My parents didn't give me to her, and I thank the Great Mother and all the stars in the night sky for it. I do love my grandmother, for all her faults, but I probably would have turned out very differently if I had been raised by her. More tightly packaged, less wild, I think.
As might be expected, she didn't take it very well, but even she had to relent once she learned that my parents, as part of their agreement with Gaia, had to raise me away from the capital and in the secluded northern woods.
The capital city of the Titans is located on Mount Othrys. It resembled Olympus in many ways–or should I say, Olympus resembled it in many ways–with tiers of white-walled mansions and glittering paved streets lined with trendy shops and even trendier people. The northern woods, in contrast, is a sea of pines and oaks. The hunting wasn't good, there wasn't any particularly outstanding flora and fauna, and even the nymphs tended to avoid it because there was simply nothing to do there. The only people who did live there were eccentric loners, my parents being one of them.
My childhood home wasn't large. It was probably bigger than your average mortal's dwelling but was downright shabby compared to the luxurious palaces owned by the other Titans. It was a two-story building with an enclosed courtyard. In addition to the house, my father's workshop and my mother's observatory were also located a short distance away. There was a small river running behind our house, and a vegetable garden nearby. It was almost too nondescript for the residence of powerful immortal beings.
As I mentioned before, my parents were eccentric hermits. They only had three or four nymphs working as servants, and they were already living around the area when the house was built, so they were less like servants and more like people who came around pretty often.
For the first few months, my aunt Leto lived with us as well. Partly to help take care of my mother (who was still quite weak after her pregnancy) and me, partly to avoid Phoebe, who had redoubled in her efforts to find Leto a match.
Though I didn't remember much of my earliest days, I do remember snatches of conversation around the fact that I wasn't growing very quickly for a Titan child. I remember the nymphs saying things like "Perseis doesn't seem to have grown at all in the last hour" or "I haven't heard a single coherent word from Perseis yet. All she does is stare."
Titan children were supposed to have their infancy pass in a matter of hours and become adolescents after a few days. I, on the other hand, was growing much more slowly, almost as slow as a human child.
I wasn't the only one this was happening to, however. But more on that later.
Oh, by the way, since I wasn't given my name yet, I was called Perseis. As in, the "daughter of Perses."
The naming ceremony for Titan children occurred three months after their birth. At the ceremony, the Moirai–those three old women who held the fates of both gods and mortals in their hands–would appear, bestow the child with their name, and declare their divine functions.
My ceremony was nothing out of the ordinary. I was dressed in a silk gown and taken to the ebony and gold palace on the peak of Mount Othrys. Normally, I should have been able to present myself to the King and Queen by my age, but I had just learned to crawl by then, so my mother had to hold me up to them so that they could grant their blessings.
The King and Queen's, shall we say, baby troubles were an open secret at the time. Sometimes, I wonder how they felt as they blessed the children of the other titans and celebrated them, knowing that they could never have this experience.
After this, I was placed into the hands of the Moirai. They cooed at me and bounced me in their arms.
"This child's name shall be Hecate, 'She Who Works from Afar,'" Clotho, the Moirai who oversaw births, announced.
"She will be the patroness of crossroads, the dark moon, and magic. The wandering souls shall belong to her," Lachesis, the measurer of life, declared.
"She will be known to many, be a great boon to her king, and help usher in a new age," Atropos, the cutter of lives, said.
"She heralds the end," they said in unison. Right after returning me to my mother, they disappeared.