EoM Bk 1: The Gift of Fire
Copyright© 2026 by Carlos Santiago
Chapter 3: The Price for Tomorrow
“The sun will come out
Tomorrow.”
— Annie (as portrayed by Aileen Quinn), from Annie (1982). Directed by John Huston, screenplay by Carol Sobieski, produced by Columbia Pictures and Rastar Pictures. Song “Tomorrow”: music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin, written for the Broadway musical Annie (1977), with book by Thomas Meehan and original stage production by Martin Charnin. The musical is based on the comic strip Little Orphan Annie (1924–2010) by Harold Gray (uncredited in the film). © 1977 Charles Strouse & Martin Charnin; © 1982 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved.
Changing his appearance was similar to putting on ill-fitting clothes. The skin around his chest was too tight, he could feel his fight wanting to burst out, and all of his cosmic power was pulsing to show itself, yet he knew it was best to conceal himself.
First, the other gods could recognize one of their own in their more natural form. He could see Demeter’s palace in the distance and he knew Poseidon were somewhere to the west in his sea palace. Second, if his godly presence was anything to indicate when mortals were born, he knew his powers could kill them in an instant.
While he was not excited that humans existed, just killing them would lead to the other gods noticing his actions. Zeus might have been reactive at times, but he was no fool; he could thank Metis for that particular gift.
Nevertheless, this led to Zeus appearing in the Mortal Realm as humankind. No clouds or thunder hailed his arrival, which might have been his way if he had appeared as a god. He did not want to alter his appearance much; after all, why should he try fixing perfection?
He allowed himself to be broad-shouldered, long-bearded, and weathered by sun and wind, so there were scars and teen tan lines. His feet were still sandaled, but they were a more crude design than what he might have worn on Olympus. This prevented his feet from having to touch the dirt.
He considered putting on a cloak, but then he considered the primitive nature of humans. If he came across as too advanced or too privileged, the mortals might notice that he was not quite what he appeared to be.
That would never do.
Any alterations that inhibited his plan to find out how they proliferated would be wrong in Zeus’ eyes. He could punish one or two within existence, but killing all of humanity would turn the gods against him. Once more, life was a delicate balance of what Zeus could and could not do.
When the village came into sight, he recognized that the place was little more than a scatter of huts and lean-tos. Stone and mud and bone had been bound together by necessity in the hopes of protecting those within from the elements.
Children ran barefoot between the domiciles. A dog or two barked. Zeus could not be sure. He was too busy being amazed by the tenacity of humanity.
The place smelled of dung and sweat, yet there was some quality that Zeus could not describe. These people were clawing by their nails to survive and go on.
Zeus watched them labor with tools made of stone, wood, and bone, and he realized that his edicts had made their lives harder. Their movements were purposeful, not graceful, and yet there was rhythm to all they did so that they might endure.
In a word, they were marvelous.
The problem he ran into was that the irritation at their survival persisted.
The contradicting feelings mixed together well enough to leave him conflicted. No matter what reason he had not to slay all of the mortals (supportive gods or not), he found himself forming a begrudging respect.
They should not still be here, but they were, and for seeing that survival up close, Zeus secretly accepted their existence.
However, his thoughts were interrupted when he heard someone shout gibberish.
“Ξένος!”
He turned and a dirty middle-age man was pointing at him.
Another cried out, “Γέρος Ξένος!”
A group was forming as they examined him. He approached them slowly, mimicking their posture so as not to worry them.
He listened to them before he spoke back. Their language struck him as unclean, distant from that of Olympus. It was rougher, needing to be shaped properly. He felt there was a connection to their speech and that of the gods, much like the mortals were like the gods but not godly.
“Ποιός είναι αυτός?”
“Πρέπει να είναι από τους θεούς! Είναι μεγαλύτερος από τους μεγαλύτερους άνδρες μας.”
He tried to speak, but still the words were that of the gods, not men. His words were too formal and precise, and the gathering of men and women frowned at him.
“Ωχ όχι! Δεν μπορεί να μιλήσει σωστά. Πρέπει να είναι ηλίθιος,” said one of the woman.
“Πρέπει να τον βοηθήσουμε,” remarked another.
Zeus adjusted his words once more. He slowed himself to be sure he understood them and that they might understand him. He would need to shorten his sentences and bend his natural grammar to fit his need like the wood to become a bow.
“I assure you that I am no idiot,” Zeus said.
“Τι είπες μόλις;” a kindly middle-aged woman said.
“Σχεδόν σε καταλάβαμε!” exclaimed someone from the back.
“I am from a far away village. We speak different languages,” Zeus said.
“Now that...” someone cried out, “we understand!”
