Warning: References to twincest and an incident of marital dubious consent appear in this chapter, in mythological fashion (neither of them graphic and neither involving Everlark). After that things turn properly Everlark and sweet, if a trifle angsty. ;D

Prologue: The Wrath of the Harvest Queen

Raisa was a harvest goddess, one of several deities who carried the power of the season. She was, in fact, the artist of autumn, for it was her hand which ripened the crops and painted the many woods in glorious shades of red and gold, copper and bronze. Mortals revered her for these powers and adored her for her beauty: for her ruddy golden hair, creamy skin, and blue eyes flecked with hazel, like windborne chaff against a hot September sky.

Her husband was broad and brawny Janek, god of wheat and other grains, of millers and baking and bread. Though he was both kind and vastly handsome, theirs had been a practical match, orchestrated by the greater gods, and their union kept the mortal world thriving and fed.

Their firstborn was congenial Marko, god of scythes, sickles, and storehouses; a giant of a young man, possessing the rugged beauty of a whitened wheatfield. He did not glory in his rank but moved quietly among mortals at harvest-time, aiding in the cutting and binding of grain in a hundred fields, and was much beloved for it. Indeed, there were many Christian people who called him Saint Marko, and carried little talismans with his image as they prayed for a successful harvest.

Now Raisa's second son was not her husband's offspring, but the child of her twin brother Luka. In the manner of gods, her brother had been her first love; indeed, they had been entwined like lovers in their mother's womb and had together struck dead the hapless midwife who had pulled them apart. As Raisa was the goddess of autumn's bounty, of ripening fruit and vibrant leaves, Luka was the reverse: the god of autumn's demise; of frost and bitter wind, of withering, shriveling, and silent, relentless decay.

He was identical to his sister in every exquisite feature, but where her beauty was warm and rich and vibrant, his was as cruel and cold as the grave. She could blush an apple with a touch; he could wither it just as easily. Their powers were intertwined, of course, for Luka could not bring about the end of summer but needed his sister to turn the world red and gold, and as the first frost caused her powers to wane, his became steadily stronger, till at last the first snow fell.

They had been lovers in their youth, well-matched and fiercely passionate in their love-making, but the greater gods had quickly put a stop to it by wedding her to Janek who, as a fellow god of harvest, was as a mate not only compatible but complementary. But once Marko was birthed and traveling the mortal realm with his father, learning the weight of a sickle and the welcome brush of wheat-heads against his stocky body, Raisa wasted no time in bringing her brother to her bed once more.

Harvest was erratic that year – indeed, summer seemed not to end – for, distracted as they were in their affair, Raisa neglected to ripen the crops and paint the forests, and her brother neglected to wither them in his turn. Winter arrived without warning, albeit at its proper time, and many mortals shivered in their homes and nearly died of hunger – and indeed would have, had not Janek and his small son made many ventures from their celestial storehouses, distributing their own supplies of grain.

That winter Raisa bore her brother's child: a startlingly angry boy, albeit beautiful beyond words, with flesh like frost and red-gold hair; indeed, the very image of his twin parents. The greater gods observed this with some concern, for the forces of ripening and decay to combine in a child could surely be naught but catastrophic, but none dared speak of it to Janek, who was yet unaware of his wife's affair, let alone that her newborn son was not of his seed.

She named the baby Luka – in tribute to her brother, she told Janek – and he became the god of autumn storms; of sleet and hail and the coldest of winds that lay not in winter's domain. He was powerful, even as a child, but his might was short-lived. Winter would not yield her power to an angry boy, however beautiful he might be, and young Luka spent the vast majority of his year cursing and fuming for those few weeks when he might unleash his fury on travelers and fields.

Raisa continued to lie with her brother, and often, while her husband and elder son went tirelessly among mortals, attempting to salvage crops and increase storeholds. The greater gods frowned at this but conceded that there was a certain inevitability to the twins' passion. They were two sides of a coin: opposing forces, yet the power of each relied upon the other. So long as their son was kept in relative impunity and autumn returned to its cycle, it mattered little – to the greater gods, that is – that she chose to share her husband's bed with a lover.

