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Tamara had always seen herself as Persephone.
Taken way too soon by a man from the arms of her family, straight to hell. And what a long hell it had been. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to stop those memories from rushing back in front of her eyes, as they had done countless times before – it was too painful.
Instead, she kept her eyes closed and breathed in deeply, taking in the heartening scent of the purple hyacinths she grew in the Noris garden. When she was taken from Russia, Tamara couldn't bring many things with her to France - a few changes of clothes, a ring from her mother and some seeds from her garden, which was neither as big nor as luxurious as the garden in which she found herself. Since then, her only shelter was to see her flowers growing, regardless of where she was, like the goddess of the underworld herself.
So if she was supposed to be Persephone, why, when she opened her eyes and looked up, meeting Hélène's lost gaze, did she feel like Hades himself?
Maybe Tamara had spent too much time in the underworld after all. Perhaps, with the death of the man who took her as his wife and the abandonment of the only woman she had ever loved before Hélène, she had taken her place on a cold and haughty throne, meticulously caring for every soul from her past that still swam in her river Styx.
And now, Rene Noris had also been brought by Charon, with golden coins in his eyes, just six months after their marriage.
Tamara almost wanted to snicker when she thought of the irony, but she didn't. Instead, she turned her eyes back to the flowers, letting her hands nourish the soil once more as her tears fell onto the purple petals.
There, she had built, like a sanctuary, her own garden of shadows and, like Hades, she knew that there she would remain until the end of time – she had nowhere else to go. Tamara was trapped, once again, in a golden cage, built by her own fear and greed.
Even so, she continued to plant and care for each new species of flora every day, knowing that, at night, other feet walked the large land.
It's almost like a curse, Tamara reflected.
Since Rene's passing, Hélène no longer left her room during the day, avoiding any contact with her first and only lover, restricting herself to looking down at her through her bedroom window in an unsettling silence. She couldn't remember the last time she heard the girl's sweet voice.
But Tamara could hear her sobs and desolate cries at night, as the brunette sat beneath the punica granatum that had only recently begun to bloom. Only then, from the privacy of her own room, the roles were reversed and she spent hours on end watching her little Persephone, swallowed by the darkness of the underworld to which she had been kidnapped.
That day, however, she herself had fallen asleep under the same tree, selfishly wanting to feel any trace of Hélène's presence once more.
So when her eyes opened again, heavy and blurry, she thought for a moment she was in a dream. Not infrequently she used to see her angel in her purest dreams and most sordid nightmares, only to wake up in her bed, which was always as empty as her soul.
But this time, the ethereal figure remained standing right in front of her, looking at her with uncertainty in her bright brown eyes, like the fertile soil that carries the secrets of a blossoming forest. Without needing to take her gaze off the girl, she immediately knew that it was a full moon night, by how strongly her night-dark eyes and hair reflected the white starlight, a vision of earth's rebirth in human form.
“I just came to get...” Hélène hesitated, looking around.
"To get...?" Her voice was hoarse, but gentler than ever, like someone approaching a skittish little animal.
The brunette bit her lip, shaking her head with an exasperated sigh and turning around the tree, while Tamara still watched her. From under one of the stone benches, she took out a worn-out bag, probably from being outside for a long time.
Tamara wondered how she hadn't realized there was something there before.
Before she could take the first step back to the mansion, however, the taller woman grabbed her hand, not wanting to let her go.
“Why was this here?” She pointed with her chin at her bag, which Hélène was holding nervously.
“I use it to store... things,” she hesitated again.
"Things?" Tamara raised an eyebrow, making the younger girl swallow hard.
With a smirk, the redhead considered that she looked like a child caught making a mess. The thought quickly turned sour, however.
She was a child, Tamara. And you're a bastard for what you did to her.
Her gaze hardened involuntarily, letting her embarrassment turn into impulsiveness, holding the bag under Hélène's arm, who tried to snatch it from her hand.
“Let me see, Hélène.”
“Let me go, please." Her voice broke, trying to pull it out of her hold, causing its contents to fall to the floor at once. With a gasp, she bent down, trying to pick up the papers as quickly as possible, leaving Tamara stunned by the sob she let out. What was so important about those papers?
Crouching down in front of her, she stopped her frantic hands with her own, holding Hélène's chin with the other and making her look at her, showing her eyes watery and her cheeks red.
Quickly, she took one of the pages from her trembling hands, running her gaze over the beautiful handwriting, letting out a gasp of her own.
