What took place in the Underworld was destined to be known by the universe's great gods.
The commotion of the cosmos moving toward wholeness was simply too great.
The birth of two new goddesses who govern supreme cosmic laws filled all good and upright deities with heartfelt joy.
The advent of "cause-and-effect retribution" and "random change" sent the gods the clearest signal yet from their great God-King.
The great God-King would not fold all things into a predetermined plan; the generous, compassionate God-King was willing to grant all beings every possibility.
Freedom of spirit, randomness of fate, a just order, restrained authority, and the correction of all "excess."
This was the God-King's supreme grace!
This was the God-King's deepest, broadest love for all beings under heaven!
The God-King Zeus would never become a tyrant as dictatorial and paranoid as Uranus; nor would he ever be a destroyer as cruel and unjust as Kronos.
The God-King Zeus would only be—and forever be—the most merciful great Father of all things!
Fate is free!
And what happened in the Underworld struck two goddesses with particular force.
When Aitheron was brought by Zeus into the Underworld to serve as the lunar sphere, the Lord of Pure Radiance, that bright and cool goddess Selene, instantly felt her innate authority of limpid moonlight mysteriously extend into the Underworld—a realm she had never set foot in!
She did not yet know precisely what had happened, but that sudden expansion of authority—nearly equal to her original—brought even this ever-proud, aloof goddess a rare, heartfelt delight.
Being at leisure, she did not tarry. This goddess seldom enthusiastic about anything set off at once, in high spirits.
Happily, she headed for the Underworld, eager to grow familiar with this broad new domain of power she had just acquired.
But she rejoiced too soon.
Halfway there, she idly sent a divine message to Themis, goddess of Order, asking what exactly had happened in the Underworld.
Yet just as her message went forth, she was shocked to discover that the brand-new power—nearly to rival her original authority—had vanished into thin air!
This entirely new force, which ought to have lain within her sphere, dissipated without a trace in an instant.
For over in the Underworld, Zeus swiftly granted Hecate the honor of the Underworld Moon.
The moonglow's cool smile froze upon the Lord of Pure Radiance's striking, elegant features.
Her steps, light as they had been, halted abruptly in mid-heaven.
In that instant, even the gale of the firmament that whipped by felt bitter cold.
Then Themis's reply arrived—brief and to the point—explaining everything to Selene.
When she understood the causes and consequences, the Sovereign of Pure Radiance crushed, in a sudden clench, the moonlight-woven sheer ice-flower she had been unconsciously toying with!
If one had never possessed, one would not grieve.
But just now—only just now—she had truly received it!
She had even clearly felt that vast authority scarcely weaker than her original!
It would have given her the eternal pure radiance of the entire Underworld!
And yet she had not even had time to savor this mighty authority before it… it was gone!
Disappointment instantly shrouded the Mistress of Pure Light, along with a touch of inexpressible grievance.
O God-King, O God-King!
With so many noble, beautiful goddesses upon Olympus, how could your heart be beguiled by that shameless goddess of Night!
How could even our Celestial gods' authority be handed to the Night gods so lightly?
This incarnation of the bright moon, pure and aloof, stood there a long while. At last she turned and silently returned to her own temple.
But reaching the forecourt of her hall, she halted once more.
On that incomparable cool face of the bright moon's incarnation lay deep thought, and in her eyes flashed a resolve like none before.
With a sudden turn she flew straight toward the God-King's supreme temple!
This matter with His Majesty would not be left unsettled today!
(Physical depiction reference image of the Eternal Lord of Pure Radiance, Ruler of the Moon, Incarnation of the Bright Moon—Selene)
And the other goddess struck even harder by all this was the goddess Hemera—the daughter of Night who nonetheless symbolizes endless, eternal light—the goddess of Day.
It was not that she was shaken by the Underworld Moon's appearance.
Her case was more serious.
It was because her Mother, Night, had fully merged with the material universe; because Night's source had entered into the most primal, most profound entanglement and union with the sovereign of the sky!
