Blooms of the Underworld [Chaennie]

Hear, blessed Goddess, send a rich increase of various fruits from earth, with lovely Peace;
Send Health with gentle hand, and crown my life with blest abundance, free from noisy strife;
Last in extreme old age the prey of Death, dismiss we willing to the realms beneath,
To thy fair palace, and the blissful plains where happy spirits dwell, and Hades reigns.

- Orphic Hymn to Persephone

---

The bed was warmer than Jennie was used to.

The covers were like silk and the pillows were softer than anything she had ever felt before - like clouds.

"Miss Jennie."

The voice had been speaking on and off for about twenty minutes and each time Jennie would ignore it, burying deeper into the pillow.

"Miss Jennie."

The voice came again and, clearly, it had no intentions of leaving so Jennie pulled her covers away from her head and sat up. Her hair was a mess of tangles and was bushy like a squirrel tail. She rubbed her eyes and glanced over to her bedside table. The pomegranate seed was sitting there alone. It looked worse than it did yesterday - slowly decaying and losing all of its colour and vibrance.

Once upon a time, she might have cared. She might have channelled her magic into letting it sprout and grow into a magnificent plant. But she didn't really have to do the energy to do that anymore so she turned away from it and looked over at her bedroom door.

The voice belonged to a little girl - a Shade by the looks of her. Her golden hair had been parted in two pigtail braids and she was dressed in a light blue dress that reached her knees. Jennie's heart fractured slightly - a little girl such as this one shouldn't have had to come to the Underworld so early.

"Miss Jennie," The girl said again. She was smiling - apparently being dead didn't really affect her feelings. She skipped forwards, grin increasing in size until she was finally standing by Jennie's bed. She reached out her hand and impatiently pulled on Jennie's. "Come on, come on," She said," I've been waiting for ages."

Jennie - slightly dazed and confused - allowed herself to be pulled from the warm confines of her bed and onto her feet. The flooring was cold under her sock-less feet and it seemed to drain away any of the remaining warmth in her body until she was left shivering in place and feeling slightly numb.

"Sorry," She murmured. She inspected the little girl again. The girl couldn't have been more than eight or nine and she just looked so small that Jennie felt her heart breaking into another piece. "Who are you?"

"Ella!" The girl exclaimed, her smile getting impossibly wider and she swung their joined hands between their bodies.

"Alright...Sorry, no, I'm still confused...Why are you here?"

"Lady Roseanne wants to see you!" The girl - Ella - said. "She told me to let you sleep past breakfast but then told me to come and get you afterwards!"

----

Jennie hadn't had time to get changed into appropriate clothes as she was guided through the palace with a hyperactive Ella chatting her ear off as she pulled Jennie through the hallways.

It had surprised Jennie how easily certain mannerisms had come back to her. Back on Olympus, summons to her father's and his wife's chambers came at any time during the day. She was the favourite child - to both of them even if Hera wasn't truly her mother - and she was expected to abide by certain rules. When she was summoned, she was expected to stop whatever she was doing and go immediately and, if that meant not getting the chance to change out of her pyjamas, then that was what was expected to happen.