When I was born, there was a great fuss made over me by my relatives. In those days, Titan children–not nymphs, but children with the divinities and powers of Titans–were becoming rarer and rarer. I wonder what they would have done if they had known what I truly was.
I was told that my parents had a hard time conceiving me. It was a difficult time for them, and constant hounding by my grandmother Phoebe most likely didn't help. They were probably crying tears of joy by the time the Great Mother Gaia approached them.
In my personal opinion, they should have been suspicious the moment Gaia offered her help. The Great Mother wasn't known to answer pleas or requests, not even those of her own children, and it was widely known that she had decided to stay out of the affairs of her descendants.
But on the other hand, I probably wouldn't have been born if it weren't for her, so I suppose I should be grateful for my parents' blind desperation.
She told them, "I will give you your child, but she will be a weak, sickly babe whose divinity will be snuffed out quickly like a candle flame. Follow my instructions, and she will be as hale and healthy as any other Titan child."
My parents agreed. What else could they have done? And Gaia did fulfill her promise. I could run and skip and play as freely as any other child my age.
Though, of course, the Great Mother never fulfills a request without taking something in return, but that's something to be discussed later.
In any case, I was anticlimactically born a few months later. It was a cool, starry night when I first came into the world, the kind where darkness simultaneously enshrouded and illuminated the world. Only Phoebe, my aunt Leto, my father Perses, and a few assisting nymphs attended my birth.
"A girl," one of the nymphs announced. My grandmother let out a sigh of disappointment. She had been hoping that her first grandchild would be a boy in order to compete with my paternal grandmother, Eurybia, who already had two grandsons of her own.
My parents, on the other hand, were thrilled. With such a difficult conception, they probably would have been happy if I had been born with horns and scaly skin.
After the nymphs bathed and swaddled me and handed me to my father, Perses, he rocked me in his arms. "A healthy child, just as the Great Mother promised," he declared.
"But I can't sense much divine power coming from her," my grandmother interjected. She was looking at my aunt, who was combing my mother's sweat-soaked hair. It was clear that I would be getting no siblings, so Grandmother was now pinning her hopes on her second daughter.
"She's still an infant. She has all of eternity to develop her powers," my father insisted. "And as a child bestowed upon us by the Great Mother, she will surely possess a great destiny."
"Yes…" my mother murmured hoarsely. Her eyes turned into flat golden discs, as they did when she had her prophetic visions. "I can see that she will become a valuable servant to our king."
"But who will she marry, and how many children will she have?" my grandmother wondered aloud. "I cannot see that."
"Perhaps she will have so many suitors that it's simply too difficult to tell," my father joked, trying to appease her. He knew that once uncertainty set root in my grandmother's mind, she would make the lives of the people around a living hell just to get rid of it.
My grandmother seemed to accept this. "Very well. Once the child has been weaned, you will bring her to me to raise."
She didn't seem to see my parents giving each other unreadable looks.
So this is a story that has been brewing in my head ever since I was a kid. After coming up with a billion scenarios in my head I finally decided to put it down in writing!
I have a vague outline in mind for some events but I'm basically winging this lol. I sure hope it turns out well in the end haha
Next chapter will be about Hecate's naming. Constructive criticism is very much welcome!