lionofstone

A myth originating from Io, concerning eclipses.
Pharentine, daughter of a sun god, is called to find the moon god Abus and return him home.

There are two suns in the sky, each ruled by a different god; Chiah, master of the east, and Charo, mistress of the west. Between them, they had children as numerous and glimmering as the stars in the night, but none so loved as Abus, their youngest son, the patron of the moon. 

I am a daughter of Charo and a mortal man, left in my father’s house and raised suckling on his wife, who wanted to hate me but couldn’t. I know not if she loved my father or hated my mother, but I know she cared for me. She was not so much older than I was and, like me, was a product of the whims of the gods. Demigods do not live happy lives; I know it now and she knew it then, and she could not despise me. When she was called for her seventh quest when I was still just a girl, she pressed a pendant to my neck—a circular black stone, rimmed with gold—and told me that when my calls came, I should travel by moonlight. I did not know Abus then, and would not for many years, but I promised her that I would heed her. 

I know not what became of her on that quest, only that she did not return. Marriages, like that of her to my father, were easily broken by distance and time. Perhaps she lived and found some master or maiden to keep her idle company, and perhaps she thought of me. It is an unlikely story, but it brought me comfort in my youth, and as I grew I found that I didn’t want to ask those who could’ve answered me. It was a childish thought that would have made me look childish, but I held it to my heart anyway, along with the pendant eclipse and Pathea’s name. 

My father took another wife, this one even closer to my age and much less kind to me. We rarely spoke, and when we did, we did not speak of Pathea. My father encouraged me to stay away from his new wife and their children. I learned that demigods, like me, could not provide offspring or heirs to mortals. He had married Pathea not knowing this, and my presence was a boon to him and his status. Mortal men don’t know what to do with divinity, don’t know how to raise it. I grew on Pathea’s hip, drinking her milk and mimicking her hands. With her gone, my father knew not how to care for me, and I hardly had suitors lining the streets to take me off his hands, so he married again and bore new heirs. 

I stayed in his home, dressed finely, taught to be well-mannered, because to send me away would be a slight against Charo and an insult to the gods. I learned my powers: no heat or fire could hurt me, I could call fire to me like a song. Despite my good standing, no one called for me. Demigods live tragic lives, and no one wants to get close enough to love us. We burn like matchsticks, sharp and light and ashen far too quickly. Pathea had seven quests before her time was spent; she was a lucky one. Most only get three. We live on borrowed time, too divine for our mortality, too mortal for our divinity. We are the children of the gods, but we are also their errand runners, called away at moment’s notice by oracles and fortune-tellers. I stayed in my father’s house for fifteen years—for some demigods, that is a lifetime. For me, it was only the start. 

The first time I met my mother, the circumstances of my birth notwithstanding, the western sun was high enough that she barely had a shadow when she stood under it. Her feet were bare, scorching the sand beneath her, turning it just as richly brown as her skin, and then black, and then to glass. Her hands were bare too, her neck unadorned, her dress simple red embroidered with spirals of gold. She was not unlike me, in appearance, but where in those days I always wore my hair braided back, she wore her curls in a cloud of black spirals, twisted with strands of gold floss. Despite our physical similarities, I knew she was different, divine, without being told. 

“Do you know me?” she asked, reaching out with one hand and tilting my chin up. Her hand was warm against my skin, but it did not burn me the way it might have burned a mortal. It was almost comforting. 

“I am your daughter,” I replied. This was another of Pathea’s lessons: my place as a demigod, as a daughter of divinity, was never in question and was something I could claim, but I dare not call Charo my mother unless she did so first. She never did. In all the time I knew her, she never called herself my mother nor did she ever refer to me by my name. None of the gods I knew ever called me Pharentine. None but Abus. “Do you call me?” 

“I do.” There was no other reason she would have come to me. I was surprised she had come herself, rather than sending an oracle or soothsayer, but I did not let it show. She pressed her fingers to my throat, the pads of her middle and index fingers brushing against the chain of Pathea’s pendant. If she were offended that I was wearing a gift from the woman who raised me, she did not reveal it. What she did do was push something into my throat, a sort of pulsating heat that only I would know was there. I understood that it was the call, the quest, and it settled into my core as if it had always been a part of me. 

I was older than most demigods are when the call comes to them. My mother had wanted me for something special. 

