Persephone packed her things, put her names away, plucked three apples from her mother’s orchard, and disappeared into the night.
It wasn’t as though her mother was cruel or her husband was unkind. It was just that one day, out of nowhere, it struck her that she had lived her whole life belonging to someone and never to herself. As Kore, she belonged to her mother. As Persephone, she had belonged to her husband.
She tried to ignore the thought, which of course made her think of it more. And the more she tried the more uncomfortable her throne became, and the more she scowled on the growing wheat, and the more she enjoyed the limbo of possession between the seasons, when she made the long trek down into the underworld in Autumn and the long trek back to the world above in Spring.
One year, when the thought had become too big to keep bottled up, she said this to her husband. Like all unpracticed thoughts the words came out in a tumble, but he kissed her brow and told her that he agreed with whatever she decided.
And so, during one summer with her mother, Persephone packed her things and began a long, solitary trek through the mortal world.
She had managed to go a very good distance before the giant eagle caught her.
She was a prisoner in a cold, empty castle, far out of the reach of the gods.
It was funnily familiar in a cruel, not at all funny sort of way.
There were differences, of course. Rocky peaks and pine forests instead of black, blasted lands beyond her window. The rumble of distant avalanches instead of the whisper of the Styx. Giants, huge and blue and indistinct from sheer distance, striding through the mist instead of monsters.
There was her captor - the eagle turned out to be a giant in a magical disguise, as you do - who didn’t speak her language, but kept her in a high tower of his castle as a pretty, foreign trinket.
And then there was the huntress.
The huntress was the giant’s daughter, as far as she could tell. Huge and pale, with red braided hair and a grey wolf-skin draped over her shoulders. She would return from the wilds beyond the castle with a boar over one shoulder and soft bundles of violet flowers, the latter of which she would press into Persephone’s hands before walking away.
She called Persephone “Idunn.”
After a few weeks of slowly understanding each other’s languages, the huntress and Persephone made a plan.
The huntress enlisted another giant - a giant magically disguised as a falcon, as you do - to steal Persephone out of the hands of her father and out to safety, wherever that was. The huntress would stay behind to distract her father and his forces long enough for the two to make their escape.
Before leaving, the huntress pressed her lips to Persephone’s hands, mumbled her thanks, and then walked away.
Just for a moment, as she brought her hands up to her lips and smelled the perfume of the violets there, Idunn chose her name.
Then the falcon who was really a giant turned her into a walnut.
The rest of the story you probably know, in some form.
She woke in a hall that smelled of smoke and wood and rain, surrounded by gods in furs and chainmail. One of them - the grey-bearded one, with ravens whispering into his ears - bowed and said it was an honour to have the great Persephone in the halls of Asgard.
Idunn corrected him on her name, but thanked him nonetheless.
The apples she had brought from her mother’s orchard were a famous success in this new land, and the gods begged her to grow an orchard of them there. And for a year, this was how Idunn spent her new life, planting, growing, harvesting, and having every Aesir and Vanir come vying for her hand.
She said no to all of them, of course. Bragi came close to winning her over, and Freyja came even closer, but she turned them down all the same.
Finally, one year later, the huntress came to Asgard.
She had brought a bundle of violet flowers.
