Hades and Persephone Part Two

Persephone fell in love with Hades, sort of, like as much as one would fall in love with their kidnappers, but they were Gods so who cared about moral dilemmas. Eventually, Persephone went into the Underworld’s garden, and was offered a pomegranate. Persephone had yet to eat food because eating anything from the Underworld would bound her to there forever. But Persephone had grown hungry, so she ate six pomegranate seeds. Then as soon as she had eaten the seeds, Hermes, appeared and told her that Demeter was throwing a fit and had caused the earth to freeze over so that no crops would grow. People were dying at fast and alarming rates, Persephone return to would stop Demeters fit. She returned to Olympus, where Zeus and Demeter were arguing about how Zeus had promised her to Hades without her mother’s permission.

Demeter insisted that she had to come home, or else she would continue her tantrum of killing the crops. Suddenly Hades stepped out of the shadows and held the pomegranate that Persephone ate, which meant that she now belonged to the underworld. Zeus asked Persephone about the amount of seeds she ate. Persephone told him, “Six.” Zeus stood up and declared something among the lines of “Since Persephone has eaten six seeds of the pomegranate, I rule that she will spend six months of each year in the Underworld with her husband, and six months tending to the mortal’s fields with her mother.” – Salma Harfouche

Demeter and Hades were not exactly overcome with from this arrangement, but Zeus declared it and so it was done. Every year, for six month
s, Persephone left the Underworld, to go to the fields with her Mom, Demeter. The other six months Hades would rule with her at his side in the Underworld. For those six months Persephone spent in the Underworld, Demeter mourned, way too overdramatically and let vegetation die. When Persephone returned, life would start again.