I left that night. My father’s house had not been my home since Pathea left it. His young wife, and my brothers and sisters, had little concern for me, the slice of divinity that had wandered their halls for a few years too long, and my father would be glad to see me gone. Demigods lead tragic lives, and he did not want to love me enough to miss me. Perhaps he did anyway. I wouldn’t know. 

I walked under the light of the moon, ruled by Abus, as Pathea had instructed me. I did not know if it would be of any help to me, the daughter of a sun, but I felt it sensible regardless. My quest, as it were, was to find him. 

Abus was not known for being easily discoverable. While we could all see his moon—sometimes called himself—the truth of the matter was that he, like any of them, was a god, and was free to do whatsoever and go wheresoever he chose, not bound by the physics of things as we knew them. I walked by night, keeping one watchful eye on his moon, wondering if he was watching me as well. 

The towns and cities I visited knew me. In the great city Io, I found shopkeepers and forgers, who armed me with swaths of dark clothing and long, sharp weapons. Pathea had trained me, some, in the usage of these tools, but it was still a strange weight to bear. I was not uncomfortable with the feeling of a staff in my hands, but I was aware of it, desperately aware.

“Take care,” said the armourer, touching the pendant on my neck. I knew that this pendant (this final gift from my wet nurse, my tutor, my guide) would become my icon, a detail added to my paintings, described in my songs and stories. It was no arrogance; I had heard stories of Pathea, of Yetshu, of Arogan. Demigods became heroes, and heroes became stories. I had not yet realized that most of them were sad. I still hoped for a journey of light. As the daughter of a sun god, could you blame me for praying for warmth? 

From Io, I travelled to Lithra, and then to Ote, in those days known as Chartara. I should have known that I would not find Abus in the cities, where the late-night lights cut through the dark and they needed him less. I would meet him in the wilds, in the deserts between these cities, where the bush grew sparse and I was most grateful for the light of the moon. It was still some time before I met him, though. I had much to learn before I did. 

In every city, I met people different from those I had known. Still, no one wanted to get close enough to love me, but many paused to press their hands to my skin, to help me, to share stories of my kin. I walked barefoot, like my mother, burning the sand behind me. I was not powerful enough to leave glass in my wake, but the darkened footprints were enough. Mortals saw my footprints, knew what I was, and offered themselves to my aid. Every mortal in those days begged for glory, clinging to the scraps of it that my presence offered. Even now, I hear them sometimes, saying I forged her breastplate or I offered her my gloves or I brushed my hands through her hair and was recovered. They were desperate to be some piece of my story, and I did not see the harm in letting them be. Now, I wish I had stopped their hands and told them, “This is a tale of woe. This is not a happy story. Go, and live a happy life.” 

I did not. I was pleased to take their attention, pleased to let them close enough that they might care for me. I had only ever belonged to myself: my mother, an unattainable god; my father, a foolish man who knew me not; even Pathea, who taught me as best as she could, had left me when I was young. The attention was pleasurable, welcome, and I accepted it, to one degree or another. 

There were men who pursued me, intrigued and enticed by the fact I could not bear them children, delighted by the fact they could be careless with me. For most of the women, this mattered significantly less, but they offered themselves to me as well. I took none of them. I had only ever belonged to myself, and I did not know then how to share. 

In the war-torn city of Wio, I took up my staff and aided the fight. Oteo, the demigod son of Oktep, god of strategy, was there, and it was he who defeated the king and took the throne. It was his call, or so he told me, and I was proud to see him in his golden cloak, his bronze skin shining in the light from my mother’s sun. I would be a footnote in his stories, the sun-daughter who warmed his bed during the final battles, and only we would know I had also warmed his heart, for a time. He told me I had given him the strength to finish the fight after so many years, and that he was grateful to me. He did not ask me to be his bride. Perhaps he might have, if he did not know that I also had a call in me.

As usual, I left by night, walking away from Wio with my staff in my hand and the moon to guide me. I had been travelling for nearly two years. A footnote, to a god, or so I’ve been told, but it had felt like a lifetime to me. I was no longer that child in my father’s house, adorned in his finest but kept at a distance. I had lived. I had fought in a war. I had loved, a little. Pharentine, I remember hearing whispered as I walked, Pharentine, the sun-daughter, called to walk. I was not called to walk. I was called to seek. 

