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She is cautious of Hades the moment she first lays eyes upon him.
In this conspiracy of joint parricide, it is inevitable that they end up in the same places: at the corners, on the edges, distant stars glittering from afar while their more bellicose brothers and sisters occupy the stage and spout off all manner of rhetoric. No one in their little party of relatives actually needs convincing. If the six of them do not kill their parents, it is only a matter of time before Cronus finishes the job -- permanently, this time.
Demeter has no love for performances. To her, there is no difference between a promise and a threat. Both must always be carried out, or else they are worthless.
Zeus is the loudest of their ragged rebel band. Hera is a close second, alternating between shouting at Zeus and shouting with him, beckoning them all to war. Their odds are pathetically poor. Even with the Hecatoncheires freed and the Cyclopes back at their hammers, the Titans outmatch them both in potency and in skill. What affinities their divine birthrights have given them remain weak, parasites which hang upon the spheres that the Titans have already established for themselves. Nothing truly belongs to Demeter yet. Until she and the other gods have wrestled the heavens away, they have no world to govern, and so do not have the authority to lay claim and declare, this is mine.
Demeter is the most experienced of all the Titans' offspring -- but she is still a new god, as these things go, and none of them have a particularly strong sense of their powers yet. Her gifts are only slightly keener than her younger kin. The shape of herself is a seed buried in the frostbitten loam, waiting for the right temperature and moisture to crack its shell.
In the meantime, she gathers words to describe her power like an armful of pebbles slung in a shawl: time, motion, repetition. Sacrifice.
Demeter has yet to know the full reach of her own essence, but until she can seize this world from her progenitors, she will never find out.
Like her, Hades is drawn to thoughtfulness and solemnity. Unlike her, he is dour, deeply embittered -- as if he knows how much he is being measured by the contrast of his brothers, and has begun to fill a chasm, drop by drop, with his subsequent resentment. She can respect his seriousness; she wants to like him, to find reasons to build a rapport. They are both creatures who know the importance of structure and methodology, and how much of each is required if any of them want to survive. He appears reasonable, and reason is in short supply these days, it seems.
But there is an anger festering already in Hades which burns even Demeter whenever she gets too close -- a grudge which considers everything else to be its enemy, and she keeps her distance.
One bird recognizes another, she thinks, and holds herself back.
In the center of the forest clearing, Zeus has begun to lecture once more of the importance of preemptive action. Nothing he says is something which Demeter has not already heard before. She has frequent doubts if he even truly comprehends any of it, or if he merely mimics back counsel from others. So when Demeter sees Hades similarly lurking underneath the shade of the surrounding trees, she gratefully takes advantage of the distraction and slides towards him instead.
Hades's greeting to her is no better than his brothers. "Nature," he intones, rolling the word in a dissolution of sounds, mockery in every one. "Couldn't you have chosen a more useful force to be empowered by? The Cyclopes have no idea how to turn flowers into a weapon."
Demeter breathes in slowly, and reminds herself that they are still on the same side. Technically. "Fair weather to you as well, Hades," she replies. "And not quite Nature. Not entirely, I think."
Hades leans back against the tree, conveying offense artfully through the angle of his shoulders, the insolent lift of his jaw. Zeus's voice continues to rise, once more proclaiming the need to provide the newly-freed Cyclopes with enough tools for their forges to do their work. Hestia has given up trying to get a word in sidelong; fire glimmers along her fingertips as she idly traces her hand across a fallen log, branding the bark in abstract swirls and profanities. "Close enough."
Half-curious and half-irritated, Demeter presses the matter. "You're in a similar situation with your powers, I'd imagine. Have you learned how to strike things dead with a touch?"
The other god snorts, arching an eyebrow. "No," he admits. "We're both useless."
She wants to say more, to take advantage of the rare moment of self-deprecating humor to ease the conversation between them -- but then Zeus begins to loudly claim that price is no object and that there is no sacrifice which cannot be made in exchange for victory, and both she and Hades look, despairingly, at the man claiming to be their fittest leader.
