Lilac-embroidered lips. Marigold sun for skin. Garnet veins for fingers. A splendour of spring, they call her, with her hair damp with earth soil and her eyes catching the cerulean of the bright sky. Lovely, beautiful, lovely. The goddess who danced in the midst of spring fields, the goddess who's laugh made the flowers bloom. A daughter of the sky and earth, she was loved and she was adored.

SHE WAS TIRED OF THE FLOWERS.

Delicate footsteps. Fluttered eyes. Lowered gaze. Her mother tells her that to be a goddess is to be grace itself; to embody the soft breeze of the floral spring air as it seeped through her crystallised skin to her bones. No sharp edges; just all goodness, all gentleness, all kindness. That she is made of light, of sunshine, of budding blossoms. She should be.

And she would be for eternity.

SHE WAS TIRED OF THE FLOWERS.

Beneath the fields of carnations dripping with cyclamen, of gardenias being sung to by the humming of bees, lies a sheer ambition to be something more. Something more than just being Mother's dandelion, something more than just being Father's sky. A yearning to make more of her life rather than emerald tree tops and sunlight-tipped grass. A need to fill her petal-infested heart with stardust and obsidian, along with a touch of blood and darkness.

But Mother will not allow her to.

SHE WAS TIRED OF THE FLOWERS.

They do not acknowledge her rages; the frost of winter that took refuge inside the pit of her stomach. It traveled, coating her roots and her stems with ice that inked her arms and hands, forming a furious hurricane that unleashed itself when the Lord of the Underworld offered her to be his queen. Offered her to be more than the wonderful spring goddess, to be the bride of darkness, to sit on a throne of fire with a crown not made of roses and dandelions, but a crown made with the screams of terror and moans of agony.

It was sad, for her mother did not hear the way she laughed when he led them to hell.

SHE WAS TIRED OF THE FLOWERS.

The pomegranate has never looked so lovely, especially in the hands of the ruler of the dead. He held it with such carefulness, in which it emitted light and the promise of a star-filled future. It was temptation in the form of a wine-red fruit; it was calling out to her, reaching her, urging her to take that one sinful bite that would permanently entangle her limbs in a place where the horrors of men thrived. You'd think she would relent, but the goddess' hunger for glory and gore has grown during the years she stayed under her Mother's care. She wanted no more than to be free from the flowers that pinned her down, and so she opened her mouth, her Mother's worries be damned... and took a bite.

Even Hades trembled as he watched the pomegranate juice drip from her lips, smiling as she did so.

SHE WAS TIRED OF THE FLOWERS.

Their story was weaved ever so carefully that Hades was said to be the monster, always pictured as a shadow that hid in the mouth of that gaping hole as he waited to pounce until the goddess came into view. But do they not think of the goddess as such? For she, who hungrily sought the entrance to the Underworld, who enthralled the King of the Dead to make her his Queen, who plucked the pomegranate seeds in her own accord with fury in her veins, who basked in the terrifying beauty of hell and the sufferings of men, is she not the monster instead?

She asked him for it: the blood, the sin, the pain. She did not want marble statues or hymns of praises; she did not want eternal sunshine and endless summer. She wanted more, and Hades handed it to her wholeheartedly that the frost in her veins vanished when he gave her that fruit.

Bringer of destruction. She is the daughter of the Goddess of Harvest and the God of the Sky, her bones crafted from honey and dawn and nectar. But she is more than that. She is the Iron Queen, steel embedded in her bones and blood tainted in her skin. Goddess of the Underworld, the Queen of the Dead, she reigns over demons and the lifeless, her fury so immense that even Death himself bends to her will.

Her name is Persephone.

And when Death embraces you,

she will be your Queen. 

OE

I would like to clarify that this is Persephone and Hades inspired, yes, but as you can see in the description, Lisa is an angel and JK is a demon. Basically I used Perseph and Hades as references for their characters. Plus, in this chapter, I portrayed Persephone as an ambitious goddess who wanted more, so unlike the original Persephone wherein she was obedient and always followed Demeter's orders.

I also would like to say that the entire Persephone-seeking-out-the-Underworld thing is not true. That story was made by some woman back in the 80s who wanted to make the myths more feministic but it is the original. Homer and Hesiod's versions were.

The reason why Persephone is like this in this chapter is because this is how Lisa's character is going to be. .

Hopefully that clears everything up! Don't come for me hddhdhdh

Also, yes this is a demon-angel story, so Angel Lisa = Persephone, Demon Jeongguk = Hades.

caly <3