The sound of her feet pounding on the ground filled her head, while far away screams and crackling fire tried to poke their way in, eating away at her mind. ‘GO, faster, faster, faster…’ she thought, willing her legs to make that extra step.
     Running from the place, the fire and the screams, wasn’t as easy as Meg had planned. Many nights she had sat in the woods planning what she was going to, what she had to do. She had told the trees her plan, had asked the winds for advice and prayed to the Gods for strength. Now the tree nymphs had turned on her, moving the trees into her path as easily as moving a chess piece, the wind was howling ‘muuurrrderrerrr…’ in her ear, and it seemed that the God’s had turned a blind eye.
     Bursting out of the edge of the woods, Meg fell to the ground, sobs wracking her frail pixie-like body. Frozen to the ground, she lay there, unable to move for minutes and then an hour, almost two. Finally the sobs subsided, and she managed to sit up, looking around at her surroundings.
     No matter what caught her attention, her thoughts always went back to what she had done. ‘He's gone now…he can never hurt me again…no no, NO, don’t think about it…’ she told her self over and over, but the sounds of his screams and the smell of the fire always came back to tease her.
     Picking herself up from the ground, she turned to the direction she had just come, searching the woods for some answers that she knew would never come. She started walking, slowly retracing her frantic steps from before. Weaving through the trees, she looked around at the dark sky filled with stars, and the pearl-white moon shining brightly through the leaves. She listened to the wind blowing the few fallen leaves around on the ground, her thoughts scattering just the same.
     She stepped over a fallen log and was just about to turn around to untangle her long red hair out of a branch when the wind gave a huge gust and she went falling face first into a dark hole.
     She didn't remember hitting the ground, never even felt it. She woke up, almost like out of a sleep, standing in front of what looked like, or what she thought looked like, the God of the underworld, Hades.
     “Soooo, baby, my little flower, my little nut Meg,” he began, curling a long slender finger around in her hair, “you’ve done a bad thing, and you're just now thinking about the consequences,” he twirled the hair on his finger even more and her eyes followed the advancement of the whole thing, closing them when his hand was out of her vision, “…am I right?” he asked, running his hand down her cheek. “No!” she said, jerking her face out of his reach. “No you're not right! I had to do it! I couldn’t let him—“ she cut off then, looking at the bemused expression on his face.
     “See, little flower, you know you have done a wrong, but I also want you to know that I can make it better. I can take all of this away and you can wake up in the morning just like normal.”
     She looked at him then, his ‘dripping-with-charm’ smile plastered on his face and saw right through him. “But…?” she asked, watching the smile falter only for a second. Then it was back to total whiteness and dripping charm.
     “But…yes, yes, but…But you have to…sell me you're soul.”
      Her heart skipped a beat, and she closed her eyes. But before her mind could process this information, he was talking again.
     “I've brought in the fates- I want them to show you what could happen either way.” She heard three faint popping noises and opened her eyes to see three ancient looking women.
     “We are…” the first woman, who was squat and round with short spiky snow-white hair, began, “…the three fates…the Past,” and the tall angular one with the long, long gray hair at the end nodded her head, “…the Present,” the one in the middle who was petite and fairy-like, with wispy salt and pepper hair lifted a hand, “…and I, the future. We see all and we know all…and we can tell all…for the right price.” She said, looking Hades up and down then.
     “Yes, yes, we’ll get to that after all of this is said and done. Now, please, tell her how you could bring her husband back, and we can all sleep better tonight, Bada bing bada bang bada boom, ya with me?”  The spiky-haired fate just shook her hand at Hades and approached Meg. She waved her hands in the air, causing what looked like mini-waves in a tight little circle, almost like a traveling crystal ball.
     “If you…if you agree to sell Hades you're soul, we will bring your husband back from the dead and he will be none the wiser. You will both wake up in the morning like nothing ever happened, and any thoughts you had about him other then love will be erased. But, if you don’t sell Hades your soul, you will go back above and be tortured until you wished that the fiery pits of Hell took you in. But here is the catch- if you don’t sell him your soul, you’ll be unable to kill yourself- you will have to die of old age when you're 95. You will know all of what you know now, and the Gods will be informed. As of now it hasn’t reached them and they too, will be none the wiser. But its all your choice.”
     As she talked, images of what she talked of were shown in the ripples of air, ranging from Meg and her husband playing with a child, to her walking the roads of Sparta all alone, people looking at her with hostility.
     “If…” Meg started, looking at Hades, tears rolling down her face, “…if I sell you my soul, I won’t remember any of this?”
     “Oh no, babe, you’ll remember it because if you sell me your soul you're going to have to do me a…favor once in a while…” he said back, stroking his raven black goatee.  “But your husband wont remember a thing, and you wont remember setting the house on fire while he slept. You will know that I own your soul and that is it.”
     Meg sat thinking, looking from her hands to the floor to her hands again. ‘If I don’t then I’ll be damned…if I do then I could pretty much live happily-ever-after and only see…him…once in a while…maybe this is the chance that the Gods are giving me….’
     Meg stood up to see that only she and Hades remained in the room. “Ok, I’ll do it…” she said, tears rolling down her face.
     “Excellent….” Hades said, taking her by the shoulder and leading her to a back room.