When those supreme laws intermingled and interpenetrated each other, she—who is Day, born of and counter to Night, interdependent yet distinct—inevitably suffered the greatest, most direct, most profound shock and influence!
Light and Day were born from Darkness and Night.
They are by nature mutually engendering and restraining, yet share the same indivisible essence.
Light corresponds to Darkness; Day corresponds to Night.
Yet in ages past, the Lord of Spirit, by his supreme authority, forcibly stripped the roots of Light and Day from Night's system and transferred them to the material pantheon, making them the children of Hyperion, lord of the celestial bodies.
From then on, all Light and Day arose from the radiance of the stars.
This did not change even through the age of Kronos and into Zeus's era.
Before the mighty Ouranian line, even Nyx could only swallow her rage; as for Aether and Hemera, they could only accept the unchangeable reality.
Yet though the root was forcibly changed, the laws' core essence, as the basis of existence, can never be altered.
Before Zeus and Nyx united, matter and antimatter on one side, and dark matter and dark energy on the other, had long been as separate as two rivers, with a vast essential gulf between them.
Only now have these four primal constituents, for the first time, truly and completely reached perfect coordination.
Aether was better off.
Though his light-authority had suffered grievously—reduced entirely to a subordinate of Helios, lord of shining stars—
Zeus generously granted him the authority of the upper, pure air—the aether. In Zeus and Night's union he was not greatly affected; his essence, after all, counters Darkness.
But as the inseparable, transforming opposite of Night—as Day—when her Mother's source and essence were most deeply joined and infused by the Lord of Thunder,
Hemera felt, to the fullest, exactly the same sensations as her true Mother—deep Night!
Now she lay limp and powerless upon the floor of her pure white temple of Light.
Fragrant sweat had long soaked her shining white divine robe through; she no longer had strength to move even a finger.
Breathing hard and weak, over those days when Thunder lashed Night, she too had borne the thunder's might; she had even rolled from her lofty throne onto the mirror-smooth white jade floor.
She could clearly feel a never-before-known, deeper bond between herself and the entire universe.
She felt her authority over Day become firmer, stronger.
And she felt her source-divinity utterly entwined with that of the great God-King whom she had long secretly admired!
For a time she truly did not know whether to cry or to laugh.
Though a smile of irrepressible joy had already, quietly, appeared upon her sweat-dewed, peerlessly lovely face.
Since entering this new age opened by Zeus, the two former "outside gods," Aether and Hemera, had at last truly merged into the universe's new order and begun living steady, secure lives.
Freed from anxiety over survival, they finally had leisure to enjoy this ever more beautiful cosmos.
In response to the God-King's Sacred Twelve Laws encouraging divine unions and the begetting of offspring, Aether also wished to seek a wife of his own.
Looking across the universe, he found that only the Lord of Pure Radiance—Selene, the Moon's incarnation—and his sister Hemera, incarnation of Day, were truly suitable.
But that Lord of Pure Radiance was altogether too aloof, too cold, showing no warmth to any deity.
Even the pursuit of her closest brother, Helios—the lord of blazing stellar light—she had flatly refused.
Aether, long accustomed to walking on eggshells, would certainly not invite humiliation.
So he began to court his sister Hemera.
Hemera did not reject him outright, yet she never accepted.
In her heart, the goddess of Day wavered.
Had it been in the old days—when brother and sister had to huddle together against the cold, relying on one another—Hemera might have halfheartedly agreed.
But now, with the universe at peace and all things flourishing, Hemera simply could not feel a spark for her brother Aether.
She had well and truly had enough of living as a goddess forever on tiptoe, ever anxious.
She too wished, like other goddesses, to live openly and at ease in this universe.
She knew clearly that her brother, of equally humble origin, had no power to shelter her and grant her a life secure enough, assured enough.
Harshly schooled by cruel reality, Aether had long since become cautious, humble, low-key—which was not at all the type she loved.
As for whom she truly favored—deep within her heart—she had always harbored a small, secret longing she dared not voice to any god.
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