It was no wonder that I stumbled upon Tinya, goddess of hunters. I had been a poor huntress, unable to find my prey even when he hung in the sky above me. Tinya took my hands and did not ask if I knew her. I did; we were kin. She had been a demigod once, granted godhood by her killing of monsters. She was a favoured daughter of Chiah, raised to become his equal, but there was something more mortal at the core of her than the other gods. She had been born of flesh and bone, like me, not of a star, as Chiah and Charo’s godly children. She took my hands and spun me around her fire. She was not alone; she had men and women with her, some mortal, some godly, and some, like me, a mix of the two. She fed me, gave me fresh clothing, and advised me on the particulars of my hunt. 

“Abus has taken up with Solaris,” she told me. “Charo, the mother goddess, does not approve. Solaris is patron of a far-off star, and Abus is away from our home. This is why you are called to discover him and bring him to his mother. If you wish to find Abus, sun-daughter, you must find Solaris first.” 

She knew my name. She did not use it. I asked her, “Where is Solaris?” 

Tinya smiled, taking my hands again. “Telling you would take the joy out of your hunt.” 

Though Tinya was more my kin than any other god, she was still removed from me. I would have done well to remember it, before I followed her advice too staunchly. 

I began to seek rumours of Solaris, but none were forthcoming. The stories were few and far between. Mortals suggested that Solaris was patron of a star so far off that I would have to seek another planet, laughing while they spoke. It was a foolish thought, to them, but there had been demigods and heroes transported to different worlds, called to discover new lands, and it did not seem impossible that my search for Abus would lead me somewhere else. 

I found an altar to the god of travel, Fili, and prayed to know if he would take me. He seemed to take great pleasure in visiting me only to refuse me. “Sun-daughter,” he called me, touching a cold hand to my face. “You are a pretty thing, but you know not what your destiny is.” 

I had looked to his grey eyes, his bronze skin, and I had thought of Oteo, and had said, “Pretty?” 

He had taken me nowhere but to his bed and when he left me, my skin was colder than it had ever been. I warmed myself with the sun that ran through me and continued chasing rumours of Solaris. There were few, fewer now that I knew my destiny was not on some foreign world, but still I asked everywhere I went. Some had never even heard the name. Some knew it only as mentioned in passing in the account of Chiah and Charo’s children. 

I sought smaller towns, villages, places that may have been blessed by minor gods. Cities always had patrons of nearer stars, but these small spaces were cared for by minor deities, if they were cared for by any at all. My search for Solaris yielded no results, and I began to doubt my fortune. 

I was a woman now, no more a girl, hardened by my travels but in no way prepared to fight a god. I thought of Oteo with his golden sword, triumphing over entire armies. I thought of Tinya’s songs, telling of her defeating every monster that had once walked this planet. I thought of Fili, refusing to help me but gladly trailing his fingers over my dark skin. As always, I thought of Pathea, most likely dead, who had given me my icon: a black circle rimmed with gold. These experiences, I felt, would be the footnotes of my story, the lead-up to the truth of my life. 

I met Abus in the wilds, where I was most grateful for his light. 

“Do you know me?” he asked, his full mouth curved into a half-smile, his ebony skin reflecting almost blue in the night. 

I did not know how to answer him. “Your daughter was my wet nurse,” I said, thinking of Pathea telling me to travel by moonlight. If he knew which of his children I meant, he did not reveal it. “I am your mother’s daughter.” 

“If you are my mother’s daughter, what does that make you to me?” 

It felt like a trick. Pathea had told me not to claim the gods as family. They played by different rules. Placing myself as his equal could very well be a death sentence, even with his mother’s power running through me. I stayed silent. 

“Pharentine,” he said, his eyes full of laughter. “My sister.”

No other god has spoken my name, before or since. No other god has acknowledged my place in their family tree, in the stories that are told of me. Hearing it bolstered me. “Abus. God of the moon.”

“Brother,” he added, and I thought he was teasing. 

I inclined my head, but I did not say it aloud. This seemed to amuse him. 

“You seek my spouse.” It was not a question. 

“I seek you,” I corrected. “I was told by the goddess Tinya that the only way to find you was to first find Solaris.” 

“Tinya,” Abus spat, shaking his head. With his eyes closed and his mouth twisted, he could have passed for a mortal man. “My father’s daughter.” 

“Is she not your sister?” I asked. I had not meant to say it, but he seemed delighted that I had. He opened his eyes and laughed like it was a joke we shared together. Perhaps it was. I smiled in return. 

