Stories

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.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 8.2 Strife

On the westernmost edge of the Oceanus, which spans the vast distance between the world of the living and the underworld, there is a splendid garden, constantly bathed in the glow of the sunset.
The garden belongs to Hera, a wedding gift from her grandmother, and wonderful apple trees with golden fruit grow there, under the jealous guard of the dragon Ladon, an offspring of the Typhon, and the rather distracted oversight of the Hesperides, the daughters of night and of the evening star.
The legendary orchard was far from the real world, in both location and appearance, and because of its priceless bounty, a perpetual temptation for those driven by greed.
When someone broke in to steal the apples, the circle of displeasure, complaint and requests for retribution invariably closed in the Underworld, a constant source of annoyance for Hades, who was expected to do something about it.
“Who was it this time?” Persephone asked.
“It was one of ours, actually. Eris decided to take it upon herself and plot against Hera. You remember Hera, don’t you?”
“Vividly,” Persephone replied.
Hera took exception to the smallest slight, never forgave an offense, and always made sure to drag the entire Olympus into her drama, satisfied only when she was the center of attention.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 8.1 The Blessed Isles

Persephone stood tall on the bow of the ship, against the breeze. 
Behind her, the fortune’s chosen, the ones who managed to navigate its treacherous waters through three lifetimes in a row, without reproach, were gazing towards the islands in the distance with apprehension and awe, not yet able to believe their luck, eyes moist for what they left behind. 
Lost for words, they feared the promise of this new and wonderful existence was just a mirage which would dissipate the second they stopped believing it.
Hades stood next to his wife, like a symbolic shelter against the winds.
He always attended these happy occasions when mortals earned themselves the right to perpetual bliss.
Also, he loved the Fortunate Isles, which he rarely found the time to visit, with his schedule as full as it always was, and besides, he had promised Persephone.
The islands were two, so close to each other one could think them a single land mass. They weren’t that far from the shore, but a whole world removed in terms of privilege and grace, even compared to the Elysian Fields.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 7.3 Behind the Bronze Gates

There was much sound and fury in Hades’ chambers the next morning, the clamor of many people speaking in anger, and above them all Persephone recognized the voice of Zeus.
She got dressed in a hurry and sneaked into the anteroom of the large conference hall where Hades was involved in some very heated negotiations with an entire delegation of Olympians, which, as an extraordinary circumstance, included Zeus himself.
“We’re doing everything in our power to retrieve him safely. As I told you, no effort is being spared.”
“But how was it possible, brother? I thought you ruled this kingdom supreme! Just command your minions to deliver him at the gates.”
“If the Hecatonchires were commandable, you wouldn’t need to keep them in Tartarus. They’re trained to some degree,” Hades replied, “but definitely don’t exhibit the level of obedience you seem to expect.”
“So, you’re telling me there is no hope and you can’t do anything about this?”
“Quite the opposite, brother. I just told you every effort is being made.”
“Yeah. That means you can’t do anything about it. I’m so disappointed in you, Hades. I entrusted you with the fate of one of our finest, and now he’s lost in Tartarus with no expectations of rescue.”

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 7.2 The Cave of Hypnos

When she wanted to take a break from her daily activities, Persephone wandered along the banks of the Lethe, under the slender branches of the willows, which arched to touch its waters, and walked all the way to the cave of Hypnos.
She went there mostly to pick poppies, whose flowers surrounded the quiet realm of the god of sleep.
The bright red blooms glowed from afar in the perpetual sunset, a bucolic image whose beauty was worthy of a painter’s canvas: a small tributary of the river Lethe was dancing between large boulders atop a rocky bed, surrounded by poppies, lavender and chamomile, and other soothing herbs, in the shadow of large linden trees, perpetually in bloom.
The fragrance surrounding the place, it had no match in existence, not even in the gardens of Olympus.
The flowers were always swarmed by bees, the goddess’s faithful companions, who built their hives in nearby tree hollows, which were dripping with melting wax, amber, and honey in the warmth of the sunset.
The softest grass grew on the banks of the stream, tall and bright green, so delicate its texture seemed unreal, and even its touch was barely felt under the fingers.
The little stream bubbled along its winding banks and entered the cave, getting lost in its depths.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 7.1 Politik

She rushed home, crossing the bridge over the Acheron, past the elm of false dreams, through the mucky banks of the Vale of Mourning and the orchard to get home faster, so she had to stop and shake the pumice dust off her sandals before she entered the palace.
Hermes was waiting in the loggia overlooking the gardens, impatient, as always.
“Great! You’re here.”
“Good morning to you too, cousin.”
“Aha. Yeah. Listen. The cave of Cumae gets water in it every time there is a storm; it needs a new levee to fend off tidal flooding. And consolidation. That project had sat on the shelf way too long, if you ask me.”
“So, what’s the hold-up?”
“The Cumaean Sibyl thinks making any changes equals blaspheming Apollo. She barricaded herself in the cave and refuses to prophesy. She threatened to burn the last three books, too. To tell you the truth, I think it’s a shake-down. Greedy wretch’s demands for coin never cease.”
“Well, look on the bright side: she can’t burn them if they’re underwater. Not that it would be an improvement.”
“Don’t joke, cousin, it’s serious. The woman is on a mission.”