Now You Are More Than We Ourselves Could Have Imagined

“So I was your sacrificial lamb?”

I’m too proud to think of myself as the victim—too belittling a way for me to think of myself—but that seemed to be what mother was telling me….

“Oh Persephone, we weren’t that cruel…”

“Hera and I began to realize that we might have misunderstood you and misunderstood the role you were designed to play in the cosmos. Why would anyone need a goddess of perpetual purity and virginity?”

That gave me something to think about.

I probably would have been very bored being the goddess of perpetual purity and virginity. So perhaps rather than looking at myself as the martyr and protector of all the other gods—which was kind of a downer—why did I have to help everyone else out—I could think of myself as having been spared the fate of being a goody-goody.

“We didn’t have someone to honor for the power of the imagination. So that was the gift that we gave you before we offered you to Hades.”

“And now, you are more than we ourselves could have imagined.”