Finding Persephone

There were 10,000 villages that occupied the Kingdom of Órexis, and 1,000 kingdoms that took up their banner in the land of Noûs. 

   Some villages were more powerful than certain kingdoms, different kingdoms would ally themselves in different ways, and there were 10,000 things for everybody to disagree on; at least they only hated each other for 1000.

   As different interests grew more powerful, the mightiest among them would begin trying to choke out the rest. Soon the others would ally and retaliate. Authoritarian totality was always met with an insurgency from the minority. And so the cycle would continue on. As powers grew, so they fell.

   At peak tension and magnitude among the oscillations of rising and falling powers and interests, a mother and father set off looking for their runaway child. 

   “Have you seen Persephone?” they first asked their closest family. But they didn’t remember her. 

   “Have you seen Persephone?” they then asked the village guards. But they had not seen any such thing. 

   “Have you seen Persephone?” they began asking the villages and soon the kingdoms of Noûs, “you will know her when you see her, but no one seems to remember her now.”

   Seasons came and went. They heard of sightings here and there, but Persephone had been largely forgotten. 

   The mother and father, broken and hopeless, finally returned home after journeying to each of the kingdoms through danger and peril, only to find Persephone right where they had forgotten her all along.