“Thank the gods!” a woman exclaimed.
“What is your name stranger?” one of the closer men asked.
“Call me, Xenon,” Zeus replied.
“I am called Delion,” the closest man says. “I lead our people here. What brings you so far from your village? Who leads you?”
“I came to find the origin of your people. And those that lead me and my people are the gods,” Zeus said definitively.
“Oh we know the gods!” Delion replied excitedly. “They made humans like my mother Pandora.”
“Pandora?”
“Yes!” the woman from behind shouted. “I am Pandora’s daughter too!”
“Most in my village do not have the same mother,” Zeus remarked.
Was this Pandora important? That was his first thought, but then he considered a smarter question.
“And your mother?” he asked another person.
“My mother was Galaxaura.”
Zeus froze. He kept his face still.
“Galaxaura?” he repeated carefully by way of a question.
“Yes,” the man said. “She came from the springs, they say.”
Zeus asked another.
He almost broke the mirage of a costume he wore to find out his answer. These mortals were handing him the answers he needed.
“Beroe,” a woman said, bouncing a child on her hip.
Another answered, “Clio.”
Another: “Polydora.”
Each name struck with familiarity. They were Oceanids or Nereids. Regardless, they were nymphs descended from Oceanus. He had known Clio because she had helped Gaia when he was young, and Poseidon had brought up Galaxaura as a healer.
When someone said Amalthed, he recalled her as one of the nymphs that breastfed him as a child. He knew that this was how humanity had come about!
He had not failed, but humanity had succeeded through the lines of the divine.
Humanity had not defied their destiny of extinction; they had been rescued through the children of a Titan.
Zeus straightened up. His mind was clearing up. He had the how. He would need to investigate further. There was more to know.
In his excitement, the villagers saw electricity start to form around his body without warning.
Zeus’ mortal shape vanished in a bolt of lightning. The ground beneath his feet scorched in the unmistakable mark of a lightning bolt within a circle.
The villagers fell to their knees one by one.
“Olympus,” someone whispered.
None of their praying and exaltations met Zeus’ ear. All he cared about was the fact that he was able to move his investigation forward.
He discarded the unimportant human name of ‘Pandora’ from his mind. She was some unimportant human.
The power had come from the gods. That was how these whelps had prolonged their species time in his existence. Once he had his answers, he might very well decide on how best to proceed.
One event at a time though. He could not afford to become impatient as he had another piece of the puzzle.
The palace of Oceanus spread outward on the small plot of land that it had been blessed with.
Well, that was not true.
After the defeat to Poseidon, Oceanus’ palace and the land it was on had been made to be a floating island that went to the westernmost point of the Grecian Realm.
Then, the landmass was locked back into the seafloor to keep Oceanus far from the others.
While the palace had certainly been beautiful in its time, the era of the Titan being in charge of the seas had come and gone.
Amphitrite appeared in the courtyard that she had grown up becoming familiar with.
Servants in the form of river nymphs and satyrs bowed to show respect to the former princess in relation to Oceanus and Tethys, but who was currently their Queen of the Sea. After showing their appreciation, they withdrew without being told.
This was a quality to life that Amphitrite had been used to for most of her existence. However, on this day, she had come to her parents home not as a ruler but rather as a wayward child seeking her mother’s counsel.
She found Tethys in another courtyard that faced the eastern side of the isle. The view was serene, no one attended her, and her gaze was contemplative.
Tethys was still unmistakably a Titaness. From stature and regality, her visage was wondrously beautiful, yet to Amphitrite’s analysis, the Ocean Titaness had thinned or become more hollow. Her once-lustrous hair seemed to have a dull tinge to each strand. Her posture had appeared to be weightless before, but seemed bent in an unquantifiable way that Amphitrite recognized, but could not communicate.
The wife of Poseidon stopped a few paces behind the wife of Oceanus.
There, parent and child were only feet from one another. They could not see the swirl of cracked reflections between the two of them that linked them far more than any genetics they shared.
One was married to a former ruler of the oceans; the other was married to the current one. One was trapped looking in the past, wishing for its time to come again. The other was dreading the future.
However, for their problems with the bygone or time to come, it was in the present where they both suffered.
“Mother,” Amphitrite said softly.
Tethys turned, surprise flickering across her features when she recognized one of her children coming home before settling into a familiarly tired smile.
“Well, hello, my little tide,” she said.
No matter the time or the distance or the familiarity lost between them, a mother always sees their child within their offspring. A little girl had come home, not a queen.
“You might have sent word that you were coming.”
“I would prefer that no one else be involved when I come to see you, Mother. After all, I wanted to see you as you actually are, not as you when you make yourself ‘presentable’.”
