Somewhere far, far away, in a place beyond time and space, a feminine figure was slowly striding around in a dark room, emerging from the shadows and stepping in the dim candlelight. The figure seemed to produce no sound as she moved, almost gliding across the floor. Of course, if someone were to perceive her, she would appear as a middle-aged woman, her body completely naked, with porcelain skin of a deadly pallor and hair darker than night itself. However, there was no one who could perceive her; the mortal realm, inaccessible to her, was too far away.
The woman sighed, idly walking around in the familiar room she learned to know all too well. A library. She gently slid her fingers along the spine of the books, caressing them almost with affection. She lingered besides the small window of the huge library. Outside the window, nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but the cold eternity of space, in a forgotten corner of the universe.
She used to be a goddess rr she still was, technically speaking rr and was known with many names in the course of time. Mortals used to pray her as Persephone, and during that time she used her powers wisely, putting them at their service as much as they were to her.
Until she was banished from their realm, a few millennia before. Days turned into months, then into years, then into centuries. She was tired, and she never got better. In time, she accepted that she could not return anymore. She didn’t have enough strength. But the days in the library were so incredibly boring, that only a strong will could prevent Persephone from going completely insane.
…That, and the only pastime she had left.
Persephone gently extracted a book from the stuffed library, almost with reverence. The divine being then moved to the other side of the room, towards an elegant wood armchair and a small decorated table, on top of which were a candelabrum, the only source of light of the room, and an hourglass, no bigger than a span. She sat and perused the book, reading knowledge forbidden to mortal eyes.
Her eyes read the names of the mortals, their existences, their very essence. And their lifespan. Sometimes, the former deity used what little was left of her once great power to facilitate the coming of souls to the afterlife. A small service, that, however, required her direct intervention, unfortunately, often with unorthodox methods. She smiled, unconsciously, tasting the so needed entertainment that she would soon receive. One particular fate, contained in the book, caught her attention. The next soul that would depart from Earth. Followed by a common, mortal name that she didn’t even bother to remember. Perfect.
---
Jane was returning home after a decisively long day at work. As she opened the door of her apartment, she couldn’t help but wonder why she felt suddenly so exhausted. Being an athletic type, it wasn’t often she felt that tired, but she paid no attention to that minor clue of what was to happen. She changed into her running outfit, ready to go out for her usual evening jog, when she suddenly collapsed on the floor. Unable to explain the reason of that fall, the girl was much more preoccupied by the otherworldly, twisting tear that was forming on her ceiling, directly above her powerless body. On the other side of the portal, two yellow eyes flashed in the dark, an ominous presence looming over her. She wanted to scream, but her earthly body didn’t respond to her commands. Then, a huge hand hovered over the passage, hesitating for a few seconds before two enormous yet slender fingers crossed the door between the two realities and plucked her up, carrying her to another world and away from hers. The portal closed behind her, and no trace of Jane was left on Earth.
---
Persephone was amused by the sight of the puny female mortal. Now revitalized, and imprisoned in her realm, screaming and scurrying around on her palm, a pink speck barely visible on the vast plain that was her own greyish hand. It never failed to entertain her. How determined mortals were, even in despair. How they thought that a solution could be found at every moment. Maybe she could just end the tiny thing’s life at once. Closing her palm into a fist and letting the mortal deal with the pressure until nothing remained of her. Fun, she thought, but too old and trivial. Maybe skewer her into ribbons with her fingernails? Too short and boring.
With her mere thought, she made the mortal girl disappear from her hand, teleporting her elsewhere. Persephone, thoughtfully, leaned over her armchair, looking down, only to spot the same panicked speck, running between her bare feet. She lazily lifted her right foot over the minuscule figure, only to see its efforts becoming more and more frantic. One of her toes would suffice to make her disappear – the monolithic greyish digits hovering above, ready to suffocate that small life. And yet, even that felt unnecessary. Thousands of times, the former goddess had already inflicted that very same fate. Thousands of souls harvested in the same way, compressed and disappeared under her cold, pale foot. No, not today. She wanted to inflict something different. A snap of her fingers, and the human speck disappeared into thin air.
---
Jane had no idea what was happening. After being abducted without a reason, she had found herself fearing for her own life, in a reality in which she didn’t belong. She could feel that. She wasn’t supposed to be there.
