Chapter Text
The vineyard provided the safety for many private conversations between War and Spring. They seemed very different at first, but flowers bloom in blood-soaked earth often enough. Plants do not discriminate between fertilizers, and they find corpses to be just as good as any loam. Sometimes, they would sit side by side, but often, they would be on either side of the trellis as Ares worked, and she would walk up and down on the other side. He could hear her footsteps and the softness of her breath, but not see the radiance of her face, and he found that this was when she most filled his imagination.
“Isn’t Zeus your dad?”
“So he says,” he replied.
“How’d you get put on trial then? Isn’t Poseidon your uncle, too?” He could imagine the confused look on her face, her lower lip jutting out just a bit.
And he shrugged. “They thought it would teach me a lesson. Neither of them actually cares about what happened. They only care about justice when it suits them. Especially Zeus.”
“My mom doesn’t think much of Olympus, I think. Otherwise, why would she be here?”
“Yeah, me and her are the ones on earth the most. And you, I guess.”
“I don’t have much of a choice.”
“No? You're an adult. You can leave if you choose.”
“Well, I'm going to. When I'm a hundred, she says I can go to college. Finally.” She huffed after that word, and then kicked the dirt slightly.
“You should have already. She’s trying to keep you trapped.”
“I know, right?”
“Yeah! It’s irresponsible of her.”
Persephone peeked around the end of the row as he got to the end with a basket full of grapes. Then, she looked down and frowned. She picked up a bunch, holding it up to the light.
“Look,” she said. The grapes were dusted with a white, powdery sheen that Ares hadn’t thought to question when he was cutting it off. “They’ve got mildew.”
“And that’s bad?”
“Yeah, makes them taste gross.”
“You should eat them.”
“What? No, ew!” She giggled.
Ares took it and shoved the grapes at her mouth. “Go on, just a nibble! A bite!”
She sputtered and pushed it away. “Blagh! No! Stop that!” she laughed. He pulled them back.
“They can’t be that bad. It just makes them taste bad right? It won’t make me puke my guts out?” Ares narrowed his eyes. He picked one off and rolled it between his thumb and index. Then, without an answer, he popped it into his mouth, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed.
Persephone blinked. “How is it?”
“Bad.”
She sniffed slightly, considered the grapes, and then took a mildew-y grape and popped it in her mouth. She spat it out. “Ugh. Why did I do that? That’s disgusting.”
“It just tastes a little mouldy.”
“People don’t eat mould!”
“You can if you’re hungry,” Ares said matter of factly. “I’ve eaten bread with the worms still in it.” He popped another grape in his mouth.
“I wouldn’t.” But Persephone was clearly amused.
They took a few moments to sort out any mildew-affected grapes. They threw them into the grass where the cows would be grazing later. Cows aren’t that picky about taste. They were done in about an hour.
Persephone sighed. “I should be getting back.”
Just imagining the isolation that awaited him made Ares pang for her return before she had even left, and it made him simmer. However, he nodded. Then, he looked towards the sky and sighed wearily. “It’s not fair that she has so much control over you. You should be able to do what you want.” His eyes flashed slightly, pulsing a gentle red, and his aura ran down Persephone’s neck like warm blood from a wound she couldn’t feel yet.
And he saw her eyes drip with ruby red as she nodded, and she squeezed the grape in her hand until it popped, red juice squirting between her fingers. “It’s not fair. You’re the most interesting in this stupid place, and I have to sneak in and out of the field like a thief in the night.”
“I mean, everyone’s asleep at night. That might make it easier.”
Persephone straightened up, looking surprised as if she hadn’t considered the possibility. She smirked. “There are other things that could make it easier, too.”
But, before he could ask what she meant by that, she pushed her palm against his tunic, and then immediately sprinted away. Ares didn’t understand until he looked down and saw the red handprint of grape juice.
“YOU KARIÒLA —!”
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He was taking the grapes to the storehouse in their great wicker baskets (each basket being the circumference and height of a small dining table), and after stacking them up together, he sighed and slumped against the wall for a moment’s rest. The foul taste was clinging to his mouth, and he regretted eating them, even if it had been funny.
Just as he was sitting, he heard muffled voices from outside of the barn. Being a man of opportunity, he pressed his ear into the wood to listen as closely as he could.
“And you’re sure it was her?” came the matronly voice of Demeter. “It doesn’t sound like her.”
Ares was startled to then hear the voice of Hermes. When had he come back? “No, I definitely saw her.”
“You were flying, couldn’t you only see the top of her head?”
“No one else is that pink.”
There was an audible sigh of frustration that Ares knew far too well. “ Reh maláka , we had to be sent Zeus’ son, of all people! If he finds out–”
“How would he? He’s not exactly renowned for his brains. ”
“That is true.” There was a pause. “I’ll just make sure she doesn’t run off anymore. The letters are—”
The voices faded with accompanying footsteps as the two walked away from the barn.