Now, Janek was not greatly in love with his wife, but he admired and cared deeply for her, and it was only a matter of time before he returned home, dusty from the fields, to find Raisa abed, her red hair rippling like flames against her white skin as she arched and gasped over her twin. Her lush form was flung impatiently aside as husband fought brother, and many insults were hurled and blows dealt and wounds sustained on both sides, but in the end Janek triumphed and cast out his wife's lover with a shout of fury.

No sooner was this done than he took Raisa to bed upon the tangled sheets her brother had but lately defiled, with his seed still wet upon her thighs. "Am I not a god?" Janek panted as he moved inside her, deep and forceful. "Am I not your husband? Am I not sufficient, that you open your womb to your own brother?" For he knew now what he had suspected of her second son, and hated her for it.

However, Janek was not a cruel god, nor wont to hold a grudge, even in the face of his wife's cuckolding and betrayal, and in light of her brother's banishment from her bed, Raisa was only too happy to be embraced by her husband once more. Janek was a strong and steady lover, and she let him seed her womb again and again, for there was a certain easy pleasure in it. When her belly swelled that winter, she rejoiced, for she was certain she carried another of her brother's children, and perhaps it would be a daughter this time; a pretty maid to join her in painting the crops and the trees.

But when Raisa's time came it was a son she birthed, and quite evidently of her husband's seed. A sturdy little boy he was, with Janek's golden curls and bright eyes – which was quite enough to earn her resentment, for he was neither a daughter nor Luka's get – but worse than that: he had, as sometimes occurs in their children of gods, unwittingly taken at his birth one of his mother's powers. He would, of course, be a practical god, like his father and full brother, and to him was given the arts of food preservation: of root cellars and canning, salting and spicing and smoking and drying. But he was also Raisa's son, and from her he had inherited an artist's eye and hand – and had taken from her, whole and entire, the harvest of honey.

Honey-taking was but one of Raisa's many harvests, and it galled her to see it given without warning to this youngest, least-loved son, but even the greater gods cannot revoke an inborn ability, and Peeta – for so Janek had named him – would be ever afterward the god of honey, with a form sweet and golden and the occasional company of velvet honeybees.

Three years passed, in which Raisa grew ever more resentful of her sunny youngest child and, now and again, sought to do him harm in subtle and crafty ways, and Janek took to transforming the boy into a small golden bear-cub for his protection and tucking him away in a little cave or hollow tree with a bit of honeycomb to nibble from his chubby paws. And shortly thereafter, Janek took a lover for himself.

His first love, she had been: Alyssum, goddess of fertility and new life, whose power lay in leaf buds and catkins and the first blooms of spring. She was pale as a lily, with eyes as vibrant as the violets she tucked into her flaxen hair, and in their youth Janek had loved her, and made love to her, with all his heart, but one day while coaxing a forest into flower, she had tripped into a mortal huntsman's snare, and when he arrived to free her, she had fallen at once in love with his dark beauty and exquisite voice, which could silence the birds in a thousand woods and make even the gods weep with its jeweled tones.

Alyssum had borne her husband a daughter – Katniss by name, a mortal girl with her mother's fineness of feature and her father's dusky coloring – and he had died, gored on a hunt, when the child was just three years old. Janek came to her first out of consolation and sympathy for the cruel loss of her husband, then a love gentle and patient, and at last passion and hunger, which Alyssum returned in full measure.

As their interludes grew longer and more frequent, Janek brought his beloved youngest son to play with Alyssum's daughter while he made love to her mother beneath the heady afternoon sun; now in violets, now in clover, now in primroses, bobbing their bright yellow blooms in lazy echo of the lovers' movements. Sometimes he left Peeta in his bear-cub form and tiny Katniss delighted to climb astride him like a pony and grab fistfuls of his curly golden fur as she rode him about the meadow, laughing with delight and kicking her bare feet against his sides. Other times he brought his son in his true form and they would play as all children do, carrying on in a language all their own and exchanging little presents, as simple and profound as a pretty rock, a perfect flower, or a fallen feather. And sometimes the children would even innocently imitate the actions of their parents' love-making: the golden boy would lie atop the dark girl, both fully clothed, and cover her face with many wet, clumsy kisses while she squirmed and giggled beneath him, and at last they would give great loud sighs, as they were accustomed to hearing at the culmination of all that kissing, and tumble together in a tangle of limbs and hold each other as they slept.

