Amelia: Reading from The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Joyfully Reborn

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.

Dust to dust, that’s all they were, buried in layers beneath the footings of new civilizations, just as oblivious and non-enduring as they were, only translated forward in time.

Persephone sighed, grabbed her scroll of all the souls who were scheduled to depart and made for the Asphodel Meadows.

It was the same ordeal each year, going to them one by one, and trying to sell them on being born again. Some were apprehensive, even after the Lethe took away their disappointments and pains. There were feelings, much deeper, that nudged them to distrust another journey on earth.

Some were overly enthusiastic, imagining an extraordinary adventure (Persephone cringed when she thought how quickly they would be disabused of this lofty dream), and some simply didn’t want to leave.

Lastly, just as people didn’t want to die, some didn’t want to be born, and it took a lot of creative embellishment of life on earth, which she felt terrible for making up, in order to get them to budge.

Really, if she told them they would be born, struggle to survive, probably have offspring, get old and die, and that was all there was, who in his right mind would waste effort on the journey?

She wondered who set up this idiotic merry-go-round, where people didn’t want to leave either side of the river Styx, but they were forced to do so regardless.

For all its snooze inducing boredom, unless one was damned, existence was pretty comfortable in Hades, even outside the Elysian Fields.

People made friends, married, enjoyed the occasional get together, and did all the above without having to worry constantly about feeding themselves, or illness, or death, or loss.

She had to promise them lives she knew they’d never have, and adventures that would never materialize, because she had seen what the Moirae had in store for them, the Moirae whom even the gods feared, and no matter how the mortals struggled, fought or dreamed, they could never escape their fated path.

One has to imagine that if the lessons of one life informed in any way, and held wisdom for the next, one would want them remembered, not washed down with Lethe water every time. The only logical explanation for the latter was to avoid a flat out mass refusal to go back.

So, for Persephone, this part of her attributions was very much like that of a merchant’s who had to knock on every door in the city trying to convince people to buy something they were sure they won’t have any use for.

She even conspired with Hecate at some point, to slip something in the prospects’ drinks, so she won’t have to go through this Sisyphean, completely wasted effort of persuasion, but Hades found out and was not well pleased, therefore she was now dragging her feet to the meadows, with the enthusiasm of a backed-up gut, to empty that ocean of souls one spoon at a time.

She cursed Dionysus under her breath, for making her chore two thousand strong this year, and herself for accepting it without picturing this very moment when she had to actually deliver on her promise.

Great! Let me tell them they’re going topside to replace the ones the vainglorious ambitions of an aspiring egomaniac or another had plowed under the earth like sacrificial crops.

That should garner enthusiasm.

There was always a plot somewhere, running on greed, lust for power, or illicit desires, that kept that fires going underneath conflicts and damage, to ensure that no life, no matter how generous the Moirae had been, was ever free of suffering.

She remembered the souls about to depart Hades were promised to Poseidon. Their destiny was a life at sea, or, in the case of the women, always waiting for their seafaring husbands.

An entire nation traveling by water, establishing new colonies on distant seashores, spreading far away from their homes, bringing with them its culture and customs and infusing them with all the good things they found in their new one.

They always found new foods, new ways of doing things, new construction materials, and often new gods too, which is why it was very important for Persephone to keep them keen on the Olympus pantheon.

Of course, they all ended up in Hades eventually, no matter which deity they worshipped, so the only purpose of this persuasive effort was to keep the family temples well stocked with offerings.

She imagined there would be no end to her mother’s disappointment if, by some failure of her duties, everyone got to worship Isis in her stead. By the gods, what a nightmare!

Persephone had been wise enough to keep that bit of information about the new souls being promised to Poseidon from Demeter before she came back to Hades, but the chickens were coming home to roost soon on that topic.

That was going to be a conversation to remember: two thousand souls, and not one farmer among them.

She was getting closer and glared at the Elm of False Dreams as she passed it. Of course it was growing on the border of the Meadows! What better place for it than there?

“Persephone, dear,” she could hear Hades in her head. “I’ve been listening to you for the last half hour and I heard nothing but complaints. What do you want me to do, tell the other gods everyone is staying here permanently and they should make do without the mortals?”

Persephone mumbled under her breath.

“Everyone is waiting anxiously, Poseidon, your mother, Zeus, everybody. Eris bamboozled Aphrodite, big surprise there, into making a mess of Troy and now they have to build a new city, we’ve got the Achaeans roaming aimlessly for decades all over the Aegean like they’ve never sailed before, I tell you, Odysseus doesn’t seem very eager to get back home, or even wear male attire anymore, and he just found himself a witch to blame for it, you don’t even want to know what happened in Thebes, please, Persephone! It’s a mess. Just send them on their way so I can get the whiners out of my hair.”

‘That’s all everybody ever wants, isn’t it?’ Persephone thought, annoyed. ‘We all go through the motions so the squeaky wheels don’t give us headaches with their never ending griping. No matter how irrational, revolting or worthless their demands!’

“Do you want to discuss the matter with the parties involved?” Hades got cross. “‘Cause I can set up a meeting, bring them all here, so you can present your arguments.”

“I’m going!” She muttered like a bitter old woman.

‘That’s how it happens,’ she thought. ‘That’s how all the joy and the enthusiasm get beaten out of you: through a reinforcing pattern of anticipating disappointment.’

“That’s why it’s called work,” Hades continued preaching. “You are the goddess of renewal and fertility. That’s your principal attribution, to bring new life into the world. It’s like listening to Athena complain that knowledge is useless.”

“I said I was going, didn’t I?” Persephone replied. “May the gods protect us from anybody else’s opinions not being taken into consideration.”

“I listened, my beloved wife, and empathised; now get back to work.”

She could see the souls’ expressions turn grim as she approached them. What a splendid calling this was, to be the one no one was happy to see and deliver the message no one wanted to hear. She was like Thanatos in reverse, creating diametrically opposed outcomes, but with the same emotional impact.

Persephone was pleased she at least had the insight to start with the souls in the Vale of Mourning, who didn’t have any peace and contentment to lose by going back to life.

She couldn’t help a little smile imagining Poseidon with a fresh crop of melancholy mopers on his hands, trying to teach them the ways of the sea while the latter looked wistfully into the horizon, distracted, and deploring their unrequited loves.

If she had learned anything about the workings of Olympus, she had to guess Poseidon was probably going to cut a deal with Aphrodite, who was either going to fix their problem or break them for good, either way they’d be shipshape and sea ready by the end of the process.

The goddess of love had just laid a goose egg, if one could be forgiven the avian pun, with the Helen of Troy debacle, and was, of course, ready to take on more responsibility given she had that valuable field experience under her belt.

Persephone pondered on her happy marriage and figured she could use Aphrodite on her side. After all, who says no to love? She sighed again, resigned, and started her very long list of cold calls with a youngster who was moping about the banks of the Acheron, gloomy, staring at reeds.

Thank you for reading.

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