Persephone

Persephone

Persephone awoke a half hour before dawn. Sleepily the Spiral stretched to her full length out as she uncurled herself from around her workbench seat. She had forgotten to actually go to bed again. But for good reason… Sitting on the workbench was her masterpiece, complete and beautiful. Well, to her, anyway. To the casual observer, it was little more than a box. But on the inside, it was a marvel of alchemy and light! Persephone could hardly contain her excitement. The years of study, the months of experimentation and failed attempts, the last sleepless week… It was all held within that simple box. The Spiral quickly got ready. If she was going to test her crowning achievement, it would be best to do it when the Prismatic Dawnbringer’s powers were strongest… the break of dawn.

Ever since they were young, Persephone always thought the world as beautiful. From the sparkling ocean horizon at dawn by the Beacon, to the play of light and shadow throughout the Sunbeam Ruins, to the cool glimmer of the stars in the sky and the warm flicker of candles in windows at night… Every moment was precious. But as they grew, they realized that all these special moments that they treasured so dearly… were becoming lost. The dawn of yesterday was not the dawn of today. The stars and candles would shift and even die. Every single moment they lived was a moment that would never be seen again… So they tried to draw the moments before they would become lost. It was fruitless, for they could never draw fast and accurately enough to show the real truth of those perfect moments. Then, one day, everything changed. They were at Baldwin’s Cauldron, enjoying the magic of alchemy, something that changed from moment to moment, trying her best to document how beautiful the mixture looked in the growing dusk… Suddenly, the mixture splattered out of the cauldron. Persephone luckily moved out of the way in time, but she accidentally let out a burst of light magic in her surprise. The paper she had been drawing on, however, had gotten soaked in the cauldron’s mixture. As she sadly gathered up her ruined drawing, she noticed something strange… She had not been drawing herself, but there it was, a faint picture of her jumping back in surprise! She quickly realized that whatever the mixture was in the cauldron was somehow reactive to light, and the reaction was to reflect the world as it truly was… Baldwin had not been keeping track of what the mixture contained, but had let her take the batch home when she had asked politely. Her life over the next few years were busy. She studied different alchemical ingredients reactions to light. She carefully analyzed the original compound. She tested, failed, experimented, studied, failed and even somewhat succeeded imperfectly… until she got it right.

Persephone flew high into the sky. The first test would be an image she loved best… The break of dawn over the Sunbeam ruins. She waited patiently. Her timing had to be perfect. As she waited, she started gathering the power of light within her, and started the spell. She would time the final trigger word of the spell just as the sun rose… The world seemed to hold its breath… And the dawn broke. A score of Light dragons rose into the air with the sun to greet the new day. Persephone quickly uncapped the lens on the box and spoke the final word of her spell, triggering an amazing flash of light. She held the position for a minute, then capped the lens and started back home. Now it was time to see if this worked as she knew that it would…

The room was dark. She had already prepped the chemicals for transferring the images in the box to special parchment many times before, and had learned through trial and error that they were extremely sensitive to light. It was best to do this part in the dark. It was handy to have nocturnal vision, as all Spirals do, sometimes… After she was done, she waited for the chemicals to dry on the parchment, and carefully brought it to the light of day. And there it was. That morning’s perfect moment. The true beauty of the world, captured with light and alchemy, never to be lost or forgotten. Persephone smiled. Images taken with light… she would call it “Photography”.