"Here is the cue for wiser minds, I suppose." Hades pushes himself upright, shaking his head in muted disgust. "Best think quickly then, Demeter. We will need every advantage we can get."
She watches, alone, as Hades quickly inserts himself into the conversation in order to prevent his brother from literally selling off his own would-be kingdom. She can taste the bait of the insult. But rushing into an understanding of her own power will only blind her to its subtleties -- like seizing a shield and thinking the best use of it would be as a serving tray, and missing the true potency of it forever.
Demeter is the descendant of Hyperion and Theia, as much an heir to power as any of those assembled. She will be patient. She will not be cowed.
The next time she and Hades have the opportunity to exchange words in private leisure, they are in the midst of a battlefield.
Neither of them have ever made efforts to speak together in the time since Zeus and Hera's rallies; there are more important matters at hand than personal relationships. Too often, it feels as if she and Hades are the only ones taking the whole affair seriously, studying plans ahead of time and actually considering the odds, evaluating backup plans and developing avenues of retreat. Hera is too bloodthirsty; Zeus, too pompous. The two of them egg one another on, each seeking to assert themselves over the other in this role of leadership, equals in their worst ways as well as their best.
Demeter and Hades have managed, so far, a professional courtesy, and that is enough.
Beyond the cliff face, Hyperion is raging. A mountain cracks open underneath a swing of his massive arm, sliding down in pieces like an anthill kicked open. Each one of his fingernails is larger than Helios's chariot. Lightning streaks through the air, glaring off the disc of Zeus's shield.
Demeter had been assigned the western flank, intended to goad the Titan back towards Zeus and Poseidon if the battle looked about to turn into a rout. A foolish waste of her time, as she had tried to tell them all; there is no way Hyperion would run. Instead, Hades has fallen back to her vantage point, sheltering behind the ridge with his Helm gripped under his arm, his spear blackened with soot. Even invisibility will not shroud against a Titan's firestorm.
"I should have offered the Cyclopes more in terms of payment," he says, glaring at his Helm: a rare half-admission towards a mistake on his part. "Perhaps then, they might have been motivated to arm us properly."
"One would imagine that saving them should have counted for some manner of coin," is Demeter's reply, offering him back that concession as a tiny sop to his pride.
He wastes it, of course, by turning his ire instantly upon her. "Nature able to help us at all here?" he puffs. Ash freckles his brow. He rubs the back of his hand against it, smearing the specks into broad bands. "Or did you bother to learn anything more useful than conjuring a few shrubs?"
The spear Varatha is slick in his hands, coated with ichor and sweat. Some of the blood belongs to him. Too much. Perhaps, not enough.
Demeter ducks her head around the rocks and jerks back just in time to miss the fireball streaking past, grass scorched black in its wake. "Seasons," she corrects, which is a concept she's still struggling to wrap her head around, or at least how they can be used rather than passively observed. "It might surprise you to learn that Nature is more than a patch of weeds."
Hades's lip curls. "Little flowers and insects, easily sprouted -- and easily slain. Fragile, mortal things." He attempts to resettle his grip on Varatha, and is forced to switch the weapon from hand to hand as he wipes down his palms, leaving ungainly streaks on his robes. "What good are those against beings as mighty as the Titans?"
Demeter tests the Twin Fists again. The gloves open and close with liquid smoothness, metal flexing over her bones. The forge-masters knew their talents well. She balls up her hands, pleased with the way Malphon reacts, its power humming eagerly across each of her knuckles.
"Watch, and find out," she tells him, and then steps out from behind the rocks to go murder her father.
Eldest of the new gods, Demeter is still young when she goes to battle for her life. But there are things she has already begun to learn by the time she drives her fist directly into her sire's skull: the initial blow that sends him staggering back, howling, in time to open his eyes for a second.
Spring renews the fertility of the land, but not without cost. Too much fresh growth leads to death if it is allowed to spawn unchecked. Algae chokes a pond. Piglets tear up the soil, deer overfeasting on new shoots. Rainy seasons which never cease end up washing away the richer topsoil needed for crop cultivation. Other plants refuse to germinate at all without the chill of winter to signal their seeds. Over the slow course of each year, life drains vitality from the earth.
