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PODCAST

Stories

Francis Rosenfeld

A weekly podcast of short stories and book readings by Francis Rosenfeld. Discover literary fiction, surreal tales, and introspective narratives exploring reality, identity, and human connection—perfect for listening on the go.

fiction

All Episodes

09:34

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 9.2 Joyfully...

Stories ·

2025/07/18

Life doesn’t change.Sure the technologies advance and the day-to-day gets easier, but people aren’t fundamentally different from how they were centuries ago. The same emotions and drives push them on their paths, and the same disappointments sour their spirits. Persephone tended to her souls like a gardener tends to his or her plants, watching them get born, live and die, forget their experiences and come back to life the next time around, like seeds sprinkled on the ground. It is human hubris to

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10:18

The Gates of Horn and Ivory, Chapter 9.1 Inspired

Stories ·

2025/07/11

Every four years in the middle of summer, the mortals gathered to celebrate the muses in a gentle valley at the feet of Mount Helicon.The nine daughters of Mnemosyne, they weren’t your usual goddesses; they were a gift to humankind. Nobody talked about them as such, out of fear these wonders that fired the human mind to create masterpieces might be taken away, to leave mankind only the toiling and the wars, a drab existence made of hopeless and uninspiring days, all the same. The muses were born of

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09:51

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 8.3 Through a...

Stories ·

2025/07/04

Those blessed with the gift of prophecy form a small but very special community.They instinctively seek each other’s presence, they are drawn to those who are similarly blessed. If they are mortal, they become oracles and seers whose wisdom is sought and revered, and people travel from far away to seek their counsel. They are the living vessels of the gods, who speak through them in cryptic messages, which are only understood in retrospect. It’s not that the gods were trying to make their teachings

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09:58

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 8.2 Strife

Stories ·

2025/06/27

On the westernmost edge of the Oceanus, which spans the vast distance between the world of the living and the underworld, there is a splendid garden, constantly bathed in the glow of the sunset.The garden belongs to Hera, a wedding gift from her grandmother, and wonderful apple trees with golden fruit grow there, under the jealous guard of the dragon Ladon, an offspring of the Typhon, and the rather distracted oversight of the Hesperides, the daughters of night and of the evening star. The

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09:36

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 8.1 The Blessed...

Stories ·

2025/06/20

Persephone stood tall on the bow of the ship, against the breeze. Behind her, the fortune’s chosen, the ones who managed to navigate its treacherous waters through three lifetimes in a row, without reproach, were gazing towards the islands in the distance with apprehension and awe, not yet able to believe their luck, eyes moist for what they left behind. Lost for words, they feared the promise of this new and wonderful existence was just a mirage which would dissipate the second they stopped

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10:20

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 7.3 Behind the...

Stories ·

2025/06/13

There was much sound and fury in Hades’ chambers the next morning, the clamor of many people speaking in anger, and above them all Persephone recognized the voice of Zeus.She got dressed in a hurry and sneaked into the anteroom of the large conference hall where Hades was involved in some very heated negotiations with an entire delegation of Olympians, which, as an extraordinary circumstance, included Zeus himself. “We’re doing everything in our power to retrieve him safely. As I told you, no

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09:48

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 7.2 The Cave of...

Stories ·

2025/06/06

When she wanted to take a break from her daily activities, Persephone wandered along the banks of the Lethe, under the slender branches of the willows, which arched to touch its waters, and walked all the way to the cave of Hypnos.She went there mostly to pick poppies, whose flowers surrounded the quiet realm of the god of sleep. The bright red blooms glowed from afar in the perpetual sunset, a bucolic image whose beauty was worthy of a painter’s canvas: a small tributary of the river Lethe was

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10:17

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 7.1 Politik

Stories ·

2025/05/30

She rushed home, crossing the bridge over the Acheron, past the elm of false dreams, through the mucky banks of the Vale of Mourning and the orchard to get home faster, so she had to stop and shake the pumice dust off her sandals before she entered the palace.Hermes was waiting in the loggia overlooking the gardens, impatient, as always. “Great! You’re here.” “Good morning to you too, cousin.” “Aha. Yeah. Listen. The cave of Cumae gets water in it every time there is a storm; it needs a new levee

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09:59

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 6.3 Land of...

Stories ·

2025/05/23

Hades is a water realm.Surrounded by Oceanus, it’s crisscrossed by rivers and streams whose rash and unsettled currents can be heard in the background almost everywhere. From the quiet Lethe meandering between boulders in Hypnos’s cave, careful not to awaken him, to the echoes of the Styx, muffled as it flows through underground caves, the sights and sounds of water are everywhere, sometimes soothing, sometimes unsettling. The rushing waters of the underworld carved intricate stone tracery and

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09:55

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 6.2 The...

