Hades ascended in his war chariot to confront her, wreathed in shadows and flame, pulled by dark horses. The dryads of the poplar and willow trees fled before him, and the grasses shriveled to ash under obsidian hooves. “BRIGHT LADY. I OFFER A THRONE. A KINGDOM. A CROWN. DESCEND WITH ME. RULE OVER THE HALLS OF THE DEAD” His voice echoed with centuries of stone, his eyes bright with black flames. Persephone eyed the tall and terrible Lord thoughtfully. “You’re scorching my violets.”
The Illustrated Hades and Persephone, Megan C. Lloyd (via thirdchildart)
The world burned while Atlas watched (no, that isn’t right) Atlas died screaming, trying to save those he’d watched over Aphrodite is about romantic love (no, that isn’t right) Love comes in many forms but it always leaves a mark - Aphrodite Artemis fell in love once (no, that isn’t right) Artemis loved the maidens she raised, the trees, she loved all who tried Peresphone was manipulated by the King of Underworld (no, that isn’t right) Peresphone chose power, chose love, chose freedom, she chose Achilles was golden (No, that isn’t right) Achilles was rusted, bruised and bloody. He was in love
The Myths Are Wrong by Abby S (via fireandsteelofangels)
Requested! Mountain goat + Books + Bisexual (plus Doll Skin)
And in our eyes the same sadness, like a night landscape.
Marguerite Duras, from Blue Eyes, Black Hair (pub. November 1986)
We belonged to each other, but had lived so far apart that we belonged to others now.
André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name (via terxture)
Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (via merulae)
If you genuinely enjoy being alone, do you ever wonder if it is an inherent part of your character or if it stems from feeling inescapably lonely in the first place until you taught yourself to enjoy the peace and happiness one can find in solitude? what if the reason you now prefer & choose solitude at every turn is because you were a very lonely child, or teenager, not by your own choice, and that’s how you learnt to thrive and grow, so you no longer know if you can do that around people? There might also be an element of personal pride, an unconscious “you can’t fire me I quit” point when your brain decided to switch your feelings about solitude from distress to relief. I often find myself defending my love of being alone, to people who worry that I can’t possibly be happy to live in an isolated house in the woods; I insist that I do! I really do specifically enjoy the isolated factor and chose to live here because of it, but then I wonder how to differentiate an ingrained love of solitude from an acquired ability to thrive off unchosen loneliness, to learn from it and be nourished by it; to what extent it might be a form of contentment built on a bedrock of resignation.
One of my favorite stories about Artemis is that after she required Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia, she stole her away at the last moment and left a white deer in her place. After that, people disagree on what happened, but I like the story where Artemis transforms her into Hecate, because can you imagine them in the modern era?
Artemis, protector of young women and goddess of the hunt turned vigilante, hunting down the ones who attack girls in dark alleys, the ones with beer-hard hands and no sense of decency even if they’d been sober anyway.
But when Artemis finds the girls, she takes them to Hecate–Hecate, who was mortal once, led like a lamb to an altar by a man who was supposed to protect her. And sure, Artemis is the one who makes them pay, who delights in their screams and dances in the moonlight once she knows those men will be scared of the dark forever, spend their entire lives looking over their shoulders fearing her.
But Hecate… Hecate is good with herbs and potions and she understands the nightmares, the heart-pounding, sweaty hands panic that wakes them up screaming in the middle of the night, and she makes them herbal draughts to help them sleep, because unlike Artemis, Hecate understands. She isn’t vengeful, an angry older sister out for blood like Artemis. She’s the best friend, the mother, and the sister rolled all into one.
So Artemis avenges them and Hecate cares for them and the moon-goddess Selene shines her absolute brightest for them, fills every shadow with bright silver so they don’t need to be afraid of the dark anymore, and the three goddesses call these their Lost Girls, and at first Apollo was sort of skeptical but there’s no stopping Artemis when she sets her mind on something, and before Apollo quite realizes it, he’s running beside his sister, chasing a boy who couldn’t keep his hands to himself, and he’s never felt more right.
you were my world and now i can’t imagine you in it
funny how memories can become so distant
you were once the love of my life
now you’re just someone i knew once upon a time
every now and then i see you in my dreams
it doesn’t hurt; i don’t cry or wish you were here
i hope you’re happy. i hope you’ve found someone who makes all your problems disappear
sometimes love doesn’t last
sometimes our first isn’t our last
sometimes there’s better to come
and one day we’ll once again believe in love
— i’m drunk and this is what i want u to know
When you think of Persephone you think of the lost girl who was tricked by the lord of the underworld. You don't think of the girl who knew what the pomegranate was for but ate it anyway The girl with lust in her eyes and a freedom in her soul The girl trapped by the expectation of her heritage She could stay but she knew her mother would burn the world down in order to bring her back So she rose from a throne of bones and death and returned life to the world 6 long months spend in the sun dreaming of the dark and the cold beneath the earth taking it's life force with her. Dreaming of him and the night spent whispering everything and nothing to each other on the banks of the river styx's Collecting souls like she once collected flowers in full bloom.
late night thoughts