WHO: Demeter [narrative] WHEN: Wednesday WHERE: Ambrose, Georgia WHAT: Repercussions WARNINGS: Sort of mass murder? Nothing descriptive at all.
Her rented house in Ambrose was a tiny little thing, but it suited Demeter just fine. What use was a mansion when she felt so disjointed? The town itself was tiny as well - the population just under two hundred - so the fact that someone new had come to stay indefinitely was talk that moved quickly through the residents and each bit of information shared by Demeter joined the ranks of their gossip. (They didn't get very much from Demeter though, not even details of her invented persona. She wasn't Demeter here but nor was she Chloe Thesmia. She gave them the name of a woman who was a stranger to her as much as to them.)
For almost three months Demeter had been there, tending to a small garden. Yet despite the fact that winter was passed and plants nurtured by Demeter should be thriving, her plants were slow-growing and sickly. Even when she focused all her attention on them it seemed to do little.
Without Spring it seemed Demeter could make nothing live like it should. For the Earth Mother the season itself refused to return.
This failure (this constant reminder of Persephone's painful, aching absence) made her heart grower colder and darker, ice finding a home in Demeter Thermasia, the goddess who should have been warmth instead.
The natural balance continued to tip, and without Demeter's consent darkness crept through everything.
When Demeter had searched Greece for her daughter only to be attacked by her brother, she had not emerged from it unscathed, nor did anything else near to her. She had walked away from Poseidon as Demeter Erinys, a goddess of inconsolable rage that had only been soothed by the waters of the river Ladon, a goddess that killed all she touched and saw until she could find peace.
But the river Ladon didn't flow through Ambrose, and slowly the crops around began to die despite the best efforts of those who grew them. Plants turned to ash and dust. All-nourishing Demeter, bringer of seasons and giver of wealth, tightened her fist around the tiny town of Ambrose and squeezed.
Then one Thursday no one awoke when morning came, and the town was silent, not even the birds that had escaped daring to come back. Everything in Ambrose that had once had life was now still.
In these modern times it would take no time at all before the news spread, before police arrived, before family was notified and scientists brought in to explain it all.
The woman who walked out of that town was a wraith of a creature, bones all too visible through skin, thin and sallow, a thing that probably hadn't eaten for a very long time by the look of her. Walking into town Demeter had been a goddess, but leaving it she stood at the very edge of her own death.