Life -- stressed by changing temperatures, placed under disadvantages -- must be allowed to die.
New plants cannot grow if there is no available soil to feed them. Trees blot out the light beneath their branches, their massive roots drinking first before the smaller brush can have a sip. If the seasons never vary, then there is no natural check upon the land. There is no opportunity for something else to rise.
In animals, each generation of offspring draws their strength from the blood and marrow of their mothers. Only a very few are lucky enough to be born without feeding on another's essence first.
The longer they are carried, the more they take.
From the greatest gods to the smallest worms, the cycle of seasons endures. Those who desire to be born must devour those yet living, if they wish to have a chance to survive.
It does not miss Demeter's attention when the Fates grant the three-fold layers of creation to the male half of the Titans' offspring. Not to Hera. Not to Hestia, who rolls her eyes behind Poseidon's back and calmly loads another round into Exagryph -- and, of course, not to Demeter.
The boys are still guffawing and slapping each other on their backs even as Demeter is shaking her father's blood off her gloves. It is stickier than she expected, clinging in long, ichorous trails to the Twin Fists, like ruby mucus glistening in the light. She frowns disapprovingly at the mess. With all that's happened so far, rinsing them off in the nearest stream might only spawn some vengeful new god from the currents, confused and thrashing about before it embarks on a campaign to kill Demeter in turn.
She is still debating what best to do with the fluids of her sire when Zeus claps a thick hand upon her shoulder, breaking her out of her reverie.
"You must be glad to have this all done with, sister!" The heavy reek of his self-congratulations is as thick as an ambrosia haze, wafting off his breath. Demeter feels her spine stiffen. "Now you can get down to the business of tending to everything that needs -- shall we say -- gentler care, hmmm? Nurturing, and all that. Why, Hestia's already embraced her duty of the hearth! A fine example to us all with our new responsibilities, wouldn't you say?"
Demeter does not waste her energies in looking at him. "The seasons are hardly kind, foster-brother. Few mortals speak sweetly of a blizzard."
Swollen with triumph, Zeus refuses to acknowledge simple social cues. He pats her shoulder awkwardly; his fingers linger longer than she is comfortable. "Perhaps they might now, with the gifts we deliver to them! Why don't you go ask Hestia for ideas? Never met a more peaceable goddess than her! I'm sure you sisters must be used to having your little gossip sessions together -- we're quite lucky to have the three of you taking care of these young mortals for us!"
The air stings with lingering ash. Demeter breathes in slowly, and exhales just as carefully. As she does, she reminds herself of the afternoon when the Cyclopes had delivered the Rail of Adamant to them, explaining its use with careful gestures, and how all the gods had shied back, including Demeter. No one had dared to even touch the weapon until Hestia, wordlessly, had taken the Rail into her hands, and had effortlessly blasted a hole into the nearest tree.
"If you'll excuse me," Demeter notes dryly, "I need to assist in the carving up of our parents, so that their remains can be dispersed across Tartarus. Unless you would prefer to do this, O new King of the Olympians? Sawing through muscle does take a strong hand."
This time, she does look back over to Zeus, swinging her gaze up like Hestia aligning the Rail's sights -- and gladly, for she does so just in time to watch him blanch.
He makes a huffing sound into his beard, and then steps away, freeing her from the reach of his arm. "Well. That hardly seems -- well, that's rather menial, I suppose. I'll... let you handle it then, shall I?"
"By all means," she allows dryly, making a mocking nod of her head that she is certain Zeus will interpret as reverence. "Leave us nurturers to our work."
Over the ages, Demeter learns more about her domain, transforming it from what Cronus and Hyperion had relinquished into something belonging solely to herself now. It is a slow process, as methodical as the spring rain wearing down a stone. Each year, she is all the more glad that she did not listen to anyone's pressure to hurry up about it; only by listening has she finally heard the full cycle of the soil, and all of its secrets.
