When Persephone is finally free and walks once more in the mortal realm, living flowers beneath her feet and her anthosai dancing around her, she rejoices, dancing herself as spring erupts, flowers going wild and fields surging with life as she laughs and spills yet more power from her fingers with careless passion.

She loses herself in the open fields and the breath of life . . . for mere weeks; then Persephone begins to find herself longing for the cool security of the Underworld, for the surprised adoration in the eyes of the shades when she walks among them, when she brings flowers to them, for . . . for the quiet reverence in her husband's eyes and his touch, his lips on her brow and his cool hands at her hips and breast.

And Persephone's hands tighten and her eyes harden and life still spills freely around her but now it brings tangleweeds to choke other plants, and thick brush that snares the unwary, tearing at those who would pass by force, and births that come too soon, for Persephone realises now that she lives in a constant trap, never to choose her own path but forever passed between two worlds.