“Perhaps so,” he replied. “But Solaris is also my father’s child, so I prefer not to think of it.” 

Among mortals, such a thing was disgusting, but divine blood could not be muddied—Oteo might have been called my nephew, being the son of the son of my mother, but it was not so when it came to the gods. It was why I was so surprised to hear Abus claim me as his kin, as his sister. He could choose not to. It was rare for a demigod to be considered as such. 

“You will not find Solaris,” Abus told me then. “I will not let you.” 

“As I said, I seek you.” 

Once again, I was grateful for the moonlight. It lit his face enough for me to see the shadow come over his eyes. “Why, Pharentine?” 

I have often wondered if he knew, even then, how the other gods did not use my name. Whether intentional or not, it had an effect on me. “My lord,” I started, but he cut me off. 

“Call me by name. We are brother and sister, after all.” He said it jovially enough, but somehow it felt like a threat. 

“Abus,” I started again. “Your mother would see you.” 

“Would she?” Again, his tone was light, but I could feel the tension behind the words. 

I nodded once, slowly. “She has sent me in her stead to find you and bring you home to her.” 

“Tell me, sun-daughter—“ he used this name, I think, to remind me of the power I came from— “why could Charo not find me herself?” 

I was stunned. It had not occurred to me that a goddess would be better suited to finding a god than I should have been. Demigods were given their call and went. I had not thought to wonder about the journey I had been set. “It is not my place to question the goddess—“ 

“Then let me. I have heard of you, Pharentine. My mother’s favoured daughter, as Tinya to my father.” 

“There are none so loved as you,” I stressed. It was how the stories told it. 

Abus held up a hand to silence me. “Perhaps. But I am not favoured, especially not for my choice of spouse nor how I raised my godly son nor how I have called my mortal children. The oracles spoke at your birth,” he told me. “They said you would burn with great fire and that the western sun would look upon you always, unless hidden from the sky. They said you would be favoured by both sun and moon. My mother thinks to make me love you.” 

Charo meant for me to be Abus’s bride, I understood. This is why the call had come to me so late in life. She had watched me grow from stumbling into something young and beautiful, and sent me then in the hopes I would be enough to turn her son’s eye. She had seen me traverse cities, adjusting to being adored. She had seen me fight in wars and learn to love a man, seen me dance at Tinya’s fire and learn to live amongst divinity, seen me warm Fili’s bed and learn to love a god. Everything had built to this meeting, preparing me to fill a position as Abus’s wife, preparing me for godhood. 

She had not seen Abus’s love for Solaris as an obstacle. Charo had turned from her husband many times—my presence was proof enough of that—and did not understand that her son would not do the same. She sent me to be his bride and instead he claimed me, immediately, as his sister. 

I understood, then, why he laughed with me. He wanted me at ease, wanted me willing to support him in this. He did not need me on his side. With his power, he could kill me and refuse his mother, but he wanted me to live. 

“I do care for you,” he said to my silence. “I have heard your stories and your songs, seen you painted. I have followed your journey through the moonlight.”

“Pathea advised me to travel by night,” I whispered, understanding this, too. Pathea had heard the prophecies of my birth. She had given me this small piece of advice to ensure that I did become favoured by the moon. Abus would not marry me, but I had made myself part of his story regardless. 

“I will not see my mother, not from this trick. You may tell her.” 

“You think I will survive such an encounter?” I had protested, and this had made him smile. I imagine there were few demigods who would have challenged him. He had claimed me as his sister and if that were the role he had in mind for me, then it was a role I would fill. I would not be his equal in name only. “If you intend not to see your mother, take me with you wherever you go. Let me serve in your household or hide me away, but do not tell me to face the great goddess alone.” 

“Do you mean to make me love you?” 

I shook my head. “I have loved before, and you do not compare to the feeling.” 

Abus had considered me, then, and smiled. “I will not take you with me, sister. But I will talk to my mother and free you from your call.” 

“She will call again,” I said, but I could see that he was not concerned. 

“But not for me,” he said, and he sounded sure enough that I believed him. 

