She could turn to Grandmother Gaia for help—to burrow into the earth for a time, like a bulb, and rest in the cool embrace of her earth dreams until her mother’s wrath had receded. Gaia rarely meddled in her kin’s affairs, though, and who was Persephone to expect her aid? She was no one amongst hundreds of gods and goddesses, and...

She fought back tears at the thought and sniffled, rubbing her nose. She’d known better than to provoke her mother. This was her fault. Nothing good ever came from raising Demeter’s ire.

She brushed the sweat-slicked hair back from her face and straightened, slinging her clothes bundle over her shoulder. If she couldn’t decide whom to implore for help, she would have to seek her own shelter for the night. She’d slept in trees before, when she was younger, in a time when Demeter hadn’t chastised her for being unmaidenly. Those times were dead and gone, as lost as Demeter’s patience.

She stood near the edge of her mother’s lands. To her left and right grew fields of grain, tall and almost ripe. She ran her hand over their swollen ears without thinking.

“Oh!” Persephone drew her hand back and into her mouth, tasting the sweet tang of ichor. Around her, the fields shivered, a wave rolling through them like the tides stirring the ocean.

The stalks nearest to her whipped at her legs. She lurched backward into the opposite field. Instead of parting at her presence, the stalks around her began striking her, the impact shaking grain loose all over the ground.

Persephone stumbled. The crest of the wave hit her, feeling like a wall of solid air swatting her away from Demeter’s lands, away from the safety of her mother’s protection.

Persephone tumbled as though an invisible fist had struck her. Her body rolled, crushing stalks of wheat, being pushed along by them as if the crop shared Demeter’s wrath. By the time she came to the end of the fields, her momentum continued to carry her down the side of the hill, bouncing across the uneven ground with her hands pressed over her face to protect her eyes.

It took Persephone an embarrassingly long time to stop moving, but at last she spread her arms out and dug her heels into the ground, coming to a halt. It hurt to breathe, but she was too exhausted to do more than that for a time.

Cassiopeia was visible in the night sky when she finally sat up, wincing as the movement awakened new bruises on her body. Her headlong flight had left her scratched all over and had torn the hem of her chiton.

She staggered to her feet, finding the soft earth giving way to dense rock. She’d found some sort of cave, proving that she must have traveled past the boundaries of her mother’s estate. Demeter disliked unproductive land.