Isobel Brandt \\ Persephone (praxidike) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2017-05-08 10:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | chernobog, persephone |
she exhales vanilla lace
Who: Isobel [Persephone] & Matt [Chernobog].
What: Persephone stumbles into a new winter scene, but does not find the man she expects. Likewise, Chernobog is searching for someone, but comes across a goddess of spring instead.
Where: It's all in your mind.
When: Monday, May 8.
Snow crunched underfoot as the dark-clad goddess made her way through the frigid woods. The long train of her dress snapped behind her, white arms twined around her form in a fruitless search for warmth. Nothing here looked familiar; it was not her meadow, nor was it her husband's kingdom.
"Hades!" Persephone called out, her voice snatched from her mouth by an icy wind before the words could truly strike the air. Their recent fight over what to do about her mother had left them soured on their relationship, so why she should find herself here, now, she did not know. Perhaps he'd changed his mind, which made her heart flutter; maybe he was finally going to help, or perhaps he was done with all of this and his words of longing and want were the lies she'd feared they were.
She would know the truth of the situation, but that would only come to pass once she finally found him. And across this bleached-white expanse, it should have been far easier than it seemed to find a black shadow of a man, but somehow he evaded both her gaze and her calls.
Chernobog spotted Persephone first, but he didn’t know who the woman was and assumed her to be mortal. He was drifting over the snowy land, the tendrils of his being gently reaching to touch the twigs and icicles as he went. It had been too long that he had fallen asleep, lost to the world as mortals forgotten his existence. He remembered it so clearly, and he could also recall the frozen tears on Marzanna’s face as he slipped away. He searched for her now, his queen and partner, but found only the empty landscape. The woman trailing through the snow, calling a name, was not who he was looking for and her soul did not give any cries for release, so he continued to move. She wouldn’t notice him anyway.
But he was wrong; Persephone turned, her ankle nearly twisting in the snow, her voluminous skirts creating a slick wake behind her. She saw something, though she did not recognize it as her husband, nor could she even have named it a man.
"You!" Her voice would not brook a denial, or for the thing to ignore her further. Persephone was tired, cold, and, for lack of a better word, entirely fed up with her current predicament. "Come here, and tell me where I am. Now."
Chernobog paused and gathered his ghostly figure to produce the faintest image of a man. He frowned at the woman, disliking her tone, but made no movement to come here. “You’re in the forest, or do you not know what a forest is?” Chernobog grumbled, crossing the dark smoke of his arms over what made his chest. Any sense of surprise he could have experienced for having come across someone who saw him was removed due to her demanding tone.
"That much is obvious, but where?" His facetiousness did little to endear her to the already perturbed goddess; her gaze flickered up and down his form, curiosity pulling her brows together, but it was not enough to outweigh the need to know where she'd ended up. "I've been many places these days, but I do not recognize this one. Does it not have a name?"
“The people here call it the Białowieża Forest,” Chernobog replied with a nod, still standing in the same spot as he had before and not making any effort to drift closer to the woman. “It’s not a forest to be lost in and claims many lives. You may freeze to death yet.” He tilted his head to the side and studied the woman, realizing his error from before rather suddenly. “But that isn’t a matter of concern for you, is it?”
"No, it is not." Despite the chilly air wrapping around her figure, Persephone would no more succumb to the freezing temperatures than any other immortal. To her mind, it made her suffering worse.
"All the same, is there not somewhere we could go that's...more hospitable?" The...man, or thing, or whatever it was she was looking at seemed well-bred for climes such as this, but if he knew of people, then perhaps he could escort her somewhere she could adjust herself and regain her mind.
He looked at the woman and gave, finally, a small jerk of his head before turning to move in the opposite direction. Without a word, he expected her to follow her. What would be a normal man’s feet was simply a whirlwind of dust, smoke and fog, spreading across the pale snowy ground as he directed himself south toward a nearby town. It didn’t take long before the scent of woodsmoke leaked into the air and Chernobog glanced over his shoulder to see if the woman had indeed followed.
“Would you find it preferably to linger near a mortal’s flame? Will you be seen or are you invisible to their eye?”
Having little other choice, Persephone followed.
