so call me blind

Today found her at the riverbed, digging a hole a few feet away from and parallel with the waterway. She had a purpose in mind, of course; Persephone was not one to just arbitrarily dig holes in the ground. Her purpose sat in the shade of the nearby tree, its roots exposed as it lay on its side. A small blueberry plant had caught her eye, and on a whim, Persephone had oh so carefully pulled the bush free of the ground by its base so that she could plant it closer to somewhere she frequented.

She was focused on her self appointed task, so much so that she did not hear the approach of @Poseidon, startling just a touch when he spoke, announcing himself. “You scared me!” She admonished him, though there was no anger or irritation behind it. He was Hades brother, and he'd already proven to be the not-so-serious sort.
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 “Hey Princess!” Poseidon announced, which apparently she was not expecting. He grinned, even though he didn't understand how she could have possibly missed hearing him and his loud feet. His paws were wet and muddy from an earlier dip in the river. It looked like he was wearing brown socks. He wagged his tail.
 “Not my fault you're easy to scare. Watcha doin?” He moved right into asking, trotting beside her to lower his head and inspect the mess she had made. It was a hole. No more, no less. The river crept beside the hole. He sniffed at it, but there was nothing of interest apart from dirt. He looked at her pink gaze expectantly.

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“Digging,” She answered matter-of-factly. Persephone didn't mind as he neared to investigate though she didn't stop what she was doing, either, perhaps maybe purposefully shoving some of the dirt out of the hole and into his face. And then laughed, obviously much more at each than she had been towards the tail end of their first encounter. “I'm planting a bush I found. Hopefully this close to the river, it won't die.” Yet, the little honey wolf had her doubts; never before had she been able to really grow anything. Perhaps that was also because she had never really held her own desire to grow anything, not until now. Mother had told her it was enjoyable and so... she had tried to enjoy it.

“I figured it would be good to keep on hand for medicine and such.” That was at least something she had some knowledge in. “Why are you all muddy?” She turned a question back at him, just now realizing that he was half-way covered in muck.
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 Dirt flew into his nose. Poseidon snorted and shook himself, sneezing noisily. He gave her a dirty look afterward, though the stupid grin that followed was clearly playful. Persephone explained her newfound madness for dirt. Poseidon snorted dirt from his nose again and wandered around the other side of the hole, judging how far the river was from the hole. He wondered if the plant would drown if it was too close. The hole seemed wet.
 He didn't bother telling her this, since he figured she must know what she was doing. Instead, he answered her question with a question. “Why is anyone muddy?” He flicked his paw. Dried mud flew from it toward her. “Does this bush grow like medicine, or like, med-ic-ine..?” The question was quick. He was unable to punctuate with air quotes, and instead moved his head around weirdly like she might understand.
 He knew she wouldn't.

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"Cuz they were playing in the mud," She wanted to answer, though there was no time between his question and the flakes of mud that peppered across her face. Her eyes closed, face turning to the side to avoid the lot of it. Shaking her coat out, Persephone huffed at the man, though she knew she had deserved such retaliation. Turn about was fair play, after all.

While she did not quite understand the purpose of the inflection in his voice, Seph found the question easy enough to answer. “Blueberries and their leaves have a number of beneficial properties, actually. Not to mention they're a tasty snack,” She told him, going to where the plant lay and picking it up gingerly with her teeth so she could bring it back and place its roots in the whole that she had dug.

“I want to have a garden of useful plants. Just in case, you know?”
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 Poseidon didn't know anything about blueberries apart from the fact that they were blue and sweet. Persephone, though, seemed to know a good deal about the plants, and he wondered if she had a fascination with plant life in general. It seemed weird to him to go through so much trouble just to move a bush, but then, he supposed he understood the vague joy in seeing something alive and growing under your care.
 There was definitely a joke in there about Persephone being a tasty snack, but Poseidon swallowed the joke uncomfortably and smiled.
 “In case of what?” Poseidon moved closer to the hole and lowered his head to sniff at the roots and the dirt, as though he expected the dirt itself to tell him the answer. What travesty was his brother's not-wife expecting that would warrant a collection of "useful" plants?

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That was a silly question, and Persephone had no issue giving him a look that said as much. “What ever else for?” It was obvious, wasn't it? “If someone gets hurt, or if they have a headache. Blueberries in particular help with colic and fever, among other things. Even the bush's leaves help with certain things.” If she and Hades really were going to settle down in this forest, then she wanted to make sure that they'd have everything they'd need close at hand. So far, the vast forest had done wonderfully when it came to providing for them, and while Persephone trusted that things would be alright without the preparation, you couldn't be too careful.

“Poseidon?” She asked, suddenly, focusing on the task before her. “What was your domain like? Hades mentioned it had something to do with water.” She was infinitely curious, hoping he didn't mind her asking about it, wondering if he remembered anything about it.
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 He pretended he knew what colic was. “Oh yeah, that makes sense.” She seemed to be really hellbent on literally putting roots down into this land. Poseidon was happy to stay with the pair as they were because he didn't really have anywhere else to be but... It was all a little bit stupid to him. 
 And then she asked about the impossible. Poseidon tried to jog his memory. This was something that rarely happened because it never worked and this was no exception. Things that filled in his memory seemed almost random in nature. “I don't remember much,” he admitted. “I could swim, like a lot, like.. really far.” He didn't know if that was helpful either. “I used to throw these incredible parties too. You would have loved them. All kinds of...” He looked for the word for music, and couldn't find it. “Well we had..” The band. What was the band's name? “The.. the..b.. bar...” he drifted off, and couldn't remember what a bar was. What did the bar measure? Poseidon dipped his head and frowned. He.. couldn't.. remember the important bits at all.

