Chapter Two

Like yours, my beginnings started with the joining of two. Unlike my great uncle Pontus’ finned and gilled progeny, who could give birth to new sets of glittering teeth and flashing scales without another, or Gaea, whose succulent leaves could carve new roots into the dry, cracked soil, my flesh needed two sets of hands to come into shape. After Khronos cast Ouranos deep into the earth’s most treacherous depths, he could not shake the thought of fate presenting him with the same end his father had met. In an effort to twist this seeming inevitability to his will, he devoured every child his wife Rhea would bear. Grieving and humiliated, she devised a plan. After she delivered her sixth child, she presented her husband with a stone, one that resembled the shape of a baby as close as she could find, wrapped in linens. Khronos did not hesitate a moment. He ripped what he thought was his son from her hands and swallowed it whole, swaddles and all.

Rhea’s sighs of relief were bittersweet, as she sent her first surviving son, Zeus, to be raised by the nymphs of mount Dicte, safe from his father’s eye. There he was raised on goat’s milk and stories of his titan parents. As he grew to strength, within him, a storm started to brew. Clouds gathered, roiling and thick, bruise-blue and dark. Rolling claps of thunder that turned sleep into a thing of dreams.

One day, Zeus ignited the lingering embers of Khronos’ fears into a searing blaze. He brought him to the ground and forced him to drink a poisonous draft. He vomited up his five siblings, and assumed their roles as heirs to rule over all that stretched beneath the heavens.

As time passed, humankind spread across the plains and forests, forging fires and passions, wielding bows and spears, paintbrushes and poetry, as they nursed desires and held grudges. So Zeus appointed his son, by Maia, a daughter of Atlas, whose broad shoulders bear the weight of heaven for all eternity, Hermes, to collect news from all corners of the world. He was recognized as the god’s messenger, there was no door that stood closed to him. As water carves stone, my father’s charismatic curiosity carved its way through the hearts of mortals and divinities alike. Just as sunflowers turn their faces towards the blazing chariot Helios races across the sky, people basked in his attention when he offered it, their eyes vivid with pleasure. My parents made a handsome couple, their love fickle and short-lived, me the only thing to remain of it.