"I should think I would be seen," she offered, her words slightly biting with impatience and annoyance. "I am not...a cloud, or smoke, as you are. I am flesh, like mortals, though if I had more control I might be able to pass unseen." If she had different clothing it would be simpler, but her dress marked her as someone of standing, betraying her twice over
"My name is Persephone, by the way," she tried as a lame form of apology. It was one thing to force her will on another, though it left a poor taste in her mouth; whoever or whatever this being was, it did not seem subservient and thus had no cause to assist her. One caught more flies with honey than with vinegar.
“Chernobog,” he replied with another nod. Glancing towards the trees, in the direction of where the fire would be, he frowned. “If you can be seen by mortals, I’m not sure how to go about finding you the warmth you seek. I could always kill them and take their souls, but I suspect you would frown at such an idea.” He looked her over, obviously judging her.
As if predicted, her eyes went wide; less with shock at the simple idea of killing mortals who had done nothing more than attract attention by making a fire to keep themselves alive, and more with surprise at the audacity the shadow displayed in speaking with such brusque terms.
"I would, indeed," she replied, standing up a little straighter. Her teeth chattered, but she worked against it, a voice in her mind silently voicing a dislike for men and their inability to be helpful in a simple manner. "Who are you, to say such things? Is this your wood?" She almost called him what he was -- a hateful thing -- but stopped herself before she erred too far.
A smile curled in the midst of the smoke and mist that created the creature before the woman. “You are lost,” he replied, a teasing tone in his voice. He turned fully toward her and began to drift forward, the shadows of his form licking at the snow and sucking away the brightness of the snow. “I am the black god, a god who took souls and welcomed them to the other world, but I am not just that but what they make of me. I am darkness, I am evil, I am the perfect creature to say such things and you appeared in the wood that I have traveled for many years. You are not who I was looking for, just as I and this wood are not what you sought.”
"If you mean to scare me, you'll have to do better than that," Persephone replied, pausing in her steps. Despite her arms being wrapped tightly around her form, her back was straight, giving her a regal air. The barren trees around her seemed to tilt in her direction, as if offering deference, even if it was not her place.
"I have known evil, and you do not seem so to me," she continued, eyeing the black mass with a critical eye. She would have named him other things -- sad, alone, unattached, just as lost as she -- but knew better than to do so. Instead, she tried a different tact. "Perhaps if you treated them gently, they would not think of you as such." It was a shallow attempt to show some aspect of empathy, but she suspected this creature was too bitter to accept such a token.
Chernobog could not help but laugh and he turned away, shaking his head. “That’s the humor of it all. I once embraced them gently, lovingly even. They filled my body and nestled there in their after life. But their beliefs changed and there was no room for a black god but a demonic god. They twisted my name, turned it into a curse, and they spat it out to their fires.” He looked back at the woman with a frown. “Are you not what your followers see you as? I’ve become what mortals have made me. I lost touch with the world for so long and I have only just woke. But my queen is no longer here, she seems lost herself, but instead of her I’ve found you.”
Persephone listened to his diatribe sadly, her brows pulling together across her forehead in confusion at the idea of "waking." Then again, she'd never really felt "asleep."
"I think I have changed, a little," she admitted. "Over the years. People think me softer than I used to be. But no -- for the most part, I have not changed. The people keep my stories. They tell children who I was, am; they talk about my relatives, our family, our home, for the fun of it and not because they think of us fondly as those who might help their lives.
"They do think more harshly of my husband, in some respects," she added, the first mention she'd made of her recognition of Hades in this other dark god, "but he is not hated, not as you claim to be." She shivered again, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. Finally, since there was little hope of gaining a fire or of some hospitality, she turned to the snow. One hand lingered above it for a moment, and the cold ice seemed to melt away, revealing a sudden patch of grass and flowers. Another gesture, and it wove itself together into a blanket, one which Persephone gently and carefully lifted from the forest floor. Once she did so, the spot was covered with snow anew, as if it had never been.
But Persephone was warmed by the simple thing, wrapping the green and brown and purple and yellow blanket about her shoulders. "That's better," she murmured. She looked back at her host. "How did it come to pass that your people turned on you? You claim that you were kind to them, but they rejected you all the same." The practical, prudent part of her was coming to the fore -- the old part, the Praxidike, weighing and judging his words for the truth of the matter.
