FRESH OFF MT. OLYMPUS WE PRESENT YOU DEMETER. HERE IN SEOUL THEY ARE KNOWN AS SONG BITNA, SAID TO BE TWENTY-NINE YEARS OLD. LOCALS SAY THEY LOOK A LOT LIKE JUNG SOOYEON, DO YOU SEE IT? EITHER WAY, I WONDER WHAT THEIR FATE WILL BE.
she is hope for good fortune, she is life and charity embodied through the wind, the sky, the grains in your crops and the grass between nonchalant fingers. she is your breath of relief after a harsh winter and the soft sun on an autumn day. she smiles upon you when food is placed on a table and the thought of your good fortune has finally chanced upon you.
she is demeter, of hope, love and good will, of good fortune – she is your lucky charm. if she smiles upon you, good fortune is soon to come. ( of golden grains, and greenery that stretches every facet of the earth ; of delicious foods, fresh from the earth : mother nature’s own mother )
but what demeter does for others, she fails to do for herself. in life, she gives and gives – gives until she’s practically bled dry. skin brittle, veins cold and gray – winter comes and she’s near death, having smiled upon many ; her last breath taken as she gives to those who need her.
( but who is there to save her, in the end? )
she’ll give and give until there’s nothing left. demeter does as she pleases and follows none of her own teachings, humbled by the idea that people need her – always one to sacrifice in order to quench that need. but people can be greedy, people can be careless.
and these sins rub off on a girl who’s heart is too wide to fit in such a small cage full of vines and flowers and dirt ; dug so deep that one wonders if the whole world was actually built on her remains. she becomes greedy for people who need her ; her selfless deeds becoming selfish as she conjures details into people’s life that makes them need her.
manipulating necessities that turn deaths in a matter of seconds ; the tides of a new age come and go and she watches the world burn – calling for her in their time of need.
this was her sin, one she holds close to her heart of vines and flowers and dirt. laid six feet deep from the surface ; never to breach the earth. a secret that she buries in her fears, among them – a lost friendship,
( of days of beautiful sun, sky blue skies, of flowers in bloom and in their hair – of laughter that sung for hours, of skin on skin and hands in hands. of a beautiful friendship that was meant to last and never end – until it did )
and a loss that plunges the earth into despair and starts up that need all over again.
one harvest fails, the people wail – seconds from winter, she makes the crops sing and the flowers bloom. the earth feels like it has stopped spinning as the people cheer, they roar – they pray to her.
they need her, and all demeter ever wanted was to be needed.
( and the only person who had in return done the same … disappeared )
she plunders, deeper … deeper,
but in a new life – flowers still bloom. the life of such beautiful fineries shake beneath her fingertips and wilts when the slightest turn of her lips comes on a day the sky darkens and she knows zeus is near.
she atones for her selfishness in secret ; hidden among the masses, wondering if olympus would ever come for her – knowing she didn’t deserved to be welcomed back.
she is bitna, a girl who is told to shine but only wishes to hide in the shadows of her lost heart.