The place was definitely weird. By anyone’s standards. Melinoe may as well have not even bothered to go barefoot, she could have jumped up and down and barely made much more than a whisper. The floor under her feet was covered with a thick, lush grass made of yarn, unlikely as it seemed. It was definitely not grass, though, she was daughter of Demeter and Persephone. Plants were sort of in her blood. Definitely not some bizarre grass that she’d simply never come across before.
She spent a while simply standing, face scrunched in concentration, wiggling toes once in a while. Inevitably though she had to move, as she couldn’t lay down roots and stand there forever. There were more curiosities to explore in the temple, of that she was certain. Whose was it, she wondered. Somehow she doubted it was Uncle Than’s. He seemed to sleep too much of the time on random sofas and nooks in the palace to have a home so comfortable to go back to. So that ruled out at least one person that she could think of.
She was poking at an oversized cushion that she could have used as a bed when the next deep breath brought with it the hint of apple mint. That was not a normal scent in the Underworld. In her grandmother’s garden, yes. In the sunless kingdom, no. She held still as she tried to sort out whether she was imagining things when the next inhale confirmed that she was not. There were was apple mint somewhere nearby. Which meant, probably, there was someone around.
Still with that same touching sense of invincibility that children carried, Melinoe redirected her attention to finding that someone. She didn’t mean any mischief, honestly. She simply happened to be curious, and had learned that adults did not often appreciate the value of satisfying curiosity. Something or other about her being too young. Which, good for them to have opinions and all but she happened to disagree. If she was old enough to have questions and find the answers, she was old enough to know them.
The new goal pulled her along, guiding her unerringly in the correct direction. She stopped short when she heard the unmistakable sound of someone yawning and then edged carefully closer, inaudible in her progress by way of the covered floor. At her full tiptoes she still didn’t even come close to entering anyone’s line of sight unless they happened to be looking downwards. The grass in that chamber actually was grass, which brought up all sorts of questions again as to who lived there, answered only partially by Melinoe edging around the entranceway to take a peek.
He did seem familiar. She frowned. One of Phobetor’s countless siblings? There were so many that she never remembered them all.