Persephone's Curse

Gave her a pomegranate

Thea

The air in the room seemed to shift and so did I when the door to the classroom suddenly creaked, then opened.

My first thought when I saw the man who, was probably a couple of years  older than me, walk in was who the even fuck wears a full black tuxedo and what were probably designer shoes in goddamn college.
I had barely bothered to proprely brush my hair, but I was pretty sure his was being treated with products on a daily basis, cuz god, wasn't it the perfect shade of fashionably short raven.
Man, this guy looked like he had just found out he had class at nine and a fashion show at ten.
He also kinda looked like one of those dark and broody characters in cartoons.
Not that I was making any comparisons out of interest.

He went to talk to the lecturer and I would have gotten right back to trying to understand my notes - the teach was one of those people who spoke very fast - had I not been close enough to hear his voice.
He was saying something about having been sent as a professor's help, but it wasn't his words that caugh my attention and send a shiver of bad feelings down my spine.
It was his voice.
I had heard that voice before. I could hear the words even now.
I guess you will do
I had woken up this morning to these words, remainders of the nightmare I'd had about our little summoning sketch getting a bit too much of a horror Percy Jackson feel. But this couldn't be the same voice.
Some creepy resemblance, probably the universe telling me I'd had enough good luck these past months and it was high time I started to earn my keep in some cosmic way.
Even having dismissed it, his voice still sent bad kind of shivers through me when he and the professor turned to the rest of the class and she introduced him as Aidan Kalias, a last minute transfer from some Greek university, and announced he was going to assist her in class.
What assistance could she need in teaching? It wasn't like we were in primary school and he needed to hand us scrissors for arts and crafts.
He walked to an empty desk two rows in front of me, pure grace in his steps - not that I was looking, he was certainly way too pampered up and his presence still tingled my spidey-senses.

The professor - mrs. Antonia, a middle aged woman with hair dyed a vibrant shade or red smiled indulgently at the rumour that had settled over the class.

"Quiet, please, I believe we've had enough distraction for the next week."

She walked to the board she had brought with her and pointed to a scheme of a fruit that I was pretty sure was a pomegranate.
My stomach lurched and I wasn't even looking at the real fruit, but I was already on the point of being nauseous.
I hadn't tasted one until a couple years back, when a friend had brought one to school for some reason, so I had no way of knowing I was utterly allergic o those things. That wasn't to say I hadn't liked the taste. I'd probably liked it too much, for I had eaten half of that thing by myself - and then broke out in the worst of rashes and puked my guts out for two days straight. I couldn't even look too intently at the picture.
Some people couldn't stand the sight of blood, I liked to keep as far away from pomegranates as possible.
Mrs. whatever her name was started talking again, kinda helping my predicament but not really.
"I am going to suppose you already know what fruit this is." She looked around the class for a few moments, then went on, "I want to talk about the importance of this fruit - it's a pomegranate, for those of you who did not know, especially the boy in the back who doesn't seem to be paying attention at all. Coming to class is a choice, you know? If you'd rather check your facebook every five seconds, you could stay home."
A heard someone snicker and I supposed it was the guy sitting next to facebook boy.

"But I digress. I want us to have an open conversation about what pomegranates have meant to history across the years. I know this is a rather abrubt topic change, but I think it's a better way of approaching history for all of you who don't actually want to be here."

Well this was mainly a biology university, so she did have a point. Almost nobody in the class truly cared about history. But for some reason it was in the curriculum.

A few people snickered at her not that veiled allusion, but as she saw nobody try to start a conversation, she went on, "Fine, I'm going to start, but I do want contributions from you. Speaking in class will bring you extra points in the final exam."

Well too bad this was history, then. I could drone on and on about virtually any other subject I had signed up for.

"For example, King Solomon of Israel had his crowm designed to look similar to a pomegranade."
She looked around the class again. Everyone was watching her intently, including me, having no idea what to say. Like, yes, the bit of information was rather interesting, but what was I or anyone else supposed to add to that?

In the silence that followed the professor's voice, Aidan's words echoed in a way that did not seem natural at all. He turned to the rest of the class as he spoke.
"They were also believed to be a symbol of fertile land, as people of Ancient Greece offered them to the goddes Demeter, along with prayers for a good farming season or a gentle winter."
Oh well, Percy Jackson never did mention that.
"This custom, of course, originated in the myth of Hades and Persephone."
I could swear he was looking right at me as he went on, "which says that by eating six pomegranate seeds, the goddess of spring was forever bound to the Underworld. Not that it was the fruit in itself that mattered, but the action of eating something grown in a foreign realm."
I swear he was staring. I tried my best to not meet his gaze. What the even fuck was up with this guy? He totally freaked me out.
I could feel his eyes slid off me, but his voice was still echoing in the class, seemingly moving in eerie ways around my ears, "And this is, of course, where the rumour that it is a symbol of imprisonment started, for back in the day, the custom was that if somome ate the seeds of a pomegranate in a foreign country, they were bound by honour to return there."
Percy Jackson certainly hadn't taught me that, which, by the way, was pretty cool, historically speaking.

After he finished talking, a couple more people raised their hands and said something about the fruit being said to have been made from the blood of Adonis or some shit like that, which honestly did not make me any mord eager to ever taste the red devil frut again, but my attention was not on the conversation - I was concentrating really hard on a spot on my notebook, trying with all my might to ignore the fact that the dresses up to the nines man a few meters away from me was probably digging holes inside my head with his stare.
And it annoyed the hell out of me that I did not have the guts to raise my eyes and look back and maybe get him to drop his stare as I would have usually done.
But if he was going to continue to be creepy, I would have to conforont him about it. Eventually. Even though all the bones in my body told me to steer as clear away from him as humanly possible.

For a second, I couldn't help but think back to my nightmare, and the fact that the thing we had summoned had had that exact same stare.
But that was just plainly impossible.
Maybe I'd seen him somewhere before and I just could not recall it.