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Almost immediately, concern writ itself across her face as Poseidon struggled with his words and memories. Dirtied muzzle lifted from her project, swinging to look at him, soft eyes searching his to try and figure out what was the matter. “Poseidon?” Gentle, cautious, wary. The girl left what she was doing to approach him, tentative and careful as she sat next to him, shoulder bumping his with very little force behind it. “It's okay, you know. I don't remember a lot either.” She didn't know him, so comforting was... not going to be the easiest thing, but she'd try at the very least.

“Just my mother, and the girls I grew up with. Everything else is... hazy? Out of reach, almost, when I try and remember them.” She was babbling to fill the silence, to try and help somehow. This was her fault, after all. She hadn't had to ask that question.
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 If she'd been anything less than she was, he might not have taken her mild pandering very well. Instead, he just accepted it because it reminded him of his own advice to Hades not to try to force memories. They slipped away the moment you tried to grab ahold of them. All of them seemed to be experiencing something similar. It was just frustrating to learn more from other people about himself than he knew.
 He shoved himself against her, stealing away her offered touch like she had offered a bottle of wine to a teenager. “Didn't you live with nymphs?” he blurted, mostly because he remembered watching them run around on the rare occasion he was around... wherever that was.

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She wasn't expecting him to shove himself closer, muscles tensing, body stiffening harshly for all of a few moments as a hazy memory flashed through her. It was... spotty, chaotic, and painful, forcing unshed tears to burn at her eyes, though they never fell. And then the feeling retreated, leaving the girl confused and newly wounded by an old pain. Perhaps if she hadn't been trying to comfort Poseidon, she might have confided such things in him, but Persephone instead shoved it all down and away.

“Mhmm. Flower nymphs. mostly. Some tree nymphs, and even a river nymph or two.” She answered him after a moment, curious at how easily that memory came compared to others. “There were many flower nymphs in Sicily. Lots of open fields where they could develop.” Sicily. Her heart warmed, a fond smile gracing her lips then. The warm sun, the vast crop fields, the meadows full to the brim with flowers. Oh, how she missed home just then. “What about you? Any nymphs?”
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 His close presence seemed to make her mildly uncomfortable, but he didn't realize how uncomfortable and certainly didn't understand why. Instinctively, he leaned slightly away. This let their fur touch, but he no longer leaned on her even though he wished to. He knew many people who did not like to be touched. He didn't know why anyone would like to be touched, but tried to respect it anyway.
 “Beautiful,” he recalled partially, though if you had asked him to describe a flower nymph, he would only have been able to express the feeling they gave one upon looking at them. He could not recall their shapes, nor their colours, only their overall essence. “Oh, just the odd sea nymph, you know,” he answered vaguely. He recalled enjoying staring and flirting with such lovelies, but for some reason never intimacy. “Who can resist?” He beamed at her, looking down.

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The subtle shift away from her was immensely appreciated. Even that was an understatement, but Persephone did not want to dwell on why that might have been. The direction those thoughts lay in twisted down a dark, thorny path and right now, in the sunshine, in good company, was not the time to follow that path. Later. Much later. Maybe even never, if she was able to push it far enough from her mind. 

“A sea nymph!” Her exclamation was bright and only partially faked; she was compensating for the depths that pulled at her then. “I don't think I ever met a sea nymph. What are they like?” She knew many nymphs took on the colors of their surroundings. Flower nymphs, for example, came in all shades of pinks and blues and yellows and far, far more than she could think of right then. Pink had been the most common in Sicily, though there had been the occasional green forest nymph too. 

She was struck then, by how poignant that memory was, so different than the wolven forms they took now. Would they ever return to those brightly colored, two-legged forms? Or would they be here, like this, forever?
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 “WELL,” he answered quite readily. He had seated himself then very comfortably, as though ready to give a sermon. “They aren't nearly as colourful as your odd river or flower nymph, see, but,” He made a funny roundabout motion with his snout. “They can breathe underwater with these glorious cute little gills they stretch at the sides of their beautiful faces. It's amazing, really. I think they're the most beautiful of nymphs, but my brothers find them homely and desperate.”
 Poseidon had never fallen in love with a sea nymph, but they were beautiful, and wonderful to look at. He had perhaps come close a couple times. It had always been... something... that pulled him back to reality.
 He wanted to tell her that sea nymphs made great strippers, but judging from her face, he held back. Instead, he stared absently at the horizon.

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Persephone smiled as she listened to the King of the Rivers and the Seas. However much he had spooked her in the beginning, she had settled quite easily into a comfortable rapport with him. There was something oddly soothing about listening to his chatter about the nymphs of the sea, her tension ebbing away as if she were the shore and he the tides that came in to smooth things over. When he did fall silent, the little goddess made no attempt to lift it, sitting there quietly, comfortably as she mulled over her thoughts.

Fade
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