Now the coupling of a harvest god and a spring goddess is no small thing, and as Janek and Alyssum's bodies met and merged the mortal world knew a new season: a fifth season, golden and balmy as a second summer, betwixt the first frost of autumn and the first snow of winter. And in those warm and heady weeks, Alyssum lay beneath her lover like a feast for his tender savoring, and his seed took root in her womb, and his child grew within her.

Janek remained with his beloved through the winter, delighting as her belly grew round and full beneath his strong hands, and eagerly shared her bed every night, while his small son and her daughter nestled together in their own narrow cradle and traded shy kisses beneath the covers. Alyssum was heavily pregnant when at last she went abroad to sow the firstfruits of spring – the violet, the crocus, the snowdrop and willow-bud – and she had not gone far when she sank to her knees in a forest clearing, all bare earth and still half-blanketed in snow. And when she rose at last the ground was warm and grassy beneath her and all about her stood primroses, bright and golden as sundrops, and as the hair of the daughter she had birthed in that place.

Janek came to her at once, radiant with joyous tears, and together they named their child Primrose. The daughter of a harvest god and a spring goddess, she came forth as goddess of that season which had been borne of her parents' love-making: goddess of the second summer, of late harvests and unexpected things. She could pluck wheat heads from among thistles and coax a patch of cut stalks to produce new heads of grain; not enough for a full field or second harvest, of course, but sufficient to fill the belly of a hungry traveler, or a lean cow, or a lost child. Apple trees bent their highest branches so she might pluck their most elusive fruits, and brambles parted for her little white hands to collect every last plump berry.

The greater gods much approved of this child, for they had long desired the union of Janek and Alyssum and had not been much pleased when she left her immortal lover for a mortal huntsman, though they had allowed it in light of his gentleness and woodcraft and very fine voice, which had no equal among gods or mortals. In many ways Primrose was the goddess they had longed for: a sweet and gentle presence in autumn to counter the bitterness of Raisa's twin and his fierce, angry son. She was much like her half-brothers in powers and disposition, and the greater gods nodded to one another over their goblets of hot honey-wine and contemplated the prospect of her eventual marriage. Her gifts dovetailed best with Marko's, and the greater gods smiled at the thought of the merry, ruddy-cheeked reaper traversing the grain fields with a wife who brought the warm winds of summer in her wake and could stretch a lean harvest if needed.

A few years passed, and Primrose grew and thrived and began to draw the attention of mortals. A little maid of trailing yellow curls and cornflower eyes; to be in her presence was to stand in the glory of a perfect summer's day: here a warm breeze, there a breath of wild roses, fresh with dew. A comely child, she was adored wherever she passed, and not simply for her beauty but also her gentle, generous powers. She could gather more food from a seemingly dormant garden or field than might a small party of workers at the peak of harvest-time, and she let none pass by without a handful of late berries or a pocketful of grain. And some mortals began to carry a talisman with her image and look to little Primrose, rather than Raisa, as their harvest goddess.

Now Raisa had been surpassing tolerant of her husband's affair, for every night he spent in Alyssum's arms was a night she might lie with her brother – though the greater gods had swiftly seen to the deadening of his seed, that she would not conceive another child by him – and in fact it vexed her little enough that Janek had sired a child upon his first love. She had Luka's stormy, beautiful namesake already, and there was a certain symmetry in them both having a child outside their marriage, by the ones they loved truly, most and longest.

But Raisa was passionately jealous of Primrose's powers and beauty, and when she saw mortals contemplating worship of her husband's child in her stead, her rage knew no bounds. She overripened crops till they burst and spoiled in their fields, then her brother brutally subdued the earth to dormancy in a hard, killing frost while his son cast hailstones and lightning at his side. When this was done, mortals crept from their houses to weep in the fields, where moldy grain and rotten fruit littered the pitted soil, and Raisa veiled her bright hair beneath a cloak the color of dead leaves and set off with grim satisfaction to find Alyssum and her daughters.

Of course, Janek had been with his lover and her children all this while, and Peeta besides, and he was not unaware of his wife's rampage, nor of her reasons for it. Alyssum and Primrose were immortal and beloved of the greater gods, and as such there was little Raisa could do to harm them directly – but Katniss was another matter. The daughter of Alyssum's late husband, the child was mortal and could be grievously wounded, even killed, by the full power of a goddess of Raisa's ilk, and the harvest queen would most assuredly strike wherever she found weakness, and glory in the pain it would cause Primrose and her mother. And though Katniss was no kin to Janek, she was Alyssum's firstborn and he loved her as he loved his own daughter.

