Everyone that knows about the family tree of the gods knows that everything started with Chaos. Even scientists can agree with that. From Chaos came Erebus, Eros, Gaia, Nyx, and Tartarus. From Erebus and Nyx came many others, few of which are known by mortals, sans Hypnos, Thanatos and maybe the fates. Gaia and Tartarus had Uranus, who had Kronos, Rhea and other less known titan children. From Kronos and Rhea came Demeter, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Poseidon, and Zeus, and from them came just about every Olympian god/goddess.
But what if there was a step between Chaos and the 'original' five beings? A generation so powerful, they were able to hide themselves from even their own children.
My name is Amaryllis… well, okay, it's actually Amara, but Amaryllis is my mortal name. It's where mortals got the latin word 'amare', which can mean bitterness, resentment, anger and/or love. Not that they know I'm where it came from. It was a suggestion my dad planted in their minds because he thought it was amusing that my name would mean both 'anger' and 'love'… yeah, love you, too, dad.
Ow! Sorry. He just gave me the mental equivalent of a smack upside the head. And now he's laughing…
Yeah, we're weird. Comes from being so old that the thirty year or so age difference (had there been a sun and planet to keep track of time by) makes us feel more like siblings than parent and child…
It's rude to ask what a lady's age is (not that I'd ever consider myself a lady) so I'll tell you before you ask.
I'm around a hundred thousand years old, give or take a couple thousand years.
Now you're probably wondering where I spent it, since Gaea hadn't been born yet, so there was no Earth to live on.
The answer is simple. I lived on another planet. It's a lot like Tartarus, I guess. Poisoned air, fire rivers… The ocean was made of acid, the shores were made of tiny shards of rock, or in some places, never-melting ice. That was the Rime. You know, supercooled water? The moment It's disturbed, it freezes. It was the only clean water on the planet.
Sounds nice, right? Yeah, top choice for a vacation getaway.
I'm getting a bit off track. Anyways, so Terra made a new planet, which is a lot like Earth, but way bigger and cleaner since we don't have all that smog and junk you humans kill your planet with. And she wasn't stupid enough to make the planet itself alive. Yet.
Ow! Okay, okay. Geez, Terra. Yeah, she's Gaea's mom. Her creator, really. Earth was a bit of an experiment, I think. A world where the planet itself is alive.
Didn't work out quite right, especially when dad created my brother Tartarus, because then he and Gaea had kids, who had kids, who had kids, and somewhere in that mess, humans were created, and now you all suffer on a living planet. Good thing she's mostly asleep, I guess.
Well, eventually I decided that I wanted to give being mortal a shot. Dad's tried it, Terra's tried it, Lumina's (she's light, obviously) tried it, Wake (water) has tried it, Rosania (her power is over fire, which is why roses represent passion), has tried it, Melody and Harmony (the twins of sound) have tried it… but it took me a hundred thousand years to decide that I wanted to try it.
I wanted the full experience, though. That meant forgetting my true lineage entirely and -shudder- live birth.
But whatever I was expecting… it certainly wasn't what I found.