She looked up, far above the cold sole of the foot that had just threatened to squash her. The massive face of the woman was still fixed on her. Who was that being? Was she even human, despite the aspect? She had no idea, but one thing Jane knew for sure: that being was malignant and corrupted. She could sense evil coming from her. She had tried to murder her and seemed to enjoy her desperate situation. She had put her into this, specifically to enjoy her struggles. Jane was sure. That deathly pale woman was pure evil incarnate. But she couldn’t oppose her. Only succumb to the promised despair. The exact same moment she formulated this thought, Jane felt her body disappear again. For a split second, she ceased to exist altogether.
The next thing she knew, she was standing on a deserted, vast plain, under an immeasurable glass dome. That sight was confusing, Jane still trying to make sense of the latest events. The artificial landscape didn’t help. She unsurely moved a few steps, the sound of her canvas shoes resonating through the hollow space. Only a few seconds later, the girl stopped, feeling a chill up her spine. The same looming, ominous presence she had felt only a few seconds before was creeping right at the corners of her sight. When she turned, she was met by the cold gaze of the titanic goddess that had abducted her. The huge, pale visage of the unfathomable woman, on the other side of the glass dome, was beyond anything Jane had ever imagined, her expression naturally causing pure fear to surge from her mortal prisoner. The girl let out a scream of terror, and in the same second, a small stream started to flow down, right on her head.
A stream of sand, falling down from the section above.
---
Persephone observed her small prisoner, trapped inside her hourglass. She had always liked to reserve that special treatment to mortals: manifesting them reduced in size, reminding them of their importance in the universal scale, then slowly watching them realize the inescapability of the passage of time, while the hourglass filled. Her eyes were fixed on the poor soul, flailing her limbs in the air and screaming at the top the lungs of her reduced body. Did she even understand what was happening? Or where she was? The goddess though it would be better for her feeble mind if she didn’t.
---
Jane found herself progressively submerged in the rising sand. The more she struggled to stay to the top, the more she was pushed down by the continuous flow. Even if it had almost the same consistence as water, she discovered it was almost impossible to swim in it. Slowly but surely, her body began to sink in the rising sea of sand. Her time was running short. Literally.
She gasped and fought desperately to rise. Meanwhile, the gargantuan visage of the woman outside the hourglass leaned closer and closer to the glass surface, suddenly interested in its prisoner’s struggles. Biting her lower lip, she observed as Jane sank deeper and the hourglass filled. And finally, with a last hopeless cry, the minuscule figure disappeared under the smothering sand.
Persephone let out a feeble gasp of surprise, perhaps shocked, perhaps amused, by her own undeserved cruelty. She contemplated the flow of the sand until it stopped, a few seconds later. Somewhere inside her hourglass, the small girl was suffocating in the sand. The goddess allowed herself a small chuckle.
“You time has come, mortal”.
She whispered that phrase, in reminiscence of many other times she spoke those very same words. Entertained, and therefore satisfied, the entity got up for the elegant armchair and started to walk away, abandoning Jane to her cruel destiny.
… When suddenly, she turned, struck by an even more wicked idea. The woman walked back to the small table and the now still hourglass. She used her divine senses to perceive the presence of the tiny mortal, and if she was still living. She could see the faint outline of her aura in the sand, the girl still fighting to reach the surface, even if it was clear that she had no leads on which direction to follow. Persephone was somewhat pleased by the determination of this one and decided to push that even further, to see until which point the girl could resist before giving up. Calling again upon the mystical arts she had absorbed during her existence, the former goddess focused once again on her victim… And she watched, as the girl started to shrink even more under the sand, her aura flickering like a candle in the wind, until after just a few seconds later, only a small dot could be perceived, representing the almost nonexistent presence of a soul. Persephone imagined that, at this point, a single grain of sand would be the size of a planet to her victim, to be explored or lost on.
Maybe, she could find condensed water or small remains of organisms that she could feed on and live with for the rest of her life as a prisoner of her huge hourglass. Or maybe, more likely, she would just starve in a few days, only extending her doom. Or maybe, Persephone would forget about her, turn the hourglass upside down and crush her among the grains of sands in the process. The variables could change at any moment.
The divine being left the secluded room with those thoughts, amused and ready to return to oblivion once again for a few decades.