For
background on the Packing Peanuts Posts, go here. Today’s
nuts are brought to you by Sleepy Joe’s challenge to expound somehow on a myth.
This is one of my favorites, and I’ve purposely used more ambiguous names of
the two main characters. Can you guess who’s who?
Fruit Offering
Aidoneus stood again, hands clasped behind his muscled back, black
eyes focused down. The blue-green glow of fungi sprawling up walls in the dark,
underground room lit his pacing.
From the direction of a couch came Hermes’
bark of laughter. He shook his head as he picked at the fruit spread overflowing
a low table. “Relax. She’ll come,” he said through a mouthful of
grapes. “You know that.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“You say that every autumn but she always comes.”
“Which isn’t a guarantee she’ll continue.”
“But your brother promised…”
Aidoneus snorted. “That doesn’t guarantee anything either.”
“Well then. She’ll come because she loves you.”
“Does she?”
Aidoneus slumped into an overstuffed chair, pulling at his
recently trimmed beard. Everything about Aidoneus and his underworld palace had
been recently groomed, cleaned, set into order. Even the three-headed hound had
learned some new tricks.
Glancing around the dim space, he eyed the candles and oil
lamps with a sigh. They wreaked havoc on his retinas but Kore would need them
until her vision adjusted. The bioluminescent flora here was impressive, but
nothing to the lighting she was used to above.
Nothing here was like above.
“This place has to be Tartarus for her,” Aidoneus said,
feeling his inadequacy deep.
“My Lord,” a messenger’s head poked through the door. “She
approaches.”
Aidoneus nodded, starting up. The messenger disappeared.
“Well if it’s not you she loves,” Hermes stood, lobbing a
crimson orb Aidoneus easily caught, “it’s your pomegranates. I told you she’d
come.”
Then Hermes too disappeared and Aidoneus was left alone to
watch a soft flickering down the hall slowly approach. Kore held only a single
flame, yet her image still made his eyes water. He bowed deep, offering the
fruit.
She took it. But her lips searched for something more.
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link to original here |
So what are some of your favorite myths, and how would you change/expound on them? Why have they made an impact on you -- Why are they your packing peanuts?