Tethys studied her daughter for a long moment. In her daughter, the Titaness saw all that she had once been and lost before giving a faint, humorless laugh. How easy was it for her daughter to see her for who she truly was? Was this how Gaia felt when Rhea had taken her seat of power? What of Rhea with Hera?
Never before had these thoughts passed through her mind. However, in that moment with her daughter, she could not help that they overpowered her.
“Then you have succeeded,” Tethys said with an inclination of her head.
They sat together on a low bench. What might have surprised an onlooker was they would not know whether this was some pearl or granite. The two had become so accustomed to being in charge of their domain that they did not understand the small pieces that made up that which they ruled.
For a few moments, neither spoke.
They watched the water god back and forth while stealing glances at one another.
The daughter could come to measure her mother while the mother could appreciate how much her daughter had grown.
“You look tired,” Amphitrite said at last, choosing the word carefully.
Tethys did not bristle. That, more than anything, confirmed the truth of Amphitrite’s words.
“Marriage can be a blessing and a curse,” she replied slowly. “Married to ... your father ... that is a fraying of eternity.”
“How do you mean?”
“Our marriage is more of an arrangement that challenges both of our endurances.”
Amphitrite’s fingers tightened in her lap. She was trying to be tactful about what she wanted to know, but since the conversation had taken such a turn in terms of the negative, the daughter decided to press on.
“Is that why you had sex with my husband when he became king of the sea?”
The stillness better them shattered.
“How did you—”
She was not angry in her asking; rather, the Titaness was astonished by the information that her daughter had at her disposal.
With great restraint, the feeling that overwhelmed Tethys were cast aside. After which, she fixed her dress and faced her daughter.
“Of course you know,” she murmured. “I suppose when you have endless servants to answer at your beck and call, and people talk. Well, that and I am sure since you married him, Poseidon brags.”
“Yes, he does at that,” Amphitrite remarked cooly in thinking of her husband.
She looked away as shame came to color her features.
“Yes,” Tethys said at last. “It is true. It was before you married him, but I was still very much married to your father.”
Amphitrite said nothing for a few moments, which invited Tethys to keep speaking.
“I was lonely,” Tethys continued, words spilling like a river. “Oceanus had become distant while fighting Pontus. You were there. You saw what he was like. I felt small and unimportant beside him and his strange crusade. There were no right answers, but then, Poseidon appeared. He was different then. I know regardless of what he is now, he was hungry to prove himself back then. When I looked at him, I felt ... I don’t know ... alive again.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head in indignant embarrassment.
“I and not proud of what I did, and it was a mistake,” she said quietly.
Amphitrite inhaled slowly.
“I am not so different than you,” she admitted to her mother. “Poseidon sulks and blames the everyone around him for the humiliation he suffered against Zeus. There are times, I feel as though I am alone in my marriage, much like you with Father.”
Tethys turned back to her.
“Please tell me you are not thinking of doing what I did!”
To that, Amphitrite had no answer for Tethys.
“Listen to me,” she said, grasping Amphitrite’s hands. “Do not do what I did. Betrayal does not heal loneliness; it only teaches it new names.”
Before Amphitrite could reply, the area around them shook.
Light erupted in the distance above the waves down into the palace’s outer courts.
Both knew who it was before they saw his physique.
Zeus had arrived.
Tethys rose slowly.
As the King of the Gods strode into view. He was ever the warrior king. Power radiated off of him just as the aura of the divine radiated on a god.
He could change everything for everyone at any time. This was his right as ruler.
Amphitrite saw the look of adoration in her mother, but then she recognized the longing and calculation of her mother. There was an ancient ravenousness to a Titan that did not exist in gods or nymphs.
No matter her advice, Amphitrite could see that neither loyalty nor rebellion existed in her mother’s gaze. There was only truth in what Zeus was.
Amphitrite straightened
She would not define herself by Poseidon’s judgments, nor her mother’s failure, nor even Zeus’ intentions.
To be herself was all she could be.
Her mother’s regret could not infect her, yet she knew that she would make failures of her own.
Prometheus stood at the edge of the high ridge that overlooked the ocean.
He had not seen this place in its most famous moment. That moment was locked in the past. For him, the moment was a small moving target that one could not properly find themselves in.
One moment, the present was there, and with a snap of the fingers... Poof! ... the momentary immediate existence was gone, and there was another. What occurred before was lost to memory, to history, to the past to be mulled over.
That was why this cliffside was so important.
This had been where Ouranos had battled his Titanic sons. It was here that the cycle had been born. Father would depose son for generations. There might not ever be an end to this foolish violence.
What was even the point of such mayhem? This would only lead to more chaos and uncertainty.