Chernobog looked at the blanket the woman had created herself and felt an ache in his heart that always appeared when he saw signs of the spring that would weaken his queen and leave her shivering in his embrace. But her questions caught his attention and his gaze lifted to greet hers. “Many mortals dislike death, do they not? When their loved ones die, they may find it unfair, they may find themselves angry. Over time that anger became a solid thing and they begged my brother, the white god, to save them from me. Other beliefs filtered in, other religions, and they began to call me a damned thing, an evil thing. So… I became what they saw me as.”
The explanation saddened the goddess of spring; never had her husband been treated with such indifference, at least, not by the mortals who feared him. There were a few who attempted to bring their loved ones back, but the attempts were always exercises in futility. Death was the great equalizer, another step on the long road, something to be respected. It was what made life precious.
"Then I am sorry," she said, sympathy echoing true in her reply. "That is an unkind thing to do to one who has done little more than comfort those while completing its purpose. I know there are others who are not appreciated for their tasks, as needed as they may be." She glanced around at the wood, her eyes then coming back to the shadowed man before her. "If it is always winter here, I can see why they might be unhappy to comply..."
“Mortals die more often in the winter months, so that is where my reign is most powerful,” Chernobog murmured, but his shadowed face somehow twisted in sorrow. “But this wood is not always under winter’s spell. There is spring and summer here until the first heavy frost of autumn. That is when my queen takes her place and aids me with my work, but I cannot find her. I have lost her completely.” He looked about, as if to emphasize how she had vanished from the realm. He turned to the woman again and studied her before speaking. “You have not met anyone else in this wood, have you?”
Persephone shook her head. "No, I've met no one save you. I was just...in a similar place, with my husband. I thought he'd drawn me back here, as we'd had a disagreement." She did not add that she'd been the one to flee the scene, wishing to draw their confrontation to a close. Fingers curled around her self-made blanket, which was also starting to wither in the cold.
"When was the last place you saw her?"
“In this wood,” Chernobog said with a sigh. “She was with me as I faded away and then I was lost to her, and her to me, for… I do not know how long.” He looked away from the woman and watched the fluffy snowflakes fall. The light of the day was slowly sucking away and soon it would be nightfall--when he truly reigned--but what was it to reign without his queen? He imagined this was what mortals meant when they lost a limb. That they could feel it there despite it being gone and suffered still.
Part of her wanted to close the distance between them, and lay a comforting hand on the being's shoulder, if such a thing was even possible. She had been a long time without Hades, and now that she'd found him, she did not wish to be parted for him longer than necessary. Even through all their fights, they were two sides of the same coin and she could not imagine a world without him.
"But you are here," she offered, trying to give some of the comfort she wished she could simply via her voice. "Perhaps she is not too far behind. There are many here, that I have visited, who come from places I have never heard of. Who knows? Perhaps she will follow."
Chernobog nodded and considered what the woman had to say before looking at her again, this time with curiosity. “You found yourself here by accident. So… you’ve been to different lands? You’ve seen different places?”
She echoed his gesture, her chin brushing the top of her grass-blanket. The feeling tickled, slightly, and she wrapped it more snugly about her shoulders.
"A cave," she started, as though ticking them off on her fingers, remembering the man bound to a rock. "A man was trapped there, as a punishment. Others have visited me, in my realms, so this is not...as surprising as it might seem.
"Perhaps she is in one of those, elsewhere in the world?"
Chernobog nodded again. “Perhaps…” he liked the idea that she was alive, although he’d rather she not be lost. “If you see her in your travels, will you tell her I am searching for her? Tell her that I’ve come back, returned even, that I’m no longer lost myself and I…” He was at a loss for words. How did an evil god convey the ache in his heart for his queen who had vanished? How could he voice his concerns and desires?
"I'll try," she offered, unsure how much hope there was to be had in wishing for such a thing. But it was better to offer such false things rather than denying him outright. "I'll try, if you'll walk with me and tell me more about her." At least it would help her pass the time there, until she could find a way home.
Together, they walked further into the forest, only one leaving a set of footprints in the snow.