There was naught to do for the moment but hide the little family, though before this could be done Janek turned Peeta into his bear-shape and sent him into the woods, under the pretense of securing a fine honeycomb for their supper. Janek knew that for Alyssum and her daughters to be hidden safely, none could know their location but himself, and even he dared not go to them till Raisa ceased her search or, at the very least, the violence of her rage subsided. At eight mortal years of age Peeta still accompanied his father on every visit to Alyssum's home, and though he would happily play with his little half-sister for a time, his devotion was to Katniss, and it was as unwavering as it was obvious. It was equally apparent that Raisa would discover, and all too quickly, if Peeta knew where the girls were hidden, and rather than wring the truth from her misliked youngest son she would simply wait for him to go to his playfellow and follow him there, and add his pain to that which she would cause there.

So while Peeta bounded happily into the woods, all curly golden fur and stout legs, intent on the perfect honeycomb to present for his sweetheart's repast, Janek gathered Alyssum and her daughters, as well as a few small provisions, and led them to a secluded valley, walled off from the world – and more importantly, from Raisa's sight – by a ring of silver mountains, their jagged snowy peaks reaching up into the clouds. Little Katniss berated the harvest god for the better part of the journey, and fiercely, for she saw the deception at once and despaired at the thought of being parted from her sweet playfellow, but Janek pleaded with her for the boy's sake. Raisa thoroughly despised her youngest child and would not hesitate to abuse him in her pursuit of Primrose and Katniss; this much was obvious, but she would swiftly divine that he was ignorant of these matters, and while Janek's thwarting would not please her, she could hardly mistreat her son to reveal information he did not possess.

The valley, while empty of persons, was verdant in nature, and Alyssum's arrival made it even more so, with wildflowers and wholesome herbs sprouting in her very footprints as she entered that place. A lake there was, small but plentiful with fish and nourishing weeds and flanked on one side by a little grove of trees, and Janek procured a small flock of spotted goats, placid and soft-eared, with udders low and plump with milk to supply the family's table. The valley housed a shepherd's cottage, a solid stone shelter, long-disused, and in such a place Alyssum and her children might live safely and well, for as long as might be necessary. Alyssum's powers peaked when Raisa's were at their lowest ebb; thus she could leave the valley to sow spring upon the earth, as always she had done before, and until Primrose's safety was assured, the world would manage quite well without her second summer.

Janek met Peeta, golden muzzle closed delicately about a perfect honeycomb as he galloped merrily back toward his sweetheart's former residence, and conveyed, in gentle words, how Katniss and her family had been hidden from all for their safety, from Peeta no less than his mother. The boy cast off his bear form and shouted his dismay, both hands closed about the dripping comb, and his bees came to comfort him with their downy bodies and feathery wings. "Why would you do such a thing?" cried the heartbroken honey-god to his father. "Why would you hide my sweetheart from me? I could protect her better than her mother, and keep her in a finer fashion than this exile you have wrought."

Of course, Peeta's anger was at the separation, not at his father, and Janek knew it well. "It will not be forever," he soothed the boy, "and she grieves your absence just as much as you grieve hers. She will leave that hiding place soon enough, and I doubt not you shall one day have her to wife. Take this parting as opportunity to prepare for that day," he urged. "Channel your love into a craft, something you might present one day as bride-price."

Janek said this supposing to distract the boy from his broken heart, perhaps to occupy his hands for a few days with some project or other while he came to terms with the separation from his playfellow, but he had severely underestimated the young honey-god's devotion. "That I shall!" Peeta declared, and departed in a furious rush of black and gold and small humming wings.

Author's Note: The sequence where Janek catches Raisa with her twin brother is a nod to Hephaestus devising the net trap for Aphrodite and Ares, and I briefly considered giving him a limp to further the connection. The greater gods (I'm leaving them quite vague and mysterious at present but they'll probably consist of Capitol folk - Snow, in particular, will make a rather crucial appearance in a future installment) sterilize Raisa's twin in punishment, which is a bit harsher than Ares's admonition.