Persephone

It is the night before your first ritual as the new sacred maiden, your last night in your childhood home, and your mother is brushing your long black hair with careful, sword-callused hands, occasionally holding up her treasured bronze mirror for you to see her work. You are a child - tiny, nervous- and from your child’s eyes, your mother is so very tall and wise.

(Mother is only a little taller than you would be when you’re older, a delicate doll-like woman with her long black hair in widow’s braids. But as a child, she is tall and all-knowing and all you know, when your other mother died of a fever one winter when you were too young to remember her beyond vague impressions.)

“Don’t be afraid, sweetling.” she murmurs, her hands gentle and sure as she runs her treasured enameled hairbrush through your hair. The light of her oil lamp bounces off the walls of her small bedroom, paper screen closed so that your older sisters won’t come in without leave. “The gods won’t reject you.”

You are still nervous, anyway, because even as young as you are, you know how much depends on this. How much depends on you. How well you can channel devotion, how well you can channel prayers.

“The gods can be fickle, especially those in heaven, though those on earth as well.” she murmurs, briefly setting down her hairbrush to wrap her arms around you. Private affection, when decorum demands that she is reserved in public. “But local gods, our gods, often love their people, who they live among. Whose devotion sustains them. Some gods even die for their people, when there is need. So it was, when I was Chosen.”

Your mother, an Exigent, a Prince of the Earth. Your mother, the White Lily, a warrior worth a thousand, before she gave up that life for peace and green growing things. You’d heard fragments of her story and seen the awe as she walks past in the village. But to you, she has only ever been your mother.

“We owe them our devotion, our prayers, for their gifts to us, but they cannot live without us to pray. “ she says. “But may there never be need for any of our gods to give up their existences to make another Chosen. May it be enough that you and whoever comes after you to dance and sing and no more than that.”

On the wall in her bedroom hangs her disused armor, etched with white lilies, and naginata. A reminder, she often said, but what kind of reminder?

“You are the child of my peace,” she whispers. “And I will do all I can to preserve that peace for you.”


~~~
The next morning, you dance by the river, with sacred bells in your hands and draped in the ritual garments of your new office, soft voice raised in song as you channel your prayers and the prayers of your village to the god of the river. You’ve practiced hard, and you don’t make any major mistakes, though the timing to your steps was a little off.

(Not the perfect, unearthly grace you bring later. Graceful, yes, delicate, yes, but you are still an untested child, without years behind him.)

Every year, the emissary of the river god materializes once the ritual is complete, to convey his pleasure to your village. This year is different: instead, the god himself materializes from the river and rises from the water, a sinuous, sleek, river dragon, wise and strong. Most of the village kneels, save your mother, who simply bows her head, and you. As a clear mark of his favor, he allows you to touch his head, respectfully, before he roars and disappears.

You are the youngest sacred maiden this village has ever had, but you have succeeded more than any of your predecessors have.


notes:
- black-haired Persephone, not white-haired. He's also about 7-8 in this memory.
- it's really obvious where Persephone gets his looks from, because he looks A WHOLE LOT like his mom.