“Tamara,
You have more pieces of me than the desert has sand,
And I have less pieces of you than I can hold in my hand.”
Not for the first time, Tamara felt the weight of guilt on her shoulders, growing even more when a new sob escaped the girl in front of her. Once again, she had let her impulse prevail, right at the first opportunity Hélène had given her to show a side other than that of Hades. And now, looking at the face-up pages, she could see her name written again and again. Those were letters addressed to her.
You don't deserve her, Tamara.
And she knew it was true. Yet, she cupped her face in her hands as she used to, letting the paper fall and join the others, her blue eyes connecting with opal irises.
“Is that what you think, Hélène? That you don’t have me?”
Her beautiful face crumbled into fresh tears that Tamara quickly wiped away with her thumbs.
Oh, how wrong you are.
With a desperate sigh, Tamara looked around for a moment, searching for words that would express what she had never been able to, no matter how painful it was to keep her love a secret all these seemingly eternal days.
The air was filled with the sweet fragrance of blooming flowers and the subtle rustling of leaves, while the moon continued to bathe the garden in soft moonlight. However, what filled her senses most, besides having Hélène once again under her touch, was the smell of ripe pomegranates above their heads.
“Do you know why I brought this tree right after my…” the word honeymoon caught in her throat for a moment, “right after my return from Rome?”
Hélène shook her head slightly in response, with a furrowed brow, clearly not understanding where she was going with this.
“Because it reminded me of you… of us,” she confessed, raising her hand and gently plucking the nearest pomegranate, offering it to the shorter one, “in the myth of Hades and Persephone, the pomegranate is a symbol of the ties that bind the living to the underworld, each seed within representing a moment, a memory, a shared experience between us,” Tamara says, her voice carrying a mix of sorrow and longing.
“What do you mean by that, Tamara?” Hélène whispered, holding the pomegranate uncertainly.
“It means that I can never forgive myself for being the person to take you away from your father and corrupt your spirit, for being the first person to show you the darkness of this world, but…” she closed her eyes , letting a single tear of her own fall, staining the ink of the letters that still lay beneath her, the letters that proved that she never truly left the mind of the one she loved, “it is also a way of reminding me of the joy you brought to my life. In my twisted way, it's a symbol of how much I miss you. I know I've been like Hades in your life, but you should know you have been Persephone in mine.”
Hélène's eyes widen, realizing the weight of Tamara's confession as she couldn't stop the words from coming out of her mouth and her chest, finally.
“And this tree, it's my way of admitting it. Pomegranates are the fruit of the underworld, and I thought... I thought it could represent the forbidden love that still lingers in my heart. No matter if you decided one day to bring spring to someone else's world, I'd always have a part of you here with me.”
Hélène's gaze flickered between the tear-streaked letters and Tamara's vulnerable expression, the gravity of her revelation lingering in the air like an impending storm. A blend of astonishment and comprehension traced across her face, and for an instant, the world appeared to come to a standstill.
Her lips parted, but no sound escaped at first.
A torrent of emotions flooded Hélène's eyes — gratitude for Tamara's honesty, pain for the shared secrets they carried, and an overwhelming sense of longing. She could not deny the impact Tamara had on her life, for better or for worse, the bittersweet mixture of darkness and light that she had introduced. Her eyes fell upon the pomegranate, lifting it to her lips as a testament to her readiness to surrender impulsively once more.
But the redhead quickly grabbed her arm, preventing her lips from touching the fruit, as she shook her head. She knew as well as Hélène what it meant and could not bear the thought of selfishly tying the girl to herself again.
"If you choose to taste the seeds, you'll be forever connected to my darkness, to our shared past and to the love we once had."
With a mischievous, tearful smile that Tamara hadn't seen in months, Hélène decided it was her moment to confess, “the love we still have.”
Before anyone could intervene, she indulged in a bite, savoring the bittersweet blend of nostalgia and acceptance. In a heartbeat, Tamara found herself experiencing it too, on Hélène's soft lips.
She couldn't help the sigh that escaped her as their kiss deepened, the world around them seeming to come alive again as she held Hélène tightly like she had been dreaming about since their last meeting in Tamara's apartment.
Under the watchful gaze of the Fates, Tamara's winter heart bloomed with the promise of a new season. Hélène, her own goddess of spring, dispelled the shadows lingering in Tamara's soul. In a sweet kiss, the Fates orchestrated the renewal of hope — a gentle thaw heralding a resilient love against even the harshest winters.