Picture this:
There she was waist deep in wheat, a golden ocean undulating under an empty sky that blew her black hair back from her face. A girl on the cusp of being a woman, still filled with dreams sparkling in her blue eyes, raw ideas untempered by the gravity of experience. She, and her entourage of Aurai who amused themselves by sending waves through the seed-heavy straw, bending them with breezes, blowing kisses through the warm air.
Smiling at the play, running through the chaotic cross blasts without bending a blade, a red pinprick rolled into eyeshot. Like a question, a point of interrogation, it stood simple in the field. Persephone aimed her body at the crimson drop in the gilt sea, and ran for it with the wind of the Aurai at her heels.
And when she came on it, she saw the red stain was an enormous poppy, its garish head cockeyed at a slight angle and nodding to the beat of the breeze. Dark grains dyed its black heart, spilling toward the shouting scarlet petals of a bloom big enough to engulf her head whole. The rhythmic movement of the flower on its thick furry green stalk continued even after the winds had dissipated like some charmed snake entranced by a flute.
Persephone raised her hand to touch the dusky core, fingers brushing anthers then coming to rest on the stigma. The steep angle of the late day sun illuminated millions of motes in an amber haze, the daylight's final corona a push of heat before darkness. Mesmerized by the heat and the touch of the poppy, the shadow of overlapping reds, time was forgotten until an Aura touched her. Time is moving and the day is ending, she said.
As the buzz of crickets' scissoring slowly built, Persephone wrapped her hand around the poppy's thick green stem. She cannot leave it behind. Her right hand pulled and bent, but couldn't separate flower from its plant body. No, she was determined it would be hers, and her left hand joined in, twisting and wresting. It was no use, flower and stalk would not be parted, but neither would Persephone from her blooming treasure.
With both hands around the rope-like shoot, she braced herself with heels and pulled mightily to loose the roots from their turf. At first nothing budged, neither girl nor greenery, and then something shifted. A scraping sound like stones sliding past each other vibrated through the earth, but Persephone's grip was unrelenting. This would be hers.
The scraping shifted in pitch to rumbling, louder and louder, until the sound wasn't heard as much as felt. A few feet from the flower, the roots moved, and the earth untwisted itself like a navel into a belly, rocks and earth falling into a pit that grew gaping and dark before her.
