Writing with Witch Archetypes (Part 3)

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Sep 02, 2024

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I’m excited to teach my popular class “Writing with Witch Archetypes” again this September. Here’s a prompt from Week 3: The Underworld.

PERSEPHONE DOES A Q AND A ON ZOOM

BY: JUDE HIGGINS

Persephone was an old hand at self isolation — every year six winter months in the underworld, cooped up with Hades. By popular demand, in the second Spring of the pandemic, she scheduled a Zoom session to answer women’s questions.

On screen, the women looked haunted and dishevelled.

How do you deal with darkness?

Are you hungry all the time?

How long was it before you let your hair go grey?
‘Darkness is never absolute,’ Persephone said. ‘When I return for Spring, I appreciate humble things. ’She was sitting with her iPad in a meadow of dandelions.

‘Take these for example,’ she said pulling up some of the weeds. ‘You can make tea and wine from the petals, coffee from the roots, and the leaves help with digestion, constipation, and weight loss. We learn to be resourceful with what’s around us.’

She shook out her long grey hair, which was sickly green at the ends.

‘Clothes turn soft yellow if dyed with dandelions,’ she said. ‘But don’t try the juice on your hair.’

They all laughed apart from a pale faced woman wearing sunglasses.

‘Hades abducted you,’ she said. ‘And now you’re stuck with that rapist half the year.’

Persephone cried a little then wiped her eyes.

‘If I leave, it will be perpetual winter on Earth. Worse than it is now. At least in your lockdown, you can still follow some of your dreams.’

The women wanted to ask more.

But the sound cut out and the call ended.

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PROMPT:

Take your favorite underworld goddess and put them in a contemporary situation as Jude Higgins does in “Persephone Does a Q and A on Zoom.” Bonus challenge: make the entire story take place in one scene.