Stories ·

2025/05/16

Persephone sneaked out into the gardens the next morning, grateful to have a few quiet moments to reconnect with her plant companions.Everything had spirit in the Underworld, even the rocks and the streams, and her beloved trees were the goddess’s most trusted friends. The poplars flittered in the twilight, their gold leaves shimmering in ways which would have gratified Demeter, who always thought her daughter’s attire too plain for a goddess and often urged the latter to show off her

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10:02

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 6.1 Going Home

Stories ·

2025/05/09

She said goodbye to her mother at the mouth of the cave of Taenarum, crumbling under the weight of her sorrow and tears, and harboring guilt over feeling relieved when she finally stepped into its dark depths and its silence.Hecate was supposed to meet her and lead the way, but Persephone had walked that path so many times she really didn’t need the dark goddess to guide her. She grabbed a lit torch from the wall and started her descent, feeling a little spacey and out of reality, and wondered

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09:21

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 5.3 ...

Stories ·

2025/05/02

To say that everybody woke up the next day nursing a headache would be an understatement. The wine and the herbs left a parting gift - a vicious nausea, amplified to epic levels by the main part of the ceremony.The Antleriai, the wailers, descended into the Megara pits, specially outfitted with snakes for the occasion, to retrieve decomposed pieces of the pig sacrifices, which were then placed on the altars to be blessed by the goddess, and then taken home, as they were believed to offer bounty and

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09:28

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 5.2 The...

Stories ·

2025/04/25

A mournful song and the unmistakable scent of winter filled the mist the next morning, when the festival attendants woke up to an eerie landscape.The meadow grasses were covered in a thin dusting of ice, and their dried flower heads, which the freezing rain had pounded relentlessly overnight, were encased in transparent globes of ice that acted like magnifying glass to enhance every detail of their intricate structures. The most beautiful among them, the latest flowers of the season, had been

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09:25

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 5.1 Thesmophoria I

Stories ·

2025/04/18

“Have you prepared yourself, daughter? You have to set an example for all the married women: fast for nine days, refrain from the pleasures of the flesh and purify yourself to be worthy of the Goddess’s blessing.”“Yes, mother. Although I find it a bit ironic that I need to prepare myself so I’d be worthy of my own blessing.” “You are a role model, daughter. Everyone is looking to you for guidance. Among the Attic women, you should be the strictest follower of the ritual preparations.” ‘Shouldn’t be

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08:51

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 4.2 Kore

Stories ·

2025/04/11

“Mother, aren’t we going the wrong way?” she asked Demeter when the ship left the shore and started following the sun due west instead of sailing towards the sunrise.Demeter smiled, but said nothing. “Where are we going?” “Sicily.” “Why?” “You’ll see, the latter smiled in anticipation.” Anthesphoria was a festival of flowers, and as such, dedicated to Persephone, or, more precisely, to her incarnation as the maiden, Kore. The mind creates sophisticated models to get a grip on reality, abstract

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09:28

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 4.1 A Trip to...

Stories ·

2025/04/04

The delegation left early in the morning, poised to reach the shores of Magna Graecia at sunrise.Everywhere else Persephone was just another goddess of the Pantheon, but in Locri, she was the goddess. Two majestic temples were raised for her worship, and the city had bestowed upon her the additional honor of being the protector of childbirth, thus managing to intrude upon the attributions of both Hera and Artemis, and therefore offend them both. Persephone tried to suppress a smile, and figured out

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09:51

Chapter 3.3 - Summer Festivals

Stories ·

2025/03/28

“Welcome back, daughter,” her mother greeted her, all smiles, at the mouth of the cave.Persephone felt a little stiff from sleeping on the ground and still a little turned around after traveling back and forth twice between worlds within the boundaries of one night. “I take it you had a pleasant journey home,” Demeter continued, way too cheerful so early in the morning. “How is your husband?” “He’s well, thank you,” Persephone mumbled, squinting from the crude light. “I take it your followers are

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09:09

Chapter 3.2 - The Eleusinian Mysteries

Stories ·

2025/03/21

The communicants started their descent into the depths of the earth, with nothing to light their way other than the high priestess’s torch.The latter was tall, and her pallid members stood in stark contrast with her long hair, black as night, which flowed freely and draped around her shoulders like a mantle, and the black chiton, tied around her waist three times with a thin golden girdle. She wore a tri-faced mask, which wrapped around her head, hiding her identity, and on her temples, the silver

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10:27

Chapter 2.3 - The Moirae

Stories ·

2025/03/14

The world is surface, a shimmery veil of illusion, woven from gossamer and dreams by the Moirae to give the unbound consciousness a home.Behind this elusive veil, the fundamental action principles of existence, known only to the gods, continuously transform reality, sometimes unseen, sometimes picking at its back and putting waves through its diaphanous fabric. Its visible side glistens like a mirror, reflecting any consciousness that is there to see it, its ever changing imagery shifting to

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07:50

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 3.1 The Dionysia

Stories ·

2025/03/08

Persephone used the pretext she had to oversee the progress in the barley fields to take her leave from the city, which was bursting at the seams with crafting festival paraphernalia, cooking, and the stress people always experience on the eve of major holidays.The city’s noise and bustle gradually disappeared as the goddess ventured into the fields, which had already been plowed and sown, and whose fresh shoots were starting to emerge, green and slender like grass. The clearings and meadows

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114 results

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