What the hell had that been about? Ares wished he could warn Persephone about what was coming. However, he didn’t see a way he could do that easily. He didn’t even know where he could find her, as she had always come to see him.
The possibility of not getting to see her again made his mouth cold and dry, and he roughly swallowed around the feeling. It might not have been her specifically. She wasn’t anything particularly special, except for being the one friendly face that sought him out, his only companion here so far. He didn’t like the idea of being alone.
Meanwhile, Persephone was sitting on the bank of the stream where the nymphs went to swim and bathe. She held a book the size of her head, thumbing through it and highlighting potions as she read. The nymphs were laughing as they dashed through the water after each other, and the sound didn’t distract Persephone; it just added to the atmosphere.
She wrote a note in the margins.
“Kore!”
She almost dropped her book. Then, she slumped back against the tree, looking up at the stern face of her mother. “Yeah, mom?”
“You’ve been talking to Ares.”
Persephone swallowed a stone of dread. “Uh— uh, what? No-o, I–”
“You don’t need to bother denying it. Someone saw you.” Demeter’s face was twisted with disapproval.
“Who?”
“Not important. That man is dangerous, and you should not be around him. Men like him will take advantage of you.”
Persephone snapped her book shut. “If he’s so dangerous, why is he even here? Why isn’t he in a dungeon?”
Her mother sighed, rolling her eyes. “Because he’s a son of Zeus. To punish the son so severely would reflect poorly on the father.” She waved away the question. “Nevertheless, you are not to speak to him again. To ensure that, every second of your days will be filled until you understand that.”
“ What? Mom, you can’t–”
“I can, and I will, young lady. You need to be studying for your testing anyway. This might just be a blessing in disguise for you.”
Persephone was aghast as Demeter left. Not only was she barred from seeing Ares (although she had already been banned from that), she was in essence going to be given so much work she didn’t have time to do anything else. Grounding via overloading. It was unfair. Persephone was an adult and should be able to choose what risk she wanted to take on. Anything to break up the monotony.
She growled at the thought.
The growl reminded her of an idea she had had earlier in the day. A smile bloomed on her face.
She opened her book again and resumed reading.
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Ares had eaten. He left the basket outside for someone to pick up. He went to bed as the sun was going down. However, as he was drifting off, he was kept awake by scratching at his door. It sounded like an animal, so he rolled over. However, the scratching continued. Minute after minute.
When he couldn’t take it anymore, he threw open the door.
A fox was sitting in front of his door, its head tilted expectantly.
“What the hell?” Ares said. “Shoo, I’m trying to sleep.” And he waggled his foot at it, trying to shepherd it back into the woods. But it chirruped, hopping from side to side, and Ares got the distinct impression it was laughing at him.
Only then, when his eyes were adjusting to the night light, did he realize that the fox was not red: it was pink.
He set his foot down. “Persephone. What do you want at this hour?”
The fox cackled again and then danced forward and back. She was working around whatever Demeter was doing to make sure she didn’t sneak out anymore. Well, Ares could play along.
Moments later, a massive gray wolf was galloping through the grass underneath the sparkling night sky, and at its side, a flash of pink, bounding and leaping over the leaves. It was the ecstasy of the wilderness that lead them that night, but Persephone was the one drawn most by the untamed earth. As the paws of the fox touched bare earth, flowers and shoots grew up after it, and in the middle of the night, flowers opened to welcome the Spring.
All the nocturnal animals sang, wind rushing in their ears. A thousand smells and sights for their new night-keen eyes, and they kept in time with each other, brushing their fur and whiskers together, if just to communicate in this world without words.
They lost themselves in the night. They lost themselves in the animals. Freedom sprawled out before them like infinite heaven, and they relished the ultimate.
Some might think it strange that Spring and War’s magic twined together like that, that they seemed to run step for step and beat for beat until they could not tell whose pawprints were whose. However, in the cycle of death and rebirth, the unrelated become woven inseparably together. In Sparta, the boys are born and handed a sword in the spring of their lives. Training in the hot summer, readying in the cold winter. Spring comes again. They fight and die, and fields are watered with the blood of heroes. From this sacralized ground, every flowering herb and grass blooms. Modern science tells us it’s the nitrogen in blood that makes plants love battlefields.
Myth would call to mind every other plant that grows from blood and death. The narcissus, the hyacinth, the sunflower, anemone windflowers, the peony, all beauty sprouting from death and gore. In another world, a maiden was picking violets when she was captured by a chariot pulled by black horses and taken underground to live with the dead.
So, it is important to realize that flowers are not innocent nor naive. The spring is not pure and lovely. It grows in bones and every crevice of rot because it is impartial. It makes these things beautiful and wild again. Spring gives birth to the wolves that will slay the calf, and it eats them all when it is their turn to die.