181. My Second Child Was Born as Ichor Fell from the Sky
My Second Child Was Born as Ichor Fell from the Sky
Whereas my mother’s many children
had been born in peace,
some while the sun shone,
others during peaceful nights,
and a few during storms,
my second child was born
into a war. Her father was summoned
to the house of Kronos
where he was told he would build
weaponry for his Titan brothers.
Pallas and I had not yet built
our own palace. And it was
my father’s insistence that
all the rest of my children
were born under his watchful eye,
as his prophetic dream
revealed how important they
would be during the war.
The agreement was forged
between Oceanus and Pallas.
No one asked how I felt.
What I had hoped was that Asteria
would invite us to live with her
and Perses. But as days passed,
no such invitation came.
I bitterly realized I had to accept
that my fate was once again
to continue in Oceanus’s palace.
But now, I had nowhere to escape to.
I tried to busy myself in the raising
of Zelus, but by the time the Titans
launched their first attack on
those new Gods of Olympus,
he was already a grown God.
And this meant he was taken from me.
I had tried to protest, but what could I say?
He was as mighty as his father and his uncles.
The morning he left to join the conflict,
I had cried so much
my heart never healed.
As I watched him accompany
his father to the house of Kronos,
I feared his capture and injury.
His emerald hair and temperament,
which he inherited from me,
often felt like the only
commonality between us.
Pallas almost missed the birth of Nike,
my child of victory, born on a night
of powerful raging thunder.
Three of my sisters helped me
give birth that night, and I could
feel their hands trembling
as the din rolled across
the skies, blinding lightning
at the windows. The birth
was long and difficult.
It was why I named her Nike.
And it was why I asked Pallas
to give her the gift of victory.
‘She will be everything,’
he had decreed, his prophecy
voice shaking with emotion.
‘From the good cheer
to the hope we need.’
My sweet rosy-cheeked child
opened her eyes at his words,
as though, even as rumbling rolled
across an uncertain posterity,
she understood what she must do.