Power From On High...

Chapter 1: Part 7

Cronus was in a depressed mood after having watched that movie with Rhea in it, twice over. He ordered his servants to prepare a meal for two, thought it over again and then asked for a third to accommodate the lion. It did not take long for the meals to be prepared as the cooks worked very fast due to their expertise and the quality of the ingredients and appliances in Cronus' kitchens. The servants had the home prepared in no time and Cronus waited patiently as he looked out to the surrounding city from the top of his mansion.

Cronus liked having guests, but he was not very good with hospitality. He usually relied on Rhea to entertain his guests and remind him how to correspond with others. With the loss of Rhea and her compassionate, attentive and caring character, he had no idea how to do the same. How to emit the comforting presence she exuded, how even to keep himself together. Everything seemed to be lost without her.

A chiming of the doorbell. Servants moved to greet Cronus' guest at the door, directing him through the ground level, upstairs to the dining room. Zeus did not bring his lion with him. Zeus took the elevator up to the thirteenth floor, the dining room. The room was quite large. Panels of glass surrounded them, as each wall was a window, though those looking from without could not see within. Zeus silently appreciated the architecture and interior design, then looked out the window and stared at the throne and stage below.

The location of the throne was positioned on the side of the cylindrical mansion. Its staged and flowered banks of white and green grass ran up the north side of the building, which faced most of the residential districts. The flowers were arranged into various characters of Martian philosophy, a total of three meaning, peace, power and procreation. Zeus always found the last one to be a little uncouth, as if the citizens of Eterlas needed reminders to propagate an already thriving population. Still, it was a commandment from God himself, how could it not be; numbers in many ways equate to power and God's nations needed to be powerful, that is why Cronus did not have breeding laws as strict as the ones he and his other brothers had instigated from the moment they began to develop great respect for their Martian world and its environment.

"God's love is infinite," his teachers would say in his childhood years, even some of the maresse in his life, though he knew they were only procuring reasons to seduce him. Many maresse had put Zeus on a pedestal, like some sort of celebrity and had he not grown used to dealing with their passionate entrapments, he would be father to more children than he had fingers and toes. Unfortunately, it was a commandment from God to procreate. Zeus feared this. He was afraid of outliving his offspring, a very natural fear for such an unnatural predicament. Perhaps Cronus felt the same, but Zeus doubted that considering that the number of concubines which were rumored to have been summoned by Cronus were many.

Zeus looked up from the immediate view and out towards the city and its organized structures. The view from the center of the city was impeccable as the cylindrical mansion, which was part of a hill reached a height of two hundred and four feet. Zeus could see everything for miles around to the tree lines that marked the fortieth perimeter of Eterlas and beyond. The window panes of all the buildings were programmed to refract and absorb the light of day at all times, firstly to re-direct the glare from the sun, secondarily to create patterns of color that shifted as the sun crossed the sky and finally for solar-panels. Right then sunset colors dominated the visages of the windows which echoed that light into the room, painting everything in shimmering yellow, gold, orange, pink and red.

Zeus was about to speak, when-

"I hope you enjoy the view. My servants will serve us dinner soon. I hope you also enjoy inado, they were caught fresh today," said Cronus cordially.

Inado were fresh water fish from the great river Trunellia, which is west of Eterlas and the most common delicacy in Eterlas. They were about half an edon, which is three point five feet long, bright yellow, with four silver/yellow fins and were covered in poisonous black barbs. To prepare them was an art form in itself because it required the removal of each barb without allowing the poison to taint the flesh, or else severe inflammation of the throat would occur and suffocation would be sure to follow, without cure. One danger or another juxtaposed many Martian activities.