Her sense of that same law guides her forward, navigating how she can best influence matters. She may have power over the seasons, but that power will mean nothing if she does not act with care, planning for months in advance, and dozens of generations to come. No season acts on its own. It inherits the leavings of its predecessors; it passes on its reserves to the next. Neither spring nor autumn can afford to be selfish -- not without killing itself in turn.
Demeter's hands lead the way for a second time, digging into the soil as she chops through roots and hauls up vegetables, splitting branches from trees and dragging stormclouds through the sky to save fields ravaged by drought. She keeps them fixed upon the wheel of seasons, turning everything forward with the same merciless inexorability of a millstone, crushing thousands of small lives into the fodder needed for the next generation to bloom.
Her worshippers, by default, are practical folk, those who know how easily one can live and die by a single harvest. She grants her blessings willingly to the farmers and shepherds, whose pragmatism most often matches hers: who know that sometimes, you must kill the very creatures you raised from birth, who cull their herds and burn their fields when blight takes the wheat. They accept her gifts with a gratitude she has never seen from her divine kin. She likes them better, too. Mortals have a deference to them; they do not question her power, knowing how their livelihoods survive under her watch.
But, over time -- harvest after harvest delivered without fail -- Demeter watches as other gods begin to take first pick of offerings and mortal ceremonies. Farmers may respect her -- but they fear Zeus and the fickleness of his lightning, which can set entire fields ablaze. Fishing villages and merchants alike pray to Poseidon, seeking safer ocean tides. As towns and cities settle into place, establishing governments directed by mortals with more of a care for commerce than fertilizer, offerings that once went to Demeter begin to go elsewhere instead: platitudes to soothe overgrown children who rage and fling disasters around at whim, often for no better reason than boredom.
Demeter watches this decline, and frowns.
Her devout begin to wane. Their pragmatism is double-edged. Even though they recognize Demeter's authority, it is her tolerance which they take for granted. She has provided them with endlessly stable seasons, and now they believe those seasons will always remain -- as if Demeter's wrath is a negligible thing, less terrifying than an empty grainery. She will forgive them quickly enough, they shrug. She always has.
The spring, they say into their cups, will always come.
It is a disgrace -- all the more so for how slowly this disregard has grown, like an infection within the soil, or a worm which chews the roots and spoils the crop. But tantrums are beneath her. Even if mortal humans are foolish and short-lived, Demeter's business is that of the entire world. She takes her comfort there, in ensuring that the earth remains strong enough to outlast what mortals reap from it, and chooses to turn a blind eye to their shallowness.
She is not so fragile as to need their love in order to perform her own work. The seasons have their rules.
In the emptiness of mortal affection, Demeter invests herself in the world instead. She helps deliver foals and calves, blood and other fluids spattering her arms. She teaches orchards to open their petals to the winds and bend their branches to breaking with fruit. She reminds nymphs of the need to tend their groves -- and she kills them, too, in calm necessity when the winter comes in, freezing the ones which have taken disease and allowing their trees to be replaced.
Her hands become as thick and calloused as Hephaestus's. Even though the slope of her hands are narrow, her knuckles are wide and flat in contrast to the rest of the fingers, gnarled with her strength. Breaking a Titan with her fists is nothing compared to uprooting an oak whose roots have gone eight forearms deep into the soul, stubbornly coiling around boulders to fix it in place more firmly than a mountain. She coaxes seeds to open their cases, convincing them to grow even as she plans ahead to smother them in snow. The fruit of spring must be devoured by the animals of summer, the roots of autumn, and then the teeth of winter -- all before spring has its own turn to feast again.
Everything eats and is eaten in turn, in Demeter's law.
The first time Zeus has a good look at her hands, he cannot help but comment.
"Well, well!" he bellows, making the jest echo to every corner of the chamber and beyond. They are at a feast in Olympus, trapped in some bawdy celebration acknowledging his kingship and authority over all of them. Again. "Looks like your sisters must still be giving you all the worst chores, eh?"
