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25
THE FALL
Persephone spun around, reaching to dig her fingers into the ground that had been beneath her feet moments ago, her longest fingertip hardly brushing the grass. Clawing at the air, Persephone fell, down, down, down, still reaching out for something to latch onto before she splattered on the bottom.
Assuming there was a bottom.
The thought shook Persephone into action, and she reached for the other side, hoping she was falling down a deep, but narrow, canal and would be able to grab onto a protruding cliff or a stray root. Anything to stop her descent, her speed increasing with every ragged breath.
As she grappled for something to cling to, her body horizontal now, something smacked into her exposed side. Something sharp stabbed into the sensitive skin under her arm, and wings slammed shut around her.
Persephone screamed at the impact and the pain in the pit of her arm, twisting to loosen whatever it was from her skin. Reaching with her uninjured arm sent shocks of pain through her side, and she had to grit her teeth to push through it. Her fingers slipped across her skin, through the blood coating her side. It had torn the linen clean open to her hip.
As her fingers curled around the object, Persephone realized it was a talon. It was smooth and curved, the hooked end stuck inside her skin.
Arms came around her middle, underneath the massive wings covering her body, and Persephone screamed louder, in terror more than surprise this time. She screamed and screamed, the sound ripped from her chest by her fall into the dark abyss.
The talon was ripped out, leaving a wet, throbbing wound in its wake, but Persephone was too afraid to notice for long.
Birds do not have arms; people do not have wings. What kind of monster was grappling onto her right now?
The body clinging to her – clearly not a bird – was soft and supple under her raging palms and elbows as she dug them in, trying to escape the restraints. The wings pulled away from her, and the rushing wind that chilled her to her bones returned as they fell together as one.
The arms remained, the soft body of a woman hugging herself to Persephone, breasts pushing against breasts with painful pressure. Yet, feathers covered every bit of the woman that Persephone could feel. The only skin she felt was on the arms she failed to push off of her, everywhere else her skin touched the woman was feathered and soft, like she was trying to escape the embrace of a massive chicken.
The woman cawed like a bird in Persephone’s face, and she slapped her, her hand connecting with feathers and the sharp tip of a beak. Somehow, Persephone screamed louder and longer than before, terrified of what clung to her.
Shrieking, Persephone pulled her legs up and under the bird-woman to kick her off. She clung to Persephone, her fingernails digging into the skin of her back, and then the talons.
Talons shooting under her skin, breaking into her body so quickly, she had not felt them break the skin. Despite the pain shooting across her back, Persephone brought her legs up a second time, then a third, trying to gain any ground on the bird-woman.
It took several tries to get her legs between them, and the minuscule amount of space did not allow for her to pull back and kick hard enough so she dug her heels into the soft, strong body. Pushing as hard as she could against the feathered stomach of the bird-woman, Persephone reached around to grasp the talons – a deep, throaty howl tearing past her lips at the pain – and pulled them out, one-by-one.
Flames burned under her skin, up her back and sides with every talon that popped out of her skin. After removing them, she shoved the arms away from her so they could not sink them back in, and pulled her legs back once more.
Making maybe an inch of space between herself and her attacker, Persephone pushed her legs into the bird-woman hard enough that she slammed into the wall behind her. Disorienting herself further as dirt crumbled onto her head and shoulders, the ache of bruised skin already warming the spots she had collided with the wall.
The bird-woman flew away from her, the distant sound of a body hitting a hard surface closely following her cawing shrieks. Though, that could have been an echo of her own body hitting the hard dirt wall.
The darkness gave way to a small haze of light below her feet, in the direction she was falling. How she had managed to stay upright after her encounter with the bird-woman, and slamming into the wall, she was sure she could thank the darkness – and her husband – for.
As she neared the bottom, the light gilded her body, highlighting all the tiny cuts and rocks embedded in her legs. Enough blood covered her skin that she would have mistaken herself for a golden statue had she not known better.
She examined the drapery barely covering her at this point, it was torn and shredded in more places than not. Probably the work of that bird-woman who attacked her, and only partly due to the countless times she fell before plummeting down here.
Soon, the walls disappeared and she was falling through open air. She could make out large boulders, and a glowing bronze gate in the distance, and she realized she was about to splatter onto the ground beneath her as it loomed ever closer.
The stone below was identical to the floors of Hades’ palace at this distance, which was not far enough for her taste, and she was wondered if this was another nightmare orchestrated by him – a real nightmare this time.
Persephone immediately banished the thought, she would not allow herself to flatten while thinking of Hades.
No, Pelops would be better to fill her final seconds with. Pelops’ hair and eyes and strong arms wrapped around her. His body limp and hanging above her head in death. His eyes wide and unseeing, the light in them dimming until they were glassy green orbs pointed at his feet, his head hanging loosely to the side.
Then she was suspended.
Where she had expected to become a flattened, liquefied version of herself, she lay suspended by a wreath of cold air holding her above. Breathing in deep and sighing, half thinking to thank Hades for sparing her, she slammed into the ground.
Her breath was knocked out of her as the side of her face met with the ground. A pounding pain stabbing through her cheekbone and down her neck, spiking when she turned her head as she pushed herself off the ground.
