the Earth meets the Sky

part two // WAR

this is part two of our three part story about Atlas, the last Titan - to read part one, go here

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The two boys leave the cave that day, having had a grand adventure together. They promise to return again the next day, and the next, and the next. And they start dreaming of all the adventures they may have together…

They each promised to return.

Only it was a promise one of them couldn’t keep. Let’s not begrudge young Zeus this one day of pretending like he was a normal boy. If only either of them had felt called to share themselves and their full truth… all of this may not have come to pass. But alas and alack alike!! They didn’t, hadn’t, wouldn’t… so here we are.

Ten years pass (ah!! How time seems to just… go.)

A war is brewing.

He always knew it would come.

Raised alone and lonely, fed on goats milk and scraps of stories he’s picked up from the nymphs who raised him. He is a wild boy, raised in the wilderness without any comforts of his mother (although the trio of nymphs were certainly loving!) or his family or his souls true home, he grows up wild and wily and tense.

Apart from one adventure with a boy his own age one day, his childhood is a lonely one.

On his 18th birthday Zeus knows what he must do.

He could sit and become spiteful, locked in his own loathing, but that is not his nature! He is a loving boy, at heart, jovial and kind - he is a wild boy, after all. Filled with all the effortless and wild love that being raised close to nature will do for you.

So he sets out on a mission, to kill his father and free his siblings who had been imprisoned now for decades (oh imagine! Just imagine! A childhood with five older siblings to run amok with!! He can practically hear their laughter and has a lifetime filled with dreams of them all, together.)

So now Zeus, hovering on that first powerful step into adulthood, sneaks into his fathers house, and posing as a cupbearer, poisons his patriarch so that he spews forth his brothers and sisters, setting them free!!

The very thing that Cronus was afraid of (that his own children would rise up to defeat him just as he had done to his own father) has come to pass.

Ah, fate!! How funny you are.

So Zeus has freed his siblings and started a war (he knew it was coming - sometimes the Fates are not all that secretive with their plans).

There will be a war.

One god to challenge another.

The Olympians - Zeus and his newly-freed siblings who reside on Mount Olympus, to challenge the Titans, Cronus and his own siblings along with their offspring - the primordial gods. Of course his own siblings would join his side in the battle - imagine if they just let any of their children rise up to challenge them!! No, there was really only one side they could choose.

(Can you see it now? Can you see where this is going? I did say that those two young boys were cousins…)

On the battlefield two armies meet.

But this is not a war waged between mortals.

It is between Gods.

(Who dies then? There is not war without casualties. But gods don’t die. The mortals who worship them do.)

Zeus stands at the head of one army, armed with his thunderbolts (a gift from the Cyclopes upon his freeing them), with the Hundred Armed Giants at his side. (Yes! He has freed them from the very same cave he stood before as a young boy with Atlas!)

And on the other side of the battlefield… one painfully familiar face. Older now, but still dressed in brown. Standing right in the front lines next to his father. Still strong and daring but still somehow emanating a kindness that feels so very fair, even from this distance.

(You see… Atlas was raised by a loving father, Zeus was not. The Fates may know which side Atlas would have fought on, should Zeus have told him his full story as a boy… but they are wont to keep tales like that to themselves. Only the things that actually come to pass are the ones that matter, after all. The wouldbes and the shoulds are all just fairytales, in the end. Had Zeus told his friend his story, it’s entirely possible that Atlas would have been standing on the other side of this war… but then, it’s also possible he wouldn’t have. In another version, we can see how the two boys would have managed to stay connected through their childhood and teenage years. Until, finally, Zeus is determined to go to war, and Atlas tries to talk him out of it… “you can’t seriously make me fight against my father..” In either story, the end result is this: the two boys end up on opposite sides. Impossibly.)

So now young Zeus, having started this war and who is now filled with the wild confidence of someone portraying the role of HERO, slowly falters. For just one step… his breath hitches in his chest as his hand impulsively reaches up to touch (gently) a small scar left on his forehead…

On the other side, Atlas shudders.

He did not know.

He did not know he did not know he did not know.

This enemy, this friend, the boy, this man who’s called them all to war….

He did not know.

But the tide has started. Just you try to stop a war between Gods once it has begun….

And this war lasts for ten years.

We do not know the individual battles that were waged, we do not know if the young friends found any time or space to confide or connect with one another. Those stories are lost, or maybe they don’t even matter that much in the end, because we do know how this all ends.

Zeus and his siblings are finally triumphant.

The new era of Olympians is here, the era of the Titans has been put to rest.

No one dies (not one of the Gods, anyhow). Instead, Zeus banishes them to Tartarus, that dark and dreadful cave he had stood at as a boy! (Let us see them now… standing side by side with no idea of what was to come…)

Atlas though, does not get banished with the rest.

(Haven’t you ever wondered why he alone was spared?)

Zeus goes on to become King of the Cosmos, splitting rule of all dominions with his brothers; Poseidon, to rule the seas, and Hades, the underworld.

And Atlas is sentenced to hold up the celestial sphere for all of eternity. Wedged here on earth between Gaia and the sky (which his childhood bestie is now the ruler of…how curious…)

Zeus is now God of the Sky, hey? That young boy with fresh wind in his heart, a blue twinkle in his eye and who wore the colour of the clouds??? Oh Fates!! You do like to tease us so!!

And I wonder… did he feel it, then, even as a boy? Did Zeus feel how his friend worshipped the earth and seemed, even then, to have a connection with her? Possibly Zeus was a prophet in his own right. Atlas has always wondered.

Because next… our young hero falls in love.

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Before we get to that part of the story, let us just focus in on one detail here, for it could matter a whole heck of a lot for some of us mortals…

On one side of this war, is the Sky. The cosmos, the stars, the promise of heaven and divinity - lead by Zeus.

And on the other (because Atlas is there), we seem to have the Earth. Stones, bones, rivers, blood… all of the things that we can reach out and hold. All of the things that make real life real.

And in this battle, the sky wins… and we’ve been waging war on our own bodies ever since.

But we didn’t know then (couldn’t know, really) that heaven doesn’t exist out there in the sky.

It is here. In our bodies on this earth.

Atlas and Zeus were always equally matched in their strength - one to stand for the earth, and one to stand for the sky.

But only one won.

And we will continue to lose our own war until we stop reaching for something out there outside of us.

We’ll only win it when we turn around to worship her here. Ourselves. Here. Now (definitely not later. Now. As we are.) We’re all interchangeable in the end.

♡

there’s one more part to our story…

coming up next: PART III // ATLAS falls in LOVE