those of Delphi, or Cumae, who were famous and revered and to whom people dedicated temples and compounds, theaters and springs.
And then there were the quiet visionaries, who saw a lot but kept it to themselves, not wanting to put any more strain on the greater order of things than it was already under, and staying out of the affairs of the mortals, whose misinterpretations of godly wisdom were a constant source of disaster and false hope.