Packing Peanuts II: Who's Who?

For background on the Packing Peanuts Posts, go here. Today’s nuts are brought to you by Sleepy Joe’s challenge to expound somehow on a myth. This is one of my favorites, and I’ve purposely used more ambiguous names of the two main characters. Can you guess who’s who?

 

                                         Fruit Offering

Aidoneus stood again, hands clasped behind his muscled back, black eyes focused down. The blue-green glow of fungi sprawling up walls in the dark, underground room lit his pacing. 

          From the direction of a couch came Hermes’ bark of laughter. He shook his head as he picked at the fruit spread overflowing a low table. “Relax. She’ll come,” he said through a mouthful of grapes. “You know that.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“You say that every autumn but she always comes.”

“Which isn’t a guarantee she’ll continue.”

“But your brother promised…”

Aidoneus snorted. “That doesn’t guarantee anything either.”

“Well then. She’ll come because she loves you.”

“Does she?” 

Aidoneus slumped into an overstuffed chair, pulling at his recently trimmed beard. Everything about Aidoneus and his underworld palace had been recently groomed, cleaned, set into order. Even the three-headed hound had learned some new tricks.

Glancing around the dim space, he eyed the candles and oil lamps with a sigh. They wreaked havoc on his retinas but Kore would need them until her vision adjusted. The bioluminescent flora here was impressive, but nothing to the lighting she was used to above. 

Nothing here was like above.

“This place has to be Tartarus for her,” Aidoneus said, feeling his inadequacy deep. 

“My Lord,” a messenger’s head poked through the door. “She approaches.”

Aidoneus nodded, starting up. The messenger disappeared.

“Well if it’s not you she loves,” Hermes stood, lobbing a crimson orb Aidoneus easily caught, “it’s your pomegranates. I told you she’d come.”

Then Hermes too disappeared and Aidoneus was left alone to watch a soft flickering down the hall slowly approach. Kore held only a single flame, yet her image still made his eyes water. He bowed deep, offering the fruit. 

She took it. But her lips searched for something more.

link to original here

So what are some of your favorite myths, and how would you change/expound on them? Why have they made an impact on you -- Why are they your packing peanuts?