Demeter

=**Demeter**=

**Fires of the Forlorn**
All I can say is that mortals are absolutely despicable. Try to show some thanks for hospitality and instead you are greeted with hostility. The ungrateful beasts are too ignorant to know a blessing when they see one. After my daughter Persephone was stolen from me, I spent many days wandering the earth in disguise looking for her. As a mother, my heart was torn. I sat helplessly by a well wondering what would become of my dear daughter when four fair maidens approached me. With Persephone being the maiden of the spring, I knew this meeting at the well had to be a sign. Recognizing my melancholic state, they offered to take me into their home. As hospitable as they seemed at first, it didn't last long.

I was emotional. I was upset. I needed someone to take the place of Persephone so I reached out to their baby brother. I held him in my arms nightly and took him in as a child of my own. My fondness for him led me to bestow one of my most powerful gifts upon him: the gift of immortal youth. To do this I secretely placed him in the red heart of the fire night after night. When his wretched mother, Metaneira, found out what I was doing, she screamed out of fear for her son. The stupid woman took him from my arms robbing him of immortal youth. What kind of mother would want to deny her child of such a gift? It felt as if she had taken my own child from me just as Persephone had been taken from me by Hades. So, I revealed myself to her as Demeter. She trembled. She begged. She even thought she could win back the favor of my heart by building me a temple but she was wrong. Nothing could bring her son back to me. Nothing could bring Persephone back to me.

"They worked willingly to build [me] a temple, and when it was finished [I] came to it and sat there---apart from the gods in Olympus, alone, wasting away with longing for [my] daughter. That year was most dreadful and cruel for mankind over all the earth. Nothing grew; no seed spran up; in vain the oxen drew the plowshare through the furrows. "(Hamilton, 53)

All of this because of Metaneira's selfish and stupid actions. The suffering brought upon mankind; the suffering brought upon herself; the suffering brought upon me. She had no one to blame but herself.