The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 5.2 The Thesmophoria II

Stories

A mournful song and the unmistakable scent of winter filled the mist the next morning, when the festival attendants woke up to an eerie landscape.

The meadow grasses were covered in a thin dusting of ice, and their dried flower heads, which the freezing rain had pounded relentlessly overnight, were encased in transparent globes of ice that acted like magnifying glass to enhance every detail of their intricate structures.

The most beautiful among them, the latest flowers of the season, had been caught by the sudden freeze while still at the peak of their bloom, and the icy shells displayed their half opened blossoms like works of art, like summer frozen in time, insulated by a magical crystal ball from the harshness of the dark season.

Towards the morning the cold and the rain gave way to a plushy fog, thick like soup, which caressed the frozen wonderland with ghostly fingers and muffled the sounds. The warmth melted the surfaces of the ice globes, making them glisten in the low light, and look polished like mirrors.

Nature was so quiet in the fog, a soft, comforting and unnatural silence which reminded Persephone of home.