KRONOS WEDDING AND THE BIRTH OF HESTIA

 Ciao, How are you guys doin' , So lets continue from where I left from yesterday's blog. Lets kick off with Kronos's wedding!

it’s a pain to be on your own when everyone around you is settling down and starting families. Kronos had earned the throne fair and square, but that curse took all the fun out of chopping up his dad. Now he had to worry about getting overthrown while everyone else got to enjoy the good life. Uncool.

His realtives didnt visit him much anymore. After Gaea went  back into the earth.They stopped coming by the palace for Sunday dinner and Karoke. They said they were busy, but Kronos suspected that his brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews were simply scared of him. He did have his father’s temper and sense of cruelty. His scythe was intimidating. Plus, he had the slightly off-putting tendency to scream, “I’ll kill you all!” whenever someone made him mad. But was that his fault?

One morning he really snapped. He woke up to a Cyclops hammering on a piece of bronze right outside his bedroom window. Seven in the morning, on a weekend!

Kronos had promised his mom he would free the Elder Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handed Ones from Tartarus, but he was getting really tired of his ugly relatives. They’d become more and more disgusting as they grew up. Their smell was really  fetid. They had, like, zero personal hygiene, and they were constantly making noise—building things, hammering metal, cutting stone. They’d been useful for building the palace, but now they were just annoying.

Kronos called Atlas and Hyperion and a couple of his other goons. They rounded up the Cyclopes and Hundred-Handed Ones and told them they were going to a BTS concert in seoul . Then they jumped the poor guys, wrapped them in chains again, and tossed them back into Tartarus.

But if Gaea woke up ( which is probably after a few millennia) she absolutely won't be happy - So what ?Kronos is the Lord of cosmos now! So mom would just have to deal with it.

Things were much quieter at the palace after that, but Kronos still had a major case of the grumpies. It wasn’t fair that he couldn’t have a wife! ( maybe that was the price he had to pay for Chop-chopping his dad)

In fact he had a particular wife in mind.

Yup , its none other than "RHEA", the titan of motherhood. Also, Rhea was sweet and kind and everyone loved her. Kronos thought: If I just had a wife like that, my family wouldn’t fear me as much. They’d come to the palace more often. Rhea would teach me to be a better Titan. Life would be awesome!

But another part of him thought, No! I can’t get married, because of that stupid curse!

Kronos grumbled in frustration. He was the king of the freaking universe! He could do whatever he wanted! Maybe Ouranos had just been messing with him and there was no curse. Or maybe he would get lucky and he wouldn’t have kids.

Note to self: If you’re trying not to have kids, don’t marry a lady who is the Titan of motherhood.

Kronos tried to restrain himself, but finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. He invited Rhea to a  date  and poured out his feelings. He proposed to her on the spot.

Now, I don’t know if Rhea loved the guy or not. If she didn’t, I imagine she was too afraid to say so. This was Kronos, the Crooked One, after all—the dude who had  chop- chopped their dad. The king of the freaking Universe!

It didn’t help that the whole time they ate dinner, his scythe was resting on a hook on the wall right behind him, its blade gleaming in the candlelight like it was still covered in golden ichor.

Rhea agreed to marry him.

Maybe she thought she could make him into a better guy. Maybe Kronos believed that, too. After a few weeks later  , when Kronos heard that Rhea was expecting their 1st child, he tried to convince himself everything is fine.

He was happy! He would never be a bad father like Ouranos. It didn’t matter if the baby was a boy Titan or a girl Titan. Kronos would love him or her and forget all about that old curse.

Then the kid was born—a beautiful baby girl.

Rhea had been secretly worried her child might turn out to be a Cyclops or a Hundred-Handed One. Maybe Kronos had been stressing about that, too. But nope. The child was perfect.

In fact, she was a little too perfect.

HESTIA'S SYMBOL, THE HEARTH

Rhea named her Hestia. She swaddled the baby in soft blankets and showed her to her proud papa. At first, Kronos smiled. The kid was nothing like a monster but —sweet! 