Were those children wrong to kill and remove their kingly father? He was certainly more powerful. He was entirely wiser, had more time in existence, and he was (without a doubt) meant to rule.
However, as he thought on these complicated thoughts, he thought of humanity scattered across the valleys and plains. They were something akin to sparks that refused to catch fully aflame, yet as they huddled in crude shelters of mud and bone or in caves, they battled every second of every day for the right to stay alive.
Every part of him had wanted more for them. What of romance? What of fine eating? What of deeper connections with nature and existence as a whole? They deserve nothing less.
Those thoughts swirled until he knew that somehow he would ultimately lead to him wanting to help his creation, but a thought that circled in the mind leads one to thinking that they are always right.
The advice he would give himself was to risk everything and help the mortals.
The problem was recreated in that of who he should talk to. It could not be Epimetheus or Chaos. Simple truths are open easier than harder ones, and he knew that he needed to content himself with people he knew.
But then, did he?
As he thought about the problem as it came, he believed there was only one easy answer:
He could look into the future
With the moment the decision formed, existence stilled.
No longer was he surrounded by the water or the sky or even Gaia’s earth. Creation melted away and reformed, allowing Prometheus to see...
He stood in a marble hall of perfect symmetry with everything in perfect order. Where there were weapons,
Athena faced him. She was not afraid of him or intimidated. Her gray-blue eyes were sharp with thought rather than emotion, which was what Prometheus enjoyed about her.
She was a being of the mind, not the body. To Athena, her body was a tool that carried her brain’s intentions, no more or less. Such precision was why he would consult her.
“You cannot interfere again,” she said, not unkindly, but without warmth. “You saw what happened when I fought to unseat my father before his time.”
“This is not the same, Athena,” he shot back.
“You would reshape the board before the pieces have learned their place,” she countered. “Giving them tools, blessing, or even fire for that matter might assist them, but then Father’s retribution will be swift and painful, and this time, I cannot help you, just as you did not help me.”
“Then you will not help because of my inaction with you,” Prometheus replied. “That is needlessly cruel.”
Athena shook her head.
“You’re not listening. My suffering was instruction, and their society’s pains could be insightful to their growth! You knew this lesson so very well when you counseled me against the coup.”
He remembered that time, and she was right to practice patience. Such advice was true and useful in reality, but when it came his turn to wait, Prometheus found himself unable to practice what he preached.
Some instinct within him told him that waiting was a mistake. He could not do nothing.
“You told me then,” she continued, “that existence unfolds as it must. Father will become undone in time, and the next ruler might be kind to your little creation. The wisdom in this moment is knowing not to act, my friend. My mother would offer you the same words.”
The statement was a blow. That even in this vision of a possible future, Athena knew to use Metis as his weak point, and the simple truth of the matter was ... she was right!
“I did,” he admitted through a breathed word.
“Then trust in that truth now,” Athena said. “Humanity must learn through its own errors. If you grant them too much too soon, you steal their future victories. Maybe they will take down my father for us, but time is our ally, not out enemy.”
Her gaze softened, just slightly.
“Surely, you know the lesson you taught me through my failings: Even gods must wait. So have the faith you asked me to have, and give this matter time.”
The hall dissolved like chalk in rain.
This was not the conclusion he wanted. However, it was sound advice. He could not begrudge Athena for being harsh. She was a good student and using the lessons of her teacher against him.
There was one who would not want him interfering with events. After all, she had felt betrayed more than anyone else in all of existence. She was right too, though.
Athena and Prometheus had abandoned Hera in her time of need. Surely, with enough might, Prometheus, Hera, and Athena could have bested Zeus. As matters stood at the time, Prometheus was not sure that going after Zeus was the most strategic course.
That failing would surely fester within the Queen of Mount Olympus.
He could feel a darkness oppressing his physical form. Her palace was a gilded monument to her reulership, but he could not escape this suffocation in the atmosphere.
Her violet eyes fixed on him when he he finished asking his question. Accusation traced the features of her face.
“You...” she practically choked out. “You expect me to help you after you did nothing!”
Prometheus said nothing. In part, he wanted to respect his own experiment, but also, he wanted to listen. Fundamentally, this was what Hera believed, so knowing what she would say would help him if he decided to approach her in the flesh.
“Are you out of your mind?” Hera snarled from her throne. “Tell me—did you help me when I was mere inches from Zeus’ fall?”
Her laughter after the question was dripping with a brittle restraint.
“Look where your precious decisions have lead, Prometheus. I could not help you even if I wanted to. I cannot raise a hand against Zeus, and we both know that he never intended for humanity to live this long. The magical oath I swore bars me from ever intentionally raising a hand against him in any arena!”
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