“Brother!”

Prometheus froze, under normal circumstances there was no sound less welcome to him than Cronus sultry boom. Here, however, was the last place in all the universe he wanted to hear it.

“Cronus!” He tried to exude sycophantic pleasure at seeing the god-tyrant. “Um, what brings you down to this backwoods bilgeswamp of a vineyard?”

Somewhere, deep within