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Melia tried opening her mouth wider to catch it all, but there was too much and the cup drained too quickly. Her face was red under the wine, and Persephone could feel her wrath radiating off her. She swam a little further away, expecting fists and legs to fly soon and not wanting to get caught in the middle.
The wine warmed Persephone’s chest and loosened her body; she hadn’t realized how tense she was from her small encounter with whoever had been watching them from the forest until now.
As she sipped from her over-flowing cup she dared a glance back at the forest, back at the spot that darkness had swarmed around whoever the person was. She shook her head, lost in thought. Who was it and how had they found this place? They hadn’t merely walked away when Persephone noticed them, but had vanished, as if they had never been there at all.
And maybe they hadn’t. Maybe the sun exposure and abundance of wine and smoke wafting over her all day from Melia’s pipe had made her see things that weren’t there. It was possible the mixture of all three made for a concoction of hallucination. Even if it had never done so before.
That had to be the answer, Persephone decided as she turned back to her smiling friends. There was nobody watching them because there was nobody there; this place was secluded and hidden. Nobody had ever shown up before, stumbled upon them while they swam and ate and slept out here, nor when they’d walked along the streams to get here.
Even Pelops couldn’t find it – he claimed to search for it every year – and he was the best hunter she’d met. Probably the best hunter ever.
Persephone grimaced into her wine, remembering her morning with Pelops.
“What’s wrong?” Melia asked, touching Persephone’s arm to bring her back to the conversation.
“What?”
“You look sad.” Her brown eyes bore into Persephone’s as she spoke. “Did something happen with Pelops this morning?” Her voice was wary.
Persephone looked between her friends, at a large tree in the distance. Branches jutted out of its trunk in every direction, it’s roots pushing out the ground at it’s feet. She took a deep breath and chugged her wine, holding the empty cup to Elektra in a silent plea for more. She obliged without hesitation.
“I told Pelops I thought we should get married,” she blurted, avoiding her friends’ eyes. She could feel Melia’s grimace while Elektra – happily married Elektra – beamed as she handed her back her wine.
“And? What did he say?” Elektra tried to keep her voice level, but she’d spilled much of her wine in her excitement, bouncing from foot to foot.
“He—didn’t really say anything. He looked uncomfortable and honestly a little angry. Almost like,” she pressed her lips together before continuing, trying to keep her voice steady, “almost like he was thinking the opposite.”
“The opposite? What – as in stop seeing each other all together?”
“Yes.” She clenched her teeth against the ache in her throat and burning behind her eyes, surely betraying her feelings to them. “He said that he loves me and everything, but you should have seen his face,” she said, her tone defeated. “He clenched his jaw so hard I swear I heard a tooth chip.”
Melia and Elektra exchanged a look.
“Well,” Elektra was watching her warily, her eyes darting from Persephone’s grief-stricken face to Melia’s, urging her to continue, “we did see his face. And he definitely seemed…conflicted, to say the least.”
Persephone groaned and threw her head back, splashing most of her drink across her neck and chest. The wine was sticky on her skin and the thought of another sip made her stomach turn so she pushed the cup into Elektra’s outstretched hand and sunk under the water.
It enveloped her like a blanket, crisp and cool as it waited to be warmed by her body heat. She scrubbed her face as she laid down on the smooth rocks covering the bottom of the pool, and watched her friends from below, eyes stinging against the water. She stayed down there until her lungs ached and she started to feel light-headed, the water above her growing darker with every minute as the sun set. She pulled herself out of the water, hoping to sit in the last few moments of sun, but it had already dipped past the tree tops, rushing for the horizon.
The air was cooling quickly without the sun in the sky and Persephone’s skin was already becoming bumpy against the cold. She pulled her clothes from the basket she’d shoved them into, a loaf of bread tumbling out with it, and dressed quickly, wanting to preserve as much body heat as she could.
On the far side of the grass surrounding the water, Melia was trying to build a fire with the few twigs she had managed to round up. Her fingers were shaking so badly from the cold she couldn’t hold the sticks together long enough to create any sparks, so Persephone grabbed Melia’s pile of clothing under her arm and joined her by the make-shift fire pit.
“Cold?” She asked, throwing thechitonto her friend. She watched the cloth unfold and expand as it flew through the air.
Melia threw the sticks down and threw her hands above her head to catch it before it fell to the dirt. It wrapped around her extended arms, the ends grazing through the air just above the ground. She’d barely nodded her head in thanks before wrapping herself in it and facing the pit again, trying and failing to get any sparks from the measly sticks.
As Persephone approached, opening her mouth to offer her assistance, Melia screamed and threw them down. Jumping to her feet and stomping on them, kicking the little wooden tent she’d so carefully piled there.
“I need a drink,” she said, huffing and stomping toward Elektra, who already had a freshly poured cup of wine waiting for Melia.
Persephone quickly rebuilt the twig tent, not without difficulty as most of them had been snapped in half and were now too small to make a tall flame. Not that the size of the flame mattered much, Melia had already scrounged up a pile of firewood large enough to feed the flames throughout the night.
Digging deep into herself, Persephone pictured the wood in front of her with her eyes closed. Pictured it dry and kindling with red-orange flames as high as her knees, the crackling of the wood as it burned to black and disintegrated into white and grey ashes. She dared a peek, hoping she just hadn’t felt the warmth on her legs yet due to the wine.
The fucking wine.
Usually she was able to start a fire and extinguish it easily with merely a thought. Doing almost anything so minuscule with her power came easily, but with her mind blurred with wine, she was having difficulty putting her thoughts into action, willing a flame to spark at her feet.
