Life doesn’t change.

Sure the technologies advance and the day-to-day gets easier, but people aren’t fundamentally different from how they were centuries ago.

The same emotions and drives push them on their paths, and the same disappointments sour their spirits.

Persephone tended to her souls like a gardener tends to his or her plants, watching them get born, live and die, forget their experiences and come back to life the next time around, like seeds sprinkled on the ground.

It is human hubris to imagine there is a purpose to this repetitive endeavor. Just like is the case with plants, there is no purpose for them to exist other than to perpetuate themselves. Life wants to continue and slowly evolve.

If there was a greater purpose under Olympus, it was too high for anyone to understand it, and it most likely did not involve building mighty empires and fighting bloody wars, the empty vanities and illusions of power that die with their creators.

Every four years in the middle of summer, the mortals gathered to celebrate the muses in a gentle valley at the feet of Mount Helicon.

The nine daughters of Mnemosyne, they weren’t your usual goddesses; they were a gift to humankind. Nobody talked about them as such, out of fear these wonders that fired the human mind to create masterpieces might be taken away, to leave mankind only the toiling and the wars, a drab existence made of hopeless and uninspiring days, all the same.

The muses were born of the goddess of memory and the highest of the gods, a splendid metaphor for the mind’s union with the sublime.

And, just as happens with the human minds, their relationships and connections with other gods and with the mortals got complicated from there.

Unexpected friendships and mentoring roles emerged, and if one wanted to understand them, one had to know their whole family history.

Pegasus himself had struck the ground with its hoof to open their source of inspiration, the stream of Hippocrene.

Their mother, Mnemosyne, the keeper of the fount of memories in Hades, was Hypnos’s neighbor and friend.

Remembering is the opposite of forgetting, and therefore, it embodies the same concept. They are two halves of the same whole.

Every object in a universe of duality must have an opposite, and the two opposing elements are intrinsically the same essence. 

They are what is, reflecting itself into what it is not.

Those blessed with the gift of prophecy form a small but very special community.

They instinctively seek each other’s presence, they are drawn to those who are similarly blessed.

If they are mortal, they become oracles and seers whose wisdom is sought and revered, and people travel from far away to seek their counsel. They are the living vessels of the gods, who speak through them in cryptic messages, which are only understood in retrospect.

It’s not that the gods were trying to make their teachings obscure, or that they even cared if they were. People can’t form concepts about things that don’t yet exist.

Immortal prophets like Apollo, Phoebe, the Moirae, doled their wisdom onto the world below, speaking through their official oracles, like those of Delphi, or Cumae, who were famous and revered and to whom people dedicated temples and compounds, theaters and springs.

And then there were the quiet visionaries, who saw a lot but kept it to themselves, not wanting to put any more strain on the greater order of things than it was already under, and staying out of the affairs of the mortals, whose misinterpretations of godly wisdom were a constant source of disaster and false hope.

On the westernmost edge of the Oceanus, which spans the vast distance between the world of the living and the underworld, there is a splendid garden, constantly bathed in the glow of the sunset.

The garden belongs to Hera, a wedding gift from her grandmother, and wonderful apple trees with golden fruit grow there, under the jealous guard of the dragon Ladon, an offspring of the Typhon, and the rather distracted oversight of the Hesperides, the daughters of night and of the evening star.

The legendary orchard was far from the real world, in both location and appearance, and because of its priceless bounty, a perpetual temptation for those driven by greed.

When someone broke in to steal the apples, the circle of displeasure, complaint and requests for retribution invariably closed in the Underworld, a constant source of annoyance for Hades, who was expected to do something about it.

“Who was it this time?” Persephone asked.

“It was one of ours, actually. Eris decided to take it upon herself and plot against Hera. You remember Hera, don’t you?”

“Vividly,” Persephone replied.

Hera took exception to the smallest slight, never forgave an offense, and always made sure to drag the entire Olympus into her drama, satisfied only when she was the center of attention.

Persephone stood tall on the bow of the ship, against the breeze. 

Behind her, the fortune’s chosen, the ones who managed to navigate its treacherous waters through three lifetimes in a row, without reproach, were gazing towards the islands in the distance with apprehension and awe, not yet able to believe their luck, eyes moist for what they left behind. 

Lost for words, they feared the promise of this new and wonderful existence was just a mirage which would dissipate the second they stopped believing it.

Hades stood next to his wife, like a symbolic shelter against the winds.

He always attended these happy occasions when mortals earned themselves the right to perpetual bliss.

Also, he loved the Fortunate Isles, which he rarely found the time to visit, with his schedule as full as it always was, and besides, he had promised Persephone.

The islands were two, so close to each other one could think them a single land mass. They weren’t that far from the shore, but a whole world removed in terms of privilege and grace, even compared to the Elysian Fields.

There was much sound and fury in Hades’ chambers the next morning, the clamor of many people speaking in anger, and above them all Persephone recognized the voice of Zeus.

She got dressed in a hurry and sneaked into the anteroom of the large conference hall where Hades was involved in some very heated negotiations with an entire delegation of Olympians, which, as an extraordinary circumstance, included Zeus himself.