She hates him. She has the luxury to do this: Hera was the one who wed him, and Demeter has no need to keep the peace. Instead, she looks at this little thunder-king, who had needed his brother to barter a fair price from the forge-masters in order to have his lightning bolts smelted for him, and thinks that he has never touched the soil and breathed in the scent of moss and loam -- save as a pretense to lure some new maiden to be claimed.
"My hands have always been strong, foster-brother," she reminds him coolly. "To the benefit of us all, if you would recall the Twin Fists."
"Ah, yes. Those things." Zeus wrinkles his nose. "Perhaps we should have asked for a better weapon for you instead, back then. Something ranged like your sisters chose. Rather sensibly too -- they keep you ladies out of the thick of battle, ha ha!"
The Twin Fists had been as light as fish-scales when Demeter had worn them. Each punch had been strong enough to split open fresh ravines in the earth. They had protected her from the blistering heat of her father's blood as she had driven her hands into his chest, and torn open the forest of his ribcage.
Demeter reminds herself of the way her father's bones had screeched as she looks up diffidently towards the ceiling. "They worked well enough for our needs, I suppose."
Shaking his head, Zeus fails to mark her expression. "But such a terrible experience to put you through, sister. After all, you are the giver of life! That's what seasons and nature are all about, correct? Flowers blooming, and all that."
For all the times that Demeter has heard that assumption, it has somehow never become toothless. Years have passed since they have slain the Titans, and yet no one, it seems -- other than her sisters -- ever actually bothered to learn what Demeter can do. She can see the idiocy of it, the same idiocy that had landed the world in the hands of three doltish brothers, and that knowledge does not make the situation better one bit.
"You know nothing about what I should or should not be, foster-brother," she says, finally losing all patience at last. "And the seasons involve much more than granting life."
"Of course," Zeus replies grandly, as if she has been the one causing trouble the entire time, and he has been the one patiently putting up with it. He leans forward, one hand sliding up against her arm, breath tickling her face. "But creating life is the most fun part, isn't it?"
It is not the first time that Zeus has made such overtures. Her brother-in-law is not shy about his conquests. Wedded to the goddess of marriage, he demonstrates his devotion through infidelity, spiting the power that his wife stands for by never asking her permission before finding a fresh bedmate.
Demeter had asked her sister again about it, after the business with the swan. King of the Olympians, Hera had said, trying to laugh it off. He does like to brag, doesn't he?
But then Hera's laughter had fallen flat, and her gaze had slid away into an empty corner of the room, and she hadn't said anything at all for a long, long while.
Even if Zeus will not remember such things, Demeter will not forget. "Best remove your hand from me, foster-brother," she drawls, unimpressed. "Or else your legendary fertility may find itself suddenly lacking."
He is quick to detach himself from her, a glance down to himself as if he expects to see the ice claiming his nether regions already. "Of course, good sister -- Lady Demeter, I should say. Of course."
She is more fond of the mortals than she should be, in the end. Her foster-brothers are miserable company, and her sisters have begun to defend themselves by avoiding them as much as possible, or by spending time with their children and the other new gods instead. Demeter cannot stand it. Everywhere she goes, she cannot escape how the Fates have toyed with them, locking the world down into a rulership which stagnates further with each passing year.
Mortals are equally systematic in their insults, but they are ignorant of so much by default -- and that, at least, is marginally more tolerable than gods which should possess divine wisdom. Even with their withered worship, a few humans still remember the older ways. They have more deference for her than her foster-brothers, leaving offerings to her in small, humble shrines, sacrificing precious time they could be using for labor in celebrations to her instead, their feet dancing circles in their fields as if to inscribe their prayers into the deepest roots.
Despite her best resolve -- despite how their overall respect of her fades -- Demeter gravitates back towards them, allowing her heart to slowly welcome them back in.
It lures her into forgetting one of her own rules: that everything has a cost.
