Chief of the Army Staff

and together they produced the first great family, the Titans.

Twelve of them in the classical reckoning, six brothers, Oceanus, Coas, Creus, Hyperion, Iapetus, and the youngest and most cunning, Cronus.

Six sisters, Thea, Rhea, Themis, Nemesine, Phoebe, and Tethys.

These were not small gods.

That is not a small thing.

That is, in many ways, everything.

Then there was Coas, titan of intellect, of the axis around which the heavens turned, paired with Phoebe, whose name meant bright, and who was associated with prophecy, with the oracle, with the kind of knowing that reaches past the present moment into what has not yet happened.

Their daughters were extraordinary, Leto, who would one day bear Apollo and Artemis to Zeus, and Asteria, goddess of falling stars and nocturnal oracles.