Persephone did her best not to laugh, pressing her lips together tightly to hold back the sound. It was endearing, watching his bewilderment. She was reminded of an infant animal, confused and unstable in the light. She nearly said so, but held that back too. If she was frightened, it was of frightening him off. How strange that she'd been told to fear him. She took a few steps toward him, slow, so that he would not shrink back from her. She only stopped when the chill of his creeping frost splintered through the grass near enough that it nipped at her toes. It made her gasp, but she was smiling too. Persephone had never felt the cold.<br/><br/>"Sorry? What for?" she asked, pulling his own question from between her lips. "I'm happy you're here." She said, folding her arms across her chest. "I mean, I've been looking for you, sort of." She did laugh then, and it was at her own behavior. There she was, coaxing him into the open like she'd never had the option to step into his shade. In that way, she couldn't deny the luxury of her sheltered life. To step outside apparent beauty, to face the unknown straight on, was foreign to her. It had been disturbing enough to her mother that she'd shown any interest in the things beyond her view at all.<br/><br/>It was miraculous, watching him, and more so when he met her gaze. It sent a tingle down her spine, and she wondered if it was the chill of his presence or something else entirely. She found it remarkable, regardless. "One of Gaia's..." her lips parted. "You must know my mother, Demeter, then." She said. Her mother had been one of the early gods, a daughter of the titans just as Zeus on the throne. Her expression shifted. "Why haven't I heard your name before?" she asked. "I don't live in the sea, but I know your brother Poseidon. Why haven't I met you, when you're just the same as them?" she asked. She might have known a portion of the answer, even as she asked. He was, of course, not at all like the mighty brothers. Hades was otherworldly. Persephone thought it was amazing.<br/><br/>She flushed when he said her name, and the hue grew deeper still when he found a voice for his own questions. "Well, I guess I suspected you might like my flowers. I wanted to keep giving them to you at first." She hesitated. "And then... you're right, my mother told me not to come back here." She let her gaze drop, like a guilty child. "Honestly, I didn't understand. I came back because I wanted to make you more flowers. And I wanted to meet you." She huffed. "Because I don't understand why I'm supposed to be frightened." She moved toward him then, rapidly, until the scent of blossoms in her hair made the air thick with sweetness that hung between the snapping edges of his chill.<br/><br/>"I don't understand why nobody's ever said your name to me." She held up her palm between them, a white rose blossoming upward as vines twined around her fingers. A gift. "I've never seen my flowers the way you do. I can't dress them in diamonds like you do." Persephone glanced up at him, smiling softly. The rosy flush lingered on her cheeks, a deeper pink than the hue that had touched his pallor. "You don't seem like I should have to be afraid of you." Peering past his shoulder, into the deep shadows of his winding forest gate, she shook her head. "But then, I wasn't sure why you'd not come out to meet me either. Why did you wait hidden for so long?" Her lips were darker at this proximity, a deep purple rising against the cold that drifted around him.