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There was nothing I could do about this, nothing I could do to stop him. Obviously, telling him to go home wasn’t exactly productive. And what I’d done until now—ignoring what was happening, living in denial, or running away—just wasn’t helping. The bastard was walking all over me!
I needed advice.
Luckily, I knew exactly where I could find it. I took out my phone and dialed Persephone. Now she lived on Earth, spending her six months of the year on the surface, she had a number. It seemed a little weird to turn to Persephone every time I was stuck, or for her to look me up when she thought I needed to hear something. But Persephone and I had been together for so long, it only seemed logical to go to her when everything crumbled around me.
And lately, that was what it felt like all the time.
“Why don’t you come over?” she suggested once I’d explained things. “I secured myself a little place. Come have some coffee with me.”
Persephone sounded kind, happy to accommodate me. So, I tracked her power signature, a light tingle over my skin that always gave off a fragrance of sweet fruit, and disappeared, reappearing outside a small cottage in the garden of a large house.
“And you think the humans won’t find out a goddess is hogging their cottage?” I asked when I found Persephone in the yard, tending to flowers, stroking them as if they could feel her.
“The people who own it are lovely. And I’m not hogging it. I’m giving them real money for it. I’m renting it from them, with a contract and everything.” She offered me a smile, childlike and beaming.
I shook my head; it was pointless playing by the humans’ rules.
“I love flowers,” Persephone added. “Did you know the humans have shops where you can buy them if you can’t grow them yourself? How glorious it must be to own a shop like that. I think I’d like to do something similar.”
“You want to open a floral store?” I asked. After being the Goddess of the Underworld, it seemed a hell of a step down.
Persephone rose, elegant and graceful.
“Just because you don’t understand how to take pleasure in the small things in life doesn’t mean those things are pointless, Hades.” She strolled into her cottage, and I followed.
She was right, of course. But I didn’t know how to focus on the small things. My whole life had been one train wreck after another, big things as far as I could see.
She put the coffeemaker on and prepared two cups.
“So, what’s bothering you?” she asked. “It’s X, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, the fucker just won’t stop. And it doesn’t matter what I do, whether I turn my back on him or face him, he isn’t going to go away.”
“Why does that irritate you? Is it because he’s different than you are, or so much the same?”
“We’re nothing alike!” I cried out, tensing in my seat. “I don’t kill for sport. It’s mindless.”
Persephone nodded. “Perhaps the murdering, yes. You don’t believe in mindless killing. But what about other things in life? How many things have you done mindlessly? Perhaps seeing too much of yourself in him makes you hate him so?”
I shook my head. “This is about Elyse, isn’t it? You think I should face this thing I feel for her and follow through with it.” I sighed, exhausted, not ready to dig into feelings and emotions with Elyse or anyone for that matter. “You, of all people, know I can’t do that.”
Persephone didn’t say anything. And because there was a silence, I continued to fill it. “I don’t have what it takes to get hurt like that again. I can’t do what you and I did, only to realize she doesn’t give a fuck about me in return.”
She walked to me, her knee-length violet skirt dancing around her legs. “I can’t tell you how much it pains me to know I hurt you. It was never my intention. I’m so sorry.” She put her hand on my chest and warmth spread through my body. There was a time when I’d craved her touch, but now I wished it were Elyse. But I couldn’t get her involved in a life like mine, I couldn’t offer her someone as full of pain and empty of anything else as I was.
“What am I supposed to do?” I sounded so tired, and I was exhausted from not knowing where to turn to next, how to stop being fucking afraid.
Persephone brushed her hand against my cheek before she took a step back and poured coffee into the cups.
“You have all the answers already, Hades,” she explained, her voice stern.
“You’re starting to sound like Lachesis.”
She giggled. “I’ve spent too much time with those Fates.” She turned around and looked at me with her dark eyes. They were starting to change color, going from the dark brown that they were in the Underworld to blue. She had flecks of sky in her irises. It happened when she was on Earth long enough, her hair going almost a golden blonde and her eyes turning blue. “But I do agree with her. You already know the answers. You just need to do the right thing.”
Why did all of this come down to me? I was so tired of hearing I was the key to all of this.
What if I wasn’t? What if I was just another stumbling block in a road that led to everlasting despair? Wouldn’t be the first time.
I sipped my coffee, the brew leaving a nutty taste in my mouth. Maybe this stuff wasn’t so bad. Walking over to the window, I looked outside into the green yard, watching a bee hop from one flower to the next, birds flying overhead, trees in the back of the yard swaying. Their leaf-filled branches threw just the right amount of shadows over the garden.
Life always went on—nature found a way to survive the more horrendous storms. Humans kept living through the hardest challenges. Just like Elyse. She lost her family and she kept fighting, never giving up. Maybe that was something I’d forgotten while caught up in my own head, living down in the Underworld.
Maybe not everything always revolved around me.
