ATLOP: Lessons in Water

What's in a Name?

This is the last chapter before the solstice! The custody battle will be ending next chapter!

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I drifted, flitting from dream to dream through the nights.

Rarely was it something I knew or could remember.

Fragments of shadows and sky, conflict rising, a figure holding up something great and powerful, gold eyes, bird cries, the land asleep.

One night I dreamed of a woman cradling a child who had eyes like hot coals, hair like obsidian, golden-tan skin.

The woman reminded me strikingly of Zeus for some reason.

She smiled at the child and smiled again when the gold-eyed Titan (Kronos-tito, my grandfather) leaned over, smiling down at the child.

Was that Hestia? She looked similar even now.

I blinked, and another night saw a figure of dripping shadows, winged darkness tucked close with shining light and rising sun drifting near.

Words that I didn't understand, spoken in tongues older than the sun, and dripping shadows curled around the light.

It didn't snuff them out, simply cradled.

Another night I stared as oceans raged and lashed out and crashed and I was swept away by the currents.

A presence so old and deep and aching.

Subtle creeping drifted through it, something older, quieter, ancient and deep and powerful and angry .

I gasped awake and feared the comfortable currents that had always guarded me.

The dreams kept on, curling through my mind as I slept.

I stood in a group of beings, old, powerful, glowing, immense in all ways.

My necklace guarded me in part, but it was barely a blanket in a snowstorm. The thinnest of barriers.

Gold eyes looked out, landing on me as if He could see through the thousands of years that separated us.

The child was cradled in the woman's arms, small and delicate and treasured.

Dripping shadows leaned to shifting sands and brilliant light greeted the child, Hestia, warmth and home and light.

I was dazed and awed and surrounded by power .

I looked back to gold-eyes, Kronos, shifting sands and blinked as the shifting shifted.

Brilliant light stood by Him, speaking as His sands shifted more and more.

His gaze tightened, His eyes drifting away, landing on the child and He tensed.

The sky crashed, light flashed, the child was introduced, and He acknowledged Her.

Hestia, named on the seventh day of Her birth.

Hestia, smiling up at Her father who had smiled down at Her moments before.

Hestia, whose light was devoured by the shifting sands that shifted wrong.

I stared as the shifting sands shifted wrong and Tethys reached for Him.