February Thaw Read Online Free

held the rose and, like drops of blood against his pale skin, were seven pomegranate seeds.
    Persephone gave a little cry Demeter wasn't quite able to interpret, but her eyes were dewy and that seemed a good sign.
    "Please come back to me, Sephie. The Underworld is empty without you. All my wealth is meaningless. I'll stop spending so much time with the guys. I'll cut out saturated fats. I..." The horses jerked forward. Muscles straining, Hades brought them back under control. "I love... Damn it, you four, stop it or I'll feed you to the dog! I love you, Persephone."
    Could have been a more polished declaration, Demeter acknowledged but not more sincere. "Well?" she said again, this time with a little more emphasis.
    "But spring...?"
    The goddess smiled, trying not to let the relief show. "Spring can wait two months."
    With a glad cry, Persephone ran forward and leapt into both the chariot and Hades' arms. Finding no hand on the reins, both of the god's hands being otherwise occupied, the team did what horses always do under similar, if less mythic, circumstances. Hoofs striking sparks against the air, they bolted down toward their stable carrying their two oblivious passengers back to the Underworld with them.
    The last Demeter saw of her daughter and her son-in-law, they were feeding each other the pomegranate seeds and murmuring things she was just as glad she couldn't hear.
    "Happy endings all around," she muttered, and added as she went to work tucking the spring growth back into bed, "I have no idea how Aphrodite puts up with this kind of nonsense day in and day out."
    With Persephone back in the loving arms of her husband, it didn't take long for Demeter to return the season to normal, although she felt a little bad about the radishes.
    When Dusk approached, the goddess wandered down to the rec room, opened a new bottle, and poured herself a glass of wine. The house was blessedly quiet. Even the cat had returned from wherever he'd hidden himself.
    Slippered feet up on a hassock, she picked up the remote. Maybe she'd heat up a frozen pizza for dinner.
    The lawn was a disaster. In the spring, the actual spring, it would have to be rolled.
    It seemed a small price to pay.
    Outside the cottage, it began to snow.

As I recall – and my recall isn't the best, but, all things considered, this seems like a no brainer – stories written for the anthology, Earth, Air, Fire, Water , were to be about one of the four elements in the title. Edited by Margaret Weiss and Janet Pack, it was the second in the Tales from the Eternal Archive series. I'm not sure there was a third.
     
    I wanted to use Fire because I'd recently bought a book called Fire: Technology, Symbolism, Ecology, Science, and Hazard by Hazel Rossotti who is a Fellow and Tutor in chemistry at St. Anne's College in Oxford. I suspect it may be her thesis. I love this book. It pretty much proves to me that, if you look hard enough, you can find a book about anything.
     
    As for the story, well, this is another one that started about three thousand words before it was supposed to and had to be ruthlessly edited until the actual beginning appeared. Now, I have no problem setting my urban fantasy in a distinct time – the tech is going to out you anyway – and two lines set this story firmly in the time it was written, back before DVDs of television shows were quite so omnipresent and before George Lucas proved he should've quit while he was ahead.
Burning Bright
    "Mom?"
    Beth Aswith opened her eyes and stared up at the young woman bending over her. "Good, you made it. Did you come alone?"
    "No, Alynne gave me a lift."
    "Alynne?" Beth glanced suspiciously around the small room as if she expected to see her daughter's oldest friend hiding behind the curtains or under one of the ugly, orange plastic chairs. "Where is she?"
    "She's waiting for me down in her car. She wouldn't come in."
    "Why not?"
    "I think it has something to do with a guy she was dating."
    Silver brows