PROLOGUE

| PERSEPHONE | ABOVE |

It began with him. With the one who was the other half of me—even though I didn't know it; even though I didn't understand a piece of me was missing. But, then again, do we ever realize this? No. Perhaps none of us do until it happens. Until it strikes us between the eyes and we are stunned by the force of it. Until we understand that we are alone until we are found and the one we never sought has destroyed everything we believed to be true. And then, what? We are left in the wreckage of our past, surrounded by the enormity of the future—of the sheer raw expanse of it all. Of the pain to come and the pain you suddenly remember from lives once lived and long forgotten...

But, as usual, I have raced ahead of myself. Who am I? The one who speaks to you now, out of theses symbols and lines of thoughts unformed and reunited here, now, in this moment. I am the one who became aware of many things even though I did not wish for it, or even longed for it. But I have begun to understand we are chosen, and the gods are cruel. They love to watch us suffer. And I have suffered. Perhaps more than most.

I am a daughter of the one you call Zeus. My mother was a mortal, no one special, just a shepherdess caught in the crosshairs of the lust of two gods. One prevailed, as always, in the battle of such titans. Of course, she fell in love. And of course, she lay with the one who would use her for his own temporary diversion and leave her, alone, dishonored, and pregnant. With me.

She never told me. No one did. I grew up alone, a plain girl, with simple thoughts and interests. I helped my mother with her small herd of goats. We wandered the lonely hills of Oneone. She told me stories of love, of wood nymphs and mortals. Of gods become men and woman become goddesses. We would lay on our backs under the star-studded sky and she would point up to the heavens and say to me with a soft smile: "Look there. That is where the gods live. They are looking down at us now. They are watching us." And I would ask, filled with some kind of delicious pleasure: "And do they care about us? Of the things we think, the words we speak?"

Her smile would fade and her eyes would close against the canopy of cold, silent stars. She never answered. And so, I stopped asking. Then, I didn't understand. But now I do. I understand why. And I don't know how she endured. Because I almost cannot.

It is why I write. To ease this pain. To somehow chronicle the utter improbability of it all, of who I am. And perhaps, to achieve what my mother did not.

The love of a god.

No matter what it will take.

Or how long I must wait.