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Artemis is a very good mentor for a young goddess, Demeter proclaims. Persephone may spend as much time as she likes with Artemis. Perhaps she will learn something.
Persephone learns many things from Artemis.
She learns the names of all the flowers and trees and herbs and animals of the forest, their habits and blessings and curses, their habitats and preferences. Where she walks, flowers bloom, and Artemis names them all.
She learns how to walk softly, and climb like a squirrel, and dance like a whirlwind with Artemis’s nymphs, until she is more surefooted than any but Artemis herself.
She learns to kiss.
She learns to kneel and press her mouth between her mentor’s legs, and lick just so, until Artemis swears and clenches a hand in Persephone’s hair to pull her away.
She learns to spread herself out on soft moss and hold quite still until Artemis is done looking at her; to muffle her cries when Artemis runs callused fingers over her breasts and between her legs and bites her lips and throat; to come shaking and silent beneath the elder goddess.
She learns the difference between the truth one speaks and the truth that others hear.
She learns what love is, and what it is not. She learns that she is beautiful, and that beauty is power. (Many years later, this knowledge brings her a throne and a husband.) And, most pleasant of all, she learns that if she moves her fingers like this and her tongue like this and her teeth just so, Artemis the hunter, Artemis the silent, Artemis the indomitable, comes screaming in ecstasy.