“We’re doing everything in our power to retrieve him safely. As I told you, no effort is being spared.”

“But how was it possible, brother? I thought you ruled this kingdom supreme! Just command your minions to deliver him at the gates.”

“If the Hecatonchires were commandable, you wouldn’t need to keep them in Tartarus. They’re trained to some degree,” Hades replied, “but definitely don’t exhibit the level of obedience you seem to expect.”

“So, you’re telling me there is no hope and you can’t do anything about this?”

“Quite the opposite, brother. I just told you every effort is being made.”

“Yeah. That means you can’t do anything about it. I’m so disappointed in you, Hades. I entrusted you with the fate of one of our finest, and now he’s lost in Tartarus with no expectations of rescue.”

When she wanted to take a break from her daily activities, Persephone wandered along the banks of the Lethe, under the slender branches of the willows, which arched to touch its waters, and walked all the way to the cave of Hypnos.

She went there mostly to pick poppies, whose flowers surrounded the quiet realm of the god of sleep.

The bright red blooms glowed from afar in the perpetual sunset, a bucolic image whose beauty was worthy of a painter’s canvas: a small tributary of the river Lethe was dancing between large boulders atop a rocky bed, surrounded by poppies, lavender and chamomile, and other soothing herbs, in the shadow of large linden trees, perpetually in bloom.

The fragrance surrounding the place, it had no match in existence, not even in the gardens of Olympus.

The flowers were always swarmed by bees, the goddess’s faithful companions, who built their hives in nearby tree hollows, which were dripping with melting wax, amber, and honey in the warmth of the sunset.

The softest grass grew on the banks of the stream, tall and bright green, so delicate its texture seemed unreal, and even its touch was barely felt under the fingers.

The little stream bubbled along its winding banks and entered the cave, getting lost in its depths.

She rushed home, crossing the bridge over the Acheron, past the elm of false dreams, through the mucky banks of the Vale of Mourning and the orchard to get home faster, so she had to stop and shake the pumice dust off her sandals before she entered the palace.

Hermes was waiting in the loggia overlooking the gardens, impatient, as always.

“Great! You’re here.”

“Good morning to you too, cousin.”

“Aha. Yeah. Listen. The cave of Cumae gets water in it every time there is a storm; it needs a new levee to fend off tidal flooding. And consolidation. That project had sat on the shelf way too long, if you ask me.”

“So, what’s the hold-up?”

“The Cumaean Sibyl thinks making any changes equals blaspheming Apollo. She barricaded herself in the cave and refuses to prophesy. She threatened to burn the last three books, too. To tell you the truth, I think it’s a shake-down. Greedy wretch’s demands for coin never cease.”

“Well, look on the bright side: she can’t burn them if they’re underwater. Not that it would be an improvement.”

“Don’t joke, cousin, it’s serious. The woman is on a mission.”

Hades is a water realm.

Surrounded by Oceanus, it’s crisscrossed by rivers and streams whose rash and unsettled currents can be heard in the background almost everywhere.

From the quiet Lethe meandering between boulders in Hypnos’s cave, careful not to awaken him, to the echoes of the Styx, muffled as it flows through underground caves, the sights and sounds of water are everywhere, sometimes soothing, sometimes unsettling.

The rushing waters of the underworld carved intricate stone tracery and painted the rocks in spectacular hues.

They flowed slowly through sleepy valleys only to abandon themselves suddenly to grand waterfalls, diving into bottomless chasms nobody ever dared explore.

The perpetual sunsets painted their watery curtains with rainbows, and sometimes, when the light hit them at just the right angle, it illuminated them from behind.

The fiery river Phlegethon crossed the real waters sometimes, and their mingling gave rise to sharp hisses and clouds of steam, and turned its incandescent lava first to embers, and then to black stone.

The placid river Lethe branched into a delta when it reached the land of dreams, seeping countless rivulets and streams through its open fields.

Those who’d been brought to Hades through the gate of the sun could be deceived they were still alive when they reached this familiar landscape, only to be set straight when it changed without warning, lulling them into rationalizations in order to deceive them again.

The spirits always found an explanation for why their world stopped making sense. Any explanation but the real one.

Persephone sneaked out into the gardens the next morning, grateful to have a few quiet moments to reconnect with her plant companions.

Everything had spirit in the Underworld, even the rocks and the streams, and her beloved trees were the goddess’s most trusted friends.

The poplars flittered in the twilight, their gold leaves shimmering in ways which would have gratified Demeter, who always thought her daughter’s attire too plain for a goddess and often urged the latter to show off her riches. 

Persephone didn’t need to impress in the nether realms, where even the leaves of the trees in her garden were made of pure gold. 

She grabbed a handful of the soil beneath her feet, picked out the glossiest onyx, obsidian and jet pebbles to place in her little knapsack and let the rest fall to the ground. 

The muses had inspired her to create a mosaic that morning, and she was on a mission to pick the most colorful gemstones for its motifs.