Three days later, when both the eastern and western suns were high in the sky, the light dimmed. “Abus speaks to his mother.” I heard someone whisper and I turned to ask how a mortal knew it but I need not have bothered. As I raised my head, I saw—Abus’s moon had moved through the sky and was positioned in front of the western sun, turning it into nothing but a ring of gold around a black circle. My hand went to my throat immediately, to the icon pendant I wore there, and I knew the mortals around me were looking, too. How long had I been journeying, lending my gifts and my power, allowing stories to spread and my icon to become solidified? They had seemed like passing stories to me, but I was the sun-daughter who helped Oteo, I was the demigod who danced with Tinya, the girl who laid with Fili. I had not fought monsters, but I had travelled far and left burning footprints behind everywhere I went. They knew me, and they knew my icon, and they were seeing it in the sky. 

Many had wondered what my call was for, what my quest would be, what my stories would culminate in. In an instant, I was known. 

The adoration I had collected over the years came more firmly, but I would never walk freely among these people again. I was now a creature of legend, like Pathea or Yetshu or Arogan. Pharentine, I could hear people whispering, the sun-daughter who moved the moon. 

They thought it was some great trick, some act of treachery that had deluded Abus into doing my bidding, but all I had done was talk to my brother and asked him to love me enough to protect me. No one had ever loved me enough to do something to keep me safe, not even Pathea, who was sure I would live as unhappily as she. My father had let me leave without a glance. Oteo, too, though I think he loved me more than my father did. Tinya had drawn out my hunt. Fili had barely loved me at all. 

Abus, my brother, the only piece of divinity who had ever used my name, loved me enough to face his mother. I wept, and the mortals around me did not try to offer comfort. It became my most famous painting: my hair twisted with gold like my mother’s, my face streaked with tears, my icon at my throat reflected in the sky behind me. Pharentine, who moved the moon. 

Their meeting was brief. I most often travelled by night, but Pathea had said only that I should travel by moon, so I took this opportunity to walk by day, leaving the city I was in behind me, leaving the gifts and worship and storytellers. Abus left his mother shortly, and spent even less time with his father, and then the sky lit with sun again, and my mother found me. 

“You dare,” she said, but did not seem to know how to finish the thought. 

“I have seen your son returned. Abus has dwelt in your house.” 

Charo scoffed. I suppose I sounded ridiculous, trying to reason with a goddess. “You were to be his bride.” 

“That was not my call,” I said, then flinched back, terrified that she would make it so. “He loves Solaris. He would not be turned.”

“He will grow to love you,” Charo said. “You were prophesied to be favoured of him. Find him again, and make him see.” 

She pressed her fingers to my throat again, pushing the call into me. This time, she did seem to note the pendant at my neck, Pathea’s apt gift that had become my icon and my fame. “Yes,” she said, mostly to herself. “Yes, I see. Bring Abus back, and love him.” 

I do, I almost said, Abus, my brother, I do love him. 

I shook my head. “He will not be turned.” 

Charo’s eyes narrowed, her skin glimmering under her sunlight, her hair twisted with gold that I could now see was light emanating from her head. She was the sun, and I was her disrespectful daughter, destroying her plans. I had met with heroes and gods, but this time I was afraid. 

Her fingers were burning at my throat. I gasped at the pain of it, surprised to feel heat the way others had described it. Fire had never stung me but I was only a fraction of my mother’s power. She could hurt me easily. 

“Abus,” I gasped. I did not mean to; he had already done so much for me, and I did not want to be in the debt of a god. I should have said nothing, but I called for him, and in my desperation, it became a prayer. 

He came. He heeded my prayer and came to me, pressing himself between me and his mother, blocking me from her view. He seemed strange in the sunlight, fainter, but he was enough to move Charo from me. 

“You would protect her from me? She is my daughter.” 

“And I am your son,” Abus said, and though he was faint, he was still a god. “Pharentine is my sister. You will turn your eye from her.” 

Unless hidden from the sky. I understood then the prophecy Abus had shared with me. Charo would always be able to see me, unless she was hidden from the sky, as Abus had done. That was why she didn’t come until he was gone, why she pulled away when he was near me. His presence in front of her kept me hidden from her view. I knew then what she would have us do, but I could not stop it. 

“I will turn my eye from her when you are in my home, and no other time,” Charo said. “I know you have come to care for her. Make her your wife. She would serve you well, my chosen daughter. She would give you children that Solaris refuses. She would be by your side always, burning with great fire, lighting your dark spaces.” 

“Solaris also burns. Solaris has given me a son. I need nothing else.” 

“You are foolish,” Charo scolded, and I saw Abus flinch. “In the age of gods, these things are fleeting. You will want more, and here is my daughter, who can provide it. I will make her a god for you.” 