Everything that is mortal dies. Humans are no less vulnerable to the cycle of seasons. There are mortals -- and even weaker gods -- who seek variations of escaping this, and rarely succeed. Dipping children in rivers, asking for eternal life without eternal youth, or for eternal slumber without waking. Being turned into stars. Being turned into rocks. Only by becoming fully divine can mortals escape the Underworld, and sometimes not even then. It is mortal blood which limits them, condemning them to an existence of powerlessness and envy, desiring treasures from the world without ever being able to earn them on their own.
Like Demeter's most faithful, who all ended up dying from the most basic, foolish injuries and infections, wounded in the daily course of tilling the earth and wrestling their herds. Like Demeter's daughter, who was born fragile from the start.
Her precious, wretched Kore: half-mortal, all weakness.
In a surprising display of decency, Zeus gives her room to grieve.
Not enough, however.
She is traveling through Mount Olympus only by necessity, a shortcut between one corner of the world and another, when Zeus encounters her in the hall. At first, she thinks it to be a momentary intersection of glances and nods; then he steps forward, clearing his throat, and she is forced to acknowledge his existence by default.
"Well-wishes to you, Lady Demeter," he says, leaving room for her to walk around him if she desires. It is as close as the man ever gets to empathy. Others would say that Demeter should be grateful for that much. Perhaps.
But gratitude is not the emotion thrashing in Demeter's chest right now. She hesitates, every impulse yelling at her to turn around and simply walk in the other direction, rather than be dragged into conversation with the man.
She quells it -- with an effort.
"Foster-brother," she acknowledges, and then begins to cut past him, giving him a decent berth.
But he stops her with his voice and an upraised hand, though he still does not dare to block her way with his body. "Demeter -- listen. We are all sorry to see Kore gone from Mount Olympus. But you've already mourned far longer than is seemly. Stop your search. Return to your work. You'll be much more clear-headed with that to focus on, I assure you."
She can hear her own breath coming sharp as she turns the full force of her glare upon him. One of Kore's hair ribbons is tangled between her fingers; Demeter rubs her thumb restlessly against it, a reminder to herself to stay calm, and remain focused on what truly matters.
"Do not speak to me as if I am hysterical from sorrow," she bites out, the crack in her voice like that of ice shattering. "As if everything I do is not premeditated and calculated. As if my anger is mistaken, O King of Olympus."
Zeus flushes, affront reddening his cheeks like an ambrosial haze. "Women lose children all the time," he insists. "It's a natural enough event. I am very sorry she is gone, Demeter, but you'll forget your grief once you have another. Best hurry up about that -- we can't let the fields stay dormant forever, you know."
At this, Demeter does turn. It does not matter which direction she goes in: only that she is walking away from Zeus, away from the emptiness of her quarters on Olympus, and away from another futile search that will provide her with as few answers as before.
Hestia gives her a shawl from her own loom for comfort, inviting Demeter to sit with her by the fireside. The vast hearths which warm Olympus are never silent and are all connected, lit by the same primal heat. Demeter curls her legs beneath her and watches quietly as the flames crackle, devouring each log which Hestia patiently sacrifices to its hunger.
The callouses on Demeter's hands are rough along the shawl. The nicks of her nails snag the fabric. They used to tangle just as easily on the ribbons that she would braid in her daughter's hair, decorating her in green and blue and gold, before they would travel through the fields together and coax the seeds to wakening. It hadn't been enough for mortals to simply be ungrateful. They had taken Kore for their own, too: simply another harvest, another fruit from the tree to be plucked and enjoyed for themselves.
As she sits and seethes, watching the fire gnaw through a fresh stack of wood, Demeter remembers something else about her sister's hearth. When one sits as a supplicant might at Hestia's feet, and turns their head a certain way, they can see past the curtain of merry flames. Behind that fire, an endless inferno stretches out. It roars louder than any waterfall or tempest, as if the stones frame a portal into the deepest fires of the earth itself: lava roiling in molten glory, melting even the bones and flesh of the Titans into char.
But few come to Hestia in willing subservience. Her fate -- to be overlooked, to be thought tame and harmless -- mirrors Demeter's own.
