Empires of Saturn, Part One

Chapter 1, Peace of The Evening

"Ages come and pass; it is not our nations, but our natures that endure."

-Queen Birana of Titan

Chpt. 1 Peace of The Evening

Even as a king, Chi Draconis still occasionally got to enjoy some nice, peaceful time away from his work, spending it instead with his family; his wife, his daughter, and his son. As he and his wife Birana were both older than most people would've been with children the age of their own, it was unfortunate, but his two children had no living grandparents to speak of, and both Draconis and Birana had had no siblings, so there was neither aunts, uncles, nor cousins to speak of either.

It was said that this was the smallest the royal family had ever been, these four members alone, all sitting together around a fire outside on one of the smooth, grass-covered, sparsely treed hills just to the northwest of the capital city of Crown, the elegant skyline shining against the slowly fading twilight. At the near edge of the city, to the right of the observing royal family, was Titan's tallest building, the alleged Crescent Pillar, standing at 1,322ft tall, named so for the large crescent-shaped top, being held upright at a slight angle. That crescent served as a second home for the royal family, the other being a reasonably large house out here in the Great Hills, a bit further away from the action-packed capital city.

With the faint light of the Sun in the dim, orange, western sky, Saturn stood out in beautiful glowing radiance as a thick crescent nearer to the center of the sky to the south, slightly less than its own height off the horizon. Thick, golden orange clouds stood on the borders of sight from here in the Great Hills, and the evening was simply peaceful, and enjoyable. It was warm, there was a soft breeze bringing in the faint smell of salt from the nearby sea, the bugs were chirping along with some fewer birds and the occasional howl of some creature or another, heard from miles away.

As was typical of Draconis' young son, only about 19 and a half, in Standard Years, though Draconis subconsciously counted that in Earth Years too, which would've been about 14.3, Alpha Centauri was staring up at the stars around Saturn in the sky, though most were dim, competing with the light from Saturn and its glorious rings. He was looking at something in particular, his blue eyes focusing on it. "I can see Torhindred." He spoke. He had a gentle, kind voice, befitting of his nature, yet he said that with a hint of distaste, and a feeling of loss, knowing of the relationship between Titan and Saturn's other moons.

Draconis looked to where his gaze was fixed, and sure enough, too small to make out many details, but certainly large enough to see clearly as a small sphere in the sky, Saturn's second-largest moon, and Titan's inward neighbor, Torhindred, shone in the sky. It was in the process of moving away from Titan as it revolved around the large fatherworld, whereas its next inward neighbors, Alrotha and Eympas, were coming closer, though at the moment they were little more than dots in this part of Titan's sky.

"Indeed we can..." Draconis said, looking at Torhindred. Of all Saturn's major moons, consisting of Titan's outward neighbor, at least the sizable one Lyriptus, Titan itself, Titan's inward neighbor Torhindred, and then its inward neighbors Alrotha and Eympas, Torhindred hated Titan most. It was a shame, truly, but all five major moons were in constant disdain for each other, though Titan did tend to receive the most hate of the five, being the largest and most powerful. Lyriptus was really much more of a simply closed society that had little love and little interest in the other four, but Torhindred's society held domineering hatred for Titan's people, and it had been so for such a long time that few remembered the original issue anymore. Now it was simply an inborn hate of neighbor that kept fuel to the fire.