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CHAPTERTEN
PERSEPHONE
When I have slept for what seems like days rather than hours, I finally force myself to get up. I don’t recognize the clothes I’m wearing but they are still vaguely damp with sweat. I’m thirsty enough to head into the bathroom and drink from the tap.
Once my thirst is slaked, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and pale. My long raven locks has grown matted, my oversized tee-shirt looking… well, dirty.
After a quick sniff of my armpits, I pull a face and get myself into the shower. Under the steamy jets of water, I start thinking about food.
It’s been too long since I’ve had food. Long enough that I can’t quite remember my last meal.
I wash myself as quickly as I can and then sprint through toweling off my body. Taking advantage of the cabin’s full stock of beauty products, I lather my entire body in lotion, including my face.
Wiping the steam from the mirror, I check to make sure that I haven’t left any streaks of lotion on my face. That’s when I see my belly reflected back at me.
I tilt my head and turn to the side, pressing my hands against my stomach. It looks as though I have swallowed three quarters of a basketball. I run my hands over my belly button, which has just begun to puff up like it intends to begin pointing out at any moment.
My breasts are looking overstuffed, nestled weightily again the very top of my stomach. This is not my body. I wave, just to check, and feel silly about it after. The body I see reflected back at me is so different from how I feel most of the time.
“Persephone?” Hades calls. “Are you okay in there?”
“Just… just putting lotion on!” I call out. Flushing, I pull on a loose caftan and pile my hair up in a towel.
Opening the door to the bedroom, I can see that Hades has stripped the bed. He’s in the process of putting a new set of sheets on the bed and he looks up at me, gauging how I seem to feel.
I turn a deeper shade of red. “You shouldn’t be doing that!”
Hurrying around the bed, I try to stop him. Hades pauses for a moment, looking at me like I’m crazy.
“What are you doing?”
“I can change the sheets.” I reach out, trying to tug them out of his hands.
He points to the doorway. “Jaysus, Persephone. Get sit down on the couch. Let me finish here.”
“No!” I say, stubbornly. “You shouldn’t have to take care of me. I can do it.”
He drops the sheets on the bed. For a split second, I think I’m getting my wish. But he bends down, scoops me up, and carries me out of the bedroom. I whoop, surprised.
“What are you doing?”
Hades carries me out to the couch and carefully places me on it, covering me with a heavy woolen throw. When I try to move, he glares at me.
“Stop,” he says, pointing an accusatory finger at me. “I mean it.”
His glare pins me in place and I nod, a little dazed. He vanishes into the bedroom, coming out a few minutes later with a pile of linens. He looks around, shrugs, and tosses the pile onto the floor near the wall.
“I’ll deal with that later. For now… do ye think ye can eat?”
I perk up at the mention of food. “Yes. I thought I would see what was in the cabinets that I could potentially cook.”
“If you so much as move, I’ll come over there and move ye back. Okay? I’m in charge today. Yer the patient.”
“Hades!” I protest.
“Not a word. Ye’ve been sick as a dog. I thought that I might lose ye after I had only just found ye again. So ye can still there and let me mother ye.”
He stares me down as he says it and I flush.