Demeter has always been at war. Her battlefield renews itself every twelvemoon, and she picks her way over the fallen, fallow fields, sowing the deaths of plant and animal alike in the wake of her footsteps. Humans knew the trappings of winter long before they could even conceive of what organized aggression might look like among their kind. Nature is war's antecedent, and Ares is a fool to think that the mortal realm is only discovering such things now, not when every hawk and spider and fish has always been engaged in a fierce competition to survive at any cost.
Humans have had their time. Even they wax and wane. Under the protection of Mount Olympus, they have flourished to a self-indulgence worthy of Zeus himself. Now they must know what it is like to be on the receiving end of the cycle: to die and make way for better inheritors to take their place.
Sitting and staring into the inferno of her sister's endless flames, Demeter pulls the shawl tighter around her shoulders, and thinks of winter.
Her decision is not a hasty one. As she told Zeus, she has always considered each of her actions before she takes them. The failures of one season will always leave consequences for the next. Demeter would be a poor Goddess of the Seasons indeed if she did not think in terms of the future.
As she goes down to the mortal realm, she listens one last time for Kore's voice.
The earth is quiet. The farmhouses in the distance are dark, their families all asleep and waiting for the dawn. Demeter can hear the song of insects; she can glimpse the smudge of owl wings soaring noiselessly on the air currents, hunting for mice. The field she has landed in is freshly plowed. It has not yet been seeded, taking its time to soak up the rain first, gathering its strength for the next crop.
The soil is cool against her bare feet.
The finality of the decision reminds her of the last time she saw Hades -- the last time any of them saw him, not since he retreated to the Underworld and shut the door behind him. In the days after the Titans had been conquered, they had all been preparing to formally assume the duties which the Fates had assigned to them: all so uncertain and clumsy, adorned with the blood of their parents, discovering new deities born from the violence of their succession. But Hades had already begun to stink with resentment. He and Zeus had escalated to nightly quarrels, until everyone could hear it throughout Olympus, Hades's bile raging against everything and blaming everyone equally.
In this, Demeter had been as culpable as the rest. She had not argued for anyone else to take the position the Fates had given him, and for good reason.The realm of the dead had too many things that could go wrong; if it had been bequeathed to Zeus, or even Poseidon, it would surely decay into ruin. As the prison for both mortal souls and the remains of the Titans, it needed a strict hand to control it.
Hades -- like it or not -- had been the only reasonable choice.
Their last meeting had been like their first: a resentful one, haunted by the influence of their kin. Everyone else had been dragged into feasting and Demeter -- again -- had avoided them as much as possible. Olympus was still being haphazardly pieced together, with rooms and realms still under construction. With the defeat of the Titans, other forces were settling into place; Chaos had vanished and the Furies had woken, the latter all looking uneasily at the gods as if they weren't sure if they should or shouldn't try to punish them.
It was a hard time for everyone, trying to decide what it meant to have ownership of Mount Olympus, and also the entire world.
She had ended up near Hades's quarters just as he had been leaving them, burdened with a few bags gripped in his hands and slung over his shoulder. Demeter had stared, puzzled; his Helm had been under his arm, and she could not tell if he was about to put it on, or simply stomp around looking as if he was about to. "Are your rooms not to your liking, Hades?"
"My rooms?" he had scoffed, swinging the sacks hard enough backwards that they had struck against the doorway, making a muffled clatter. "Guest quarters, all of it. Do not presume to claim that any of you would wish me to actually dwell here. How could I possibly have the time for it? Half my days would be spent journeying to the Underworld and back. Wasted time." Hefting the Helm, he had turned his dour scowl directly upon her. "Though I am certain you are as pleased as the rest of them to see me go, Demeter. Does it disappoint you that I am leaving? I thought you might have more sense in your head than the rest, but it seems that you're as much of a greedy fool as the rest of them. You will have to chatter with someone else about your gardening plans now, I'm afraid. Try Poseidon -- I'm certain he would be happy to water your fields."