Abus stilled. “Will you say her name?” 

“When it is done.” 

“No,” he pressed. “Say it now. Show me that you see her as her, as someone worthy.” 

Charo frowned, and she did not speak. I imagine this is the moment it was decided that no god would speak my name. If Charo, mother of gods, the goddess of the western sun, would not speak my name, no one else would either, for fear of insulting her. They did not mind insulting me. Abus alone would use my name, in all the centuries that came. 

Abus turned from his mother. “I will remain at Solaris’s side. Pharentine will not become a god.” 

With Abus gone, Charo reached for me again, pressing a call to my throat. “She will not,” my mother said, “but she will become my hero, again and again. She is my daughter, and you will not look upon her.” 

Abus shrugged, uncaring. “She travels by night. I will see her then.” 

Charo’s grip on me tightened. I wanted to fight, but I had only ever fought mortal men with Oteo at my side. I was no match for my mother, and I knew it. “She will not step foot in the moonlight again. She will be hidden from you, as you hid her from me.” 

At this, Abus startled, looking at my face. I am sure I looked frightened; I had only ever travelled by night, when the sun magic that ran through me was most impressive, when Abus could watch over me. But my mother’s will was ironclad, and I could feel her lacing it into the call that she pressed into me. “In darkness, you will find only fear,” she said. “From moonbeams, you will shy away. You will see Abus only when I do, and he will see you only when he sees me. Until the day he takes you as his bride, you will walk, sun-daughter, doing my deeds.” 

“Sister,” Abus said, looking at me. His eyes were white as his moon. I could tell the moment when they could see me no more, though I was still in front of him. “Pharentine, my sister, where do you go?” 

“You know the terms,” our mother said, and then she was gone. 

“Pharentine,” he called again, but he could not see me. He fell to his knees and I rushed to his side, but even when I touched his face, he knew not that I was there. “My sister, Pharentine…” 

This was the last I saw of the great god Abus, patron of the moon: kneeling in the sand, calling my name. Pharentine, who moved the moon. I did not like where I had put him. 

I was given many calls in the centuries that followed. The monsters Tinya fought rose again, and I was sent to fight them with her. I visited armies and fought alongside them. I was visited by Charo, Chiah, and a host of other gods. Unable to die, bound to the planet, I was a useful tool among the gods. That is not to say that I did not have my freedoms; I spent long summers with Tinya’s people. I laid with Fili a handful of times. I visited Oteo often. I did not become his wife, doomed as I am to live undying, but demigod to demigod, we could create a mortal heir. I bore him a son and asked for his name to be Abuscus, if only between us. Oteo allowed it to be known. I watched Oteo die, and then Abuscus, and his sons and daughters, and their children. I wondered if Abus watched them, as he could not watch me. If he did, I hope he found them well.  

Though I cannot die, I am still mortal, and sustain many injuries and madnesses. Twice, Charo has come and removed hundreds of years’ worth of memories from me, to prevent me from losing myself in the weight of them. When bards sing my songs, when the storytellers speak of me, I know not how many of their tales are true. I have performed so many more labours than Pathea’s seven callings. I wonder if she is proud, wherever she is now. 

When Abus speaks to his parents, and the sky dims, I look up at him. My icon at my throat, a black circle ringed with gold, hanging in the sky and reflected in my eyes. How many hundreds of times have we done this? How many generations have I seen rise and crumble? How many gods have I served? 

Mortals recognize me for my divinity. Do they know how long I have walked this planet, burning sand with every step, groomed to be a bride and left to fight monsters? Pharentine, who moved the moon. I am painted with tears. As the years roll by, it becomes more fitting, for I am often filled with them. 

The story is twisted by generations. In some tellings, I am less. In some, I am more. In all, I am Abus’s favoured sister and the champion of the gods. I wish I could be more of one and less of the other, but I do not fault my brother for his choices. I would not marry him. I would not have him leave Solaris. My life is not a happy one, but I knew from infancy that demigods do not live happy lives. I fight on behalf of the gods, I fight for the sake of my brother, and I take love and joy wherever I can find it. I am most often fine, which is the best me and my kin can hope for. 

An eclipse is coming. I hear a mother whisper to her child, “Abus is watching for Pharentine, his sister. They have been separated, but when he is in his parent’s house, they can see each other for a time. For them, it is a joyful time.” 

I raise my head to look at my brother, and I know that this, at least, is true. 

END.

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