 As Kronos looked into her eyes and realized that Hestia looked nothing like an titan, she wasn't much big like an titan baby but heavier and perfectly propotioned.Her eyes much too intelligent for a newborn. She radiated power. With Kronos’s understanding of time, he could easily envision what this girl would look like when she grew up. She would be smaller than a Titan, but capable of great things. She would surpass any Titan at whatever she chose to do.

Hestia was like an improved version of the Titans—Titan 2.0 . In fact, she wasn’t a Titan at all. She was a goddess—the first member of an entirely new branch of immortal evolution.

Looking at her, Kronos felt like an old Iphone 5s staring at the latest model Iphone 11pro. He knew his days were numbered.

His proud papa smile faded. This kid could not be allowed to grow up, or the prophecy of Ouranos would come true. Kronos had to act fast. He knew Rhea would never agree to have her child killed, and she’d brought those stupid lions with her as usual. He couldn’t have a fight in the throne room. 

“Besides, he couldn’t reach for his scythe while holding the baby. He had to get rid of Hestia immediately and irreversibly.

He opened his mouth—super, super wide, wider than he even realized he could. His lower jaw was hinged like on one of those massive snakes that can eat a cow. He stuffed Hestia in his mouth and swallowed her whole.

Just like: GULP. She was gobbled by Kronos .

As you can imagine, Rhea completely freaked.

“My baby!” she screamed. “You—you just—”

“Oh, wow.” Kronos belched. “My bad. Sorry.”

Rhea’s eyes bugged out. She screamed some more. She would have launched herself at Kronos and pummeled him with her fists, or ordered her lions to attack, but she was afraid of hurting the baby that was now stuck inside him.

“Cough her up!” Rhea demanded.

“Can’t,” Kronos said. “I have this super-strong stomach. Once something goes down, it doesn’t come back up.”

“How could you swallow her?” she shouted. “That was our child!”

"Yeah about that...."Kronos tried  look apologetic " she was not gonna workout,  There was this curse . I mean, come on, sweetheart ! That baby wasn’t even a proper Titan. She was trouble, I could tell! The next kid will be better, I’m sure.

“This sounded perfectly reasonable to Kronos, but for some reason Rhea wasn’t satisfied. She stormed off in a rage.

You’d think Rhea would never forgive him. I mean, your husband eats your firstborn child like a  hamburger….Your typical mother isn’t going to forget that.

But Rhea’s situation was complicated.

First, Kronos had swallowed the baby Hestia whole. Hestia, like her parents, was technically immortal. She couldn’t die, even inside her father’s stomach. Gross in there? Yes. A little claustrophobic? You bet. But fatal? No.

She’s still alive, Rhea consoled herself. I can find a way to get her back.

That calmed her down a little, though she didn’t have a plan. She couldn’t use force to get her way. Rhea was a gentle goddess. Even if she tried to fight, most of the strongest Titans, like Hyperion and that big goon Atlas, would back Kronos up.

“She couldn’t risk a sneak attack with a knife or the scythe or even her lions, because that might hurt the baby.

Maybe you’re thinking, Wait a minute. If the kid is immortal, why is Rhea worried about hurting her? But, see, immortals can be hurt badly, crippled, or mutilated. An injury might not kill them, but they also don’t always heal from damage. They just stay crippled forever. You’ll see some examples of that later on. Rhea wasn’t about to cut open Kronos and risk chopping up her baby, because being in pieces is no way to live, especially when you live forever.

She couldn’t divorce Kronos, because nobody had invented divorce yet. And even if they had, Rhea would have been too scared to try. Can you blame her? As you may have noticed, Kronos was one crazy piece of work. Rhea had known that fact ever since he chopped up their dad with the scythe and then walked around the after-party in his ichor-stained shirt shouting, “Awesome murder, guys! High five!”

She couldn’t run, because Kronos was lord of the whole world. Unless she wanted to jump into Tartarus (which she didn’t), there was no place to go.