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Lina was feeling a little breathless and displaced, which was truly ironic. She was, after al , final y wearing her own skin.

"It probably has something to do with being one of the newly dead," she muttered, holding out her arms and looking in amazement at her glowing body. She was more substantial than the dead she was so used to seeing, and she was pleased that it appeared that her body had taken on a form that was much younger than she had been at her death. With a start, Lina realized that she had materialized within her forty-three-year-old body. She laughed. "The exact age I was when I met him," she said.Advertisement

The tunnel stretched before her, black and unending, but its darkness didn't intimidate her. Lina walked forward with confidence without once looking back at the last light she would ever glimpse from the mortal world.

Suddenly, a little bal of bril iance burst into being at her shoulder, and she laughed in surprise.

"What are you doing here?" The globe bobbled around, wiggling like a puppy. But she didn't real y need to ask - she knew who had sent the light. "Thank you, Persephone," she cal ed to the listening air.

She walked quickly through the cluster of beautiful ghost trees that had come to be known as Persephone's Grove. As always, she enjoyed the sparkling facets that were their leaves. Lina left the grove, and blinked in surprise. Before her, the onyx road that led to her lover's palace stretched as usual to the gates of pearl, but this time the gates had been flung wide open, and behind them were multitudes of glowing, semi-substantial shapes. At the head of the teeming mass stood Hades, flanked on one side by Orion and on the other by Eurydice and Iapis. As the stal ion caught sight of her he screamed a shril neigh of joyous welcome. Eurydice clamped one hand against her pale mouth, and with the other she waved gaily at her mistress while tears of happiness streamed down her cheeks.

But when Hades began to move toward her, Lina's entire world narrowed to hold only him. He strode to her, his eyes dancing with emotion. When he final y stood before her, he reached out, and with a gesture that was as familiar to her as was as her own heart, he caressed her cheek.

"Welcome home, beloved," he whispered.

She smiled at her soul mate.

Hades spun around to face the mob. Cloak swirling, he raised his arms victoriously over his head.

"She has come!" he thundered in the voice of a god.

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A shout rose from the unnumbered dead that echoed from the Underworld up and spread throughout al of Olympus. " Rejoice! Our Queen is come and she shal leave us nevermore! " On her throne in Olympus, Demeter raised her goblet and touched it against Persephone's as they smiled at each other in acknowledgment of Carolina's happy ending.

"Wel done, my daughters," Demeter said. "Wel done." pqdm.com