Persephone In Her Time of Kore

Once Persephone reached the age when she could steadily run through the fields, her final evening chores made sure the floors of her mother’s home were swept.

Her mother asked her, “Do you know how strong your lungs are?”

“My lungs are the strongest,” Persephone replied, “ I can run from here to the river.”

Demeter said, “Running from here to the river is good, but if you ran to the river, jumped in, and swam to the other side, that would be better.”

“Would it make my lungs stronger?’

“Yes,” Demeter said.

So the next morning, little Persephone ran to the river, jumped in, and swam to the other side.  It was summer, and she took her time to say hello to the bees and hummingbirds. She let horseflies bite her, she picked yarrow, thistle, and stinging nettle because she liked their spikes.  You might think the child’s affinity for barbed and toothy things would reflect somehow in her countenance. But, contrarily, she remained soft and rosy against white from her forehead and cheeks to down her arms and legs. And although the horsefly bites hurt her and she did have a tendency to an allergic reaction that made bigger welts than normal, the daughter of Demeter was herself a great young goddess and her threshold for pain was rather high. Also, she often thought of all the animals who were spared the horsefly bite because of her offering, “If they feed on my blood,” she deduced, “they won’t need to feed on someone else.”

So small Persephone meandered her way home, taking bridges and worn paths so she could say hello to the herds of yaks, goats, and sheep. All of which she knew had plenty of trouble without one more horsefly to contend with.

After one week of this, Demeter asked again, “Do you know how strong your lungs are?”

Persephone said, “My lungs are the strongest! I can run to the river, jump in, and swim to the other side. No problem.”

Demeter replied, “That sounds pretty good, but if you ran to the river, jumped in, swam to the other side then ran back over the bridges and herd roads so you were back before noon, that would be better. “

So the next morning, little Persephone ran to the river, jumped in, swam to the other side, climbed up the bank, and stopped. She sat down and let the horseflies bite her. After a little while, she took off running, over the bridges, through the herd roads, and home. It was two hours past noon when she arrived.

Small Persephone wondered to herself, is it my lungs or my muscles?

Most days for the next three weeks, Persephone repeated her course. By the end of the third week she was home a few minutes before noon.

She’d learned some short cuts, cutting off a quarter of a kilometer in one part, a tenth of a kilometer in other parts.  She managed her sprint patterns and changed her strokes. Some days the weather was less helpful than other days.

Not more than one month after Demeter had first asked her daughter the question, small Persephone had become so much stronger that sometimes she didn’t bother exiting the river when she got to the opposite bank. She’d turn right around and swim back and, because this kept her on a much more direct route than the route with the bridges, she had plenty more time to sit and let the horseflies bite her. She never could quite give that piece up.

Persephone grew quickly, and her final evening chores included sweeping the floors of her mother’s home.

After the first sweep, she’d squat down and angle her body close and almost parallel to the floor. She imagined she was the wind itself, like how it was over the rice stalks and corn stalks, and over the seas of clover through all the fields. She imagined herself as the wind, the very same vehicle the songs of Maat rode.  Then she inhaled and blew the final remnants of dust from her mother’s floor.

She then mopped with a tea of nettle and peppermint and took the final moments of the day to dry her mother’s floor with her own exhales.

Groups of mushrooms that grew at the edges of Demeter’s front porch watched Persephone in envy.