The Doves that Strut

Prologue

I had always wondered about my life's meaning.

My meaning, it had never stopped pestering me, like a mosquito fluttering its wings, buzzing at my ears in the middle of the night, but also like an aching hole somewhere inside of me as if I would never feel whole unless I found the missing piece belonged to me. I craved the answer, but it's not like it was scribbled on my birth certificate.

In the dusty volumes of Greek myths of old, the war between the Titans and the younger gods saw the latter victorious, taking over Mount Olympus with Zeus on the throne, and the Titans were banished to Tartarus, the deep abyss in the Underworld. Yet this Titan, Prometheus got to stick around, because he hadn't fought in the war. And later on, he was assigned a task, the task of creating humanity.

Fashioned out of clay and just a bit of divine essence, these new creations were originally mere playthings to both the Titans and the gods, much like gerbils. Prometheus, as its creator, pitied men, and stole a strip of fire from the hearth at Mount Olympus and gave it to humanity. lt took some time for them to get used to the flaming ball of death, but eventually, they figured ways to use it to their own devices and thus began the evolution of modern man.

It was not until centuries later that Zeus found out what had been right under his nose. He got so pissed that he ordered Prometheus to be taken far away, to the Caucasus Mountains, and chained to a rock. He sent a gigantic eagle to tear his torso asunder and peck at his liver, and it did so every day. At night, Prometheus's liver healed up (at quite miraculous rates, even by modern medical standards), and as the sun rose over the mountain the next day, so did the eagle.

I often wondered why we had been created. Every time I thought of this story, I contemplated the reason, because, logically, no one in their right mind would construct a new species under an order and then defy orders to progress it with their own lives at stake. Sure, the Titans and gods were immortal, but an eternity of liver-pecking would still be extremely agonizing, right? So why did Prometheus do that? He was the Titan of prophecy, so perhaps he had foreseen something, something that Mankind would do. He must have seen the great potential in each of the ancient men's descendants, and the great things that we are meant to accomplish.

So what exactly was the great thing that I should accomplish, that would define me? I had no idea. I had been living in this world for over a decade, and yet I still hadn't found my meaning. Why was I born? What did I have to do? What was my mission in life? Why did Prometheus give me fire?