The outrage of it was all that Demeter registered for a blank moment: a nameless fire in her senses, hot as Hestia's inferno, as if a hearth had eaten her heart and replaced it with itself. She hadn't known what to begin defending herself against first. The crassness of Hades lumping her in with his brothers would have been enough. Yet he had the arrogance to assume that, somehow, his poor treatment was worse than anyone else's -- as if he was the only one of them who had ever been treated poorly, whose talents had been glossed over every time, who had been regulated to being merely a follower instead of someone with their own voice and thoughts.
It was a bitterness that Demeter knew was already lodged within her own chest; she woke to it every morning,
She had known. But she could not, would not stand for the insult either, not when every single accusation lacked even a grain of truth.
"You are correct that I will surely never have to see you again," she had said, with no small amount of satisfaction. The thought of Hades being removed from the mortal world had never given her pleasure before -- but being able to openly lash back against the offense was more than worth it. "Far beneath the earth, away from the warm touch of Helios's chariot and the generosity of Selene's grace. There is nothing which the seasons would need to bother with down there. Our realms are, unfortunately, apart."
He had glared at her, fury building with each additional moment that she did not back away in apology. "It does not matter. Everything mortal comes to me in the end. And there it stays, forever." With one heavy step forward, he had pressed into her space, until she could smell the oils of his beard. "Everything you have ever made, everything you are proud of -- I will own it, Demeter. Remember that. Everything that was once yours will become mine."
That had been enough.
"On the contrary, Hades," Demeter had replied steadily, staring him down without wavering. "You forget that life must sprout before it can wither. All I need do to deny you is to ensure that nothing new can bloom."
The threat had been enough to startle Hades out of his tirade. He had stared at her, eyes widening, as if seeking clarification that it was all a bluff; then the scowl returned to his features, blotting out all opportunity to look for anything else.
"My brother was right," he had sneered, and did not bother to say which one. "You truly are a frigid witch."
Before she could counter that one, Hades had stalked away, spurning her completely and taking the final word with him.
That had been the last time she had ever seen Hades in person.
But Demeter remembers the same conclusion now, as she stands in an empty field that waits for life to quicken it again. She remembers the same insults: a thousand assumptions of meekness from gods and mortals alike, directed against both her and her sisters. She can already imagine how Hades would be laughing now about Kore's disappearance, chortling behind his bristling beard about how weak Demeter was. How poor a mother the Goddess of Seasons had turned out to be, allowing her own daughter to be reaped like a field of grain for mortal sustenance.
Even the halls of the Underworld can be stifled, Demeter thinks. All it takes is time and patience.
Winter has always been an inevitability, on a cycle of seasons as long as an age. Humans have lived and died before by the thousands, and yet they are no better than before. A greater purge is needed this time, in order to remove their complacency. A hard frost, deep enough and long enough to freeze out the disease of ingratitude, and teach mortals to never disrespect the gifts of the earth again.
Demeter kneels on the tilled field, sinking her fingers into the soil. It parts easily to her touch. Her arms sink all the way up to her elbows, tiny pebbles and burrowing insects and worms sliding against her skin. She does not cower squeamishly away from the dirt. All of its contents are known to her, and Demeter has used each of them in turn.
Unlike the other gods, Demeter never needed forge-masters to grant her this power: she delved for it herself.
Ice comes easily to her grip, as natural as the Twin Fists. Frost buckles the ground. The chill of it radiates out from her palms; her command passes from seed to seed, root to root, ordering them back to sleep once more. Half-sprouted plants curl up in their beds. Insects and animals tuck themselves deeper in their hives and burrows, starving quietly as they wait for their hibernation to end.
Demeter tells the world to die, and it does.
As the earth closes itself away, she straightens up, shaking the dirt off. Frozen chunks of soil tumble from her skin. A grub, lanced through by the chill, curls and writhes in the grooves left behind by her fingers.
The spring will always be there, waiting. But not yet. Not until Demeter deems it so.
After all, she has always been very good with her hands.