The Edge of All You Have Ever Known
By Sister Grimm Erin
In London, Big Ben read five fifty-six, and the Titaness standing near the clock tower tried not to pay any notice to this.
Of course, Rhea knew that was a futile exercise, because even if no one else in five thousand years had ever guessed it, even if the books so antiquated that no new soul in millennia had believed the tale of their betrayals when it was told plainly, even if he'd been the thief of her, even if she'd borne so much for him, even after all he's done…
She doesn't still love him, precisely. (Or at least, she reassures herself she doesn't.) She's just curious—and the word echoes hollowly in her mind, for mere curiosity cannot begin to describe the welling of emotion within her—to see whether the promise the Oracle of Delphi had made her all those eons ago was true.
The Oracle was older than Phoebus Apollon by millennia, and when Rhea had known it best, it had been in its original form—not yet a ghost inhabiting the body of foolish mortal women, but a goddess now long forgotten by all but Rhea and one of the Protogenoi—a goddess of knowledge. Not wisdom, not guile, not truth, even—but knowledge, which Rhea can differentiate between. Wisdom is the use of knowledge; guile, the use of wisdom to further one's own ends; truth, the bits of knowledge known for certain.
The goddess's name could not be spoken, but Rhea knew it, and she knew what the Oracle had told her as clearly as the day she had said her last prophecy (for lack of a better word) as a living goddess.
"This is not a promise," the old woman had whispered. "This is only a possibility."
The then-impatient, reckless, young Titaness had expressed her distaste with preamble.
The Old One had laughed, but not cruelly. "You will need more patience than you have now for this to ever come to fruition, young mother." Rhea had dropped her head, murmuring an apology.
"It is in my power to know that you hate your husband now," her senior had continued. Rhea met the prophet's eyes unflinchingly, every core of her being trembling with anguish and strife.
"It is also in my power to know that one day you will come to the end of that hatred and find what caused it," the goddess—if that word could indeed be used to describe such a being—had continued. "It will take you millennia to do it, but five thousand years from now there is the barest possibility that the being you loved will be returned to you. He will be identifiable to you, but he will carry absolutely no memory of you in that life unless…" The woman had maddeningly ceased. Although Rhea was unwise at the time, even then she had known the words to resonate within the very core of her being, to be incredibly important and to govern her existence in a way she could not then imagine.
"Unless?" the mother of Zeus pressed when the pause stretched a few moments too long.
"Unless he loved you more than the powers working against you could ever hope to imagine," the Elder said simply, while Rhea's heart seized in not-yet-old pain. "It will be below a tower that tells time with painful accuracy, and it will be in a place called London. There will be hordes of people circling you, but you will know him by his walk. It will be on the fourteenth of the third month of five thousand solar years from this, and it will be the seventeenth hour of that day."
Rhea had nodded.
The Old One had looked at her with an ancient and curious sadness. "Pure knowledge is coming to the end of its usefulness. Soon, I will fade and wither away to but a ghost, to haunt the vessels of whoever holds this place. I am glad I did not waste the last of my strength on you, young mother."
Rhea had thought then it had been wasted, but there had been no time to protest or contemplate it, for then the elder dismissed her, and the world, for all time.
There was no helping remembering a meeting like that. Even before she had come to the edge of her hatred, even when the words had still been confusing, the weight of the last prophecy had weighed upon her chest like a stone.
When she came to the end of the blame, leaving only pain, she clung to it like a drowning mortal clings to his last breath, and prayed—yes, immortals can pray—that the goddess's possibility would prove to be a promise, after all.
Rhea knew herself to be still hurt by him, to still be affected by him, but she was not yet to the point where she could admit she still cared for him. To give that up would be to come to the edge of all she had ever known and simply trust to faith.
The clock proclaimed five fifty-eight. She shuddered, (not) desperately searching the crowd for a sign of her brother who had been her son and the father of her sons and daughters.
Gaea had handed her daughter a crying child. The Earth's eyes had been blazing with fury. "You—take this one," the ground had rumbled, and Rhea had nodded her last obedience to the one who had borne her.
The baby grew to love none but her. In fact, Rhea had made certain, through isolation and jealousy, that the infant she called Time loved none but her. That the child began to plot with her, to scheme, and she had delighted in the growing intelligence, because he was hers, could only ever be hers, and so everything he caused was hers. (Oh, and how it pains her to remember that once, that had been a thought she took joy in.)
They had overthrown their father, but his last curse had haunted them.
At first, she had agreed to the imprisonment. But then there had been the twins, the twins that had changed everything.
She had loved them enough to name them.
The rest would acquire names later, through the mothers of their hearts, but she gave Zeus and Hera, they who now ruled in Heaven, two things only: a life and a name each. And while the girl was a demanding, squabbling thing, the boy looked at her with disbelief, that the one who had given him shelter from all until then would then abandon him to an eternity of wailing.
So she concealed the infant from him, and deeply regretted it.
But then she learned, though he loved none but her, he was certainly not confining his touch to his dear wife.
And she saw Philyra's children grow strong and wise and adult, not wailing in some dark cave, and then released all of the lesser children to other mothers. She was not so foolish as to think she could be a mother to anyone but him, but at least she could give her flesh and blood mothers of the heart. She loved them enough for that.
And then the rebellion had come, and he had proved more disloyal to her than she could ever imagine. He barely saw her, only saw his own children, and her heart hardened against him, and she still does not know if she regrets her role in the war that came after. He deserved it, she feels with the last vestige of her fury, but she does not know if she deserved what came after it.
Her heart sank as the clock chimed five fifty-nine. And then, all of a sudden, she was, for the first time in centuries, incredibly furious, as the faces of the mortals nearby all blurred together through way of her hot tears. All this waiting, and for what? Nothing, she raged as the clock struck six o'clock! Absolutely nothing.
Then a miracle happened.
A man with a pocketwatch approached her with an expression of recognition on his face.
She gasped for breath, hands reaching out to him, flesh to her flesh at last, and his hands gripped hers with equal fervor.
"I know you," he whispered, and her heart lurched forward instead of sinking down, for the first time in millennia.
She was smiling and crying into his shoulder, but she managed to sob, "I could never know any but you." For answer, he embraced her so tightly they had to back off to manage a kiss.
"I am so sorry," he whispered into her hair, and she thrills to it, for that was all she ever needed to hear to know I love you was true, too. So it was that strength that prompted her to lift her regal head, and to tell him flippantly:
"No problem."
Author's Note: This is dedicated to two very close friends. Also entirely the fault of MyPenIsSharperThanYourSword. I hope she's happy. Feedback of any kind is greatly appreciated!