They say Persephone was kidnapped. But the old stories always pretend that women are helpless (against villains, against their own naïveté). So I wonder if it didn't happen differently.
Edith Hamilton writes in Mythology that the gods of Olympus were "untouched by lasting grief." So when Persephone first saw him wandering alone, like herself, among the fields of narcissus, when she saw the despair of mortal souls darkly glowing in his eyes, it must have been a paradigm shift for her.
Watching from a distance as the crust of earth arched back to admit him again, she must have felt the shiver in the air. Her mind must have flooded with all the things she had only just begun to know. And poor Hades, as he turned to go, must have dropped the small plucked flower he had been twirling in his fingers. I wonder if he didn't kidnap her. I wonder if he only got to that dark doorway and paused.
She must have run. She must have charged after him, more Faustus than goddess, making her deal with the devil.
Then when the earth closed up behind them, and they stood confused and alone in the darkness, he would have asked, "Who are you?" He would have asked, "Why did you come?" She might have said, "I couldn't let you go alone," or she might have said, "I want to know." She might have only shrugged.
The adjustment wouldn't have been hard for her because she was the right type, the type to want to know and to not let anyone go alone. She would have found herself at ease conversing with lost souls. She would have enjoyed the strange happiness they built for themselves, just listening to one another tell their sad stories and never saying they'd heard it before.
In time, of course, the godly ordinance came that Persephone must return to the earth for half the year. They say Hades tricked her into eating the pomegranate that would engender the darkness inside her. But the earth had become a pleasant inside joke between them, so I think it more likely that she snatched the pomegranate from his hand, knowing all along, just saying, "One for the road."
Of course she would have felt death blooming in her blood. Still, I think, she shot him a sly look as she burst the seeds between her teeth.
