The Portrait

Once upon a time, in the shadowed heart of the underworld, there lived a queen made of springtime and shadow—Persephone, bride of Hades, beloved of both bloom and bone.

To honor her, her dark and brooding husband gave her a gift: a portrait of stained glass, crafted with reverence and alchemy. It shimmered with the colors of every version of her—the maiden of blossoms, the queen of ash, the girl who danced on the edge of light.

He placed it in a sunlit alcove he had carved into the stone of their palace, where a single golden beam pierced the darkness each day. There, in that nook, she would sit with dreams and secrets, letting the light pour through the glass, warming her skin with colors and memory.

And then... one day....the portrait fell.

Persephone stepped into the room and found the masterpiece shattered across the black marble floor. A gasp caught in her throat. Her knees buckled. Shards sparkled like knives—like accusations. She bled as she crawled toward them, the pieces of her fractured self. There was no fixing it. No undoing. She wept.

But as her tears fell, something else began to rise.

The sunlight streamed in as it always did—but now it scattered through the chaos. Beams refracted through prisms and edges. Rainbows spun on the walls, alive and unbound.

The stained glass was no longer a portrait. It was a constellation of possibility.

Persephone looked again. What once felt like wreckage began to shimmer with potential. Some pieces were too jagged, too dangerous to hold—but others… oh, others sang. Each shard held a different truth: a flash of courage, a forgotten joy, a piece of power she had once set aside. She gathered them gently. She scooped up the diamond dust and memory and wonder.

And then, she called for the jeweler. The one who had forged tiaras for queens and reliquaries for saints. She gave him the shards, the dust, the story.

“Make me a kaleidoscope,” she said. “Let it tumble and turn. Let it show me who I am—not in a single, frozen portrait, but in infinite, ever-shifting light.”

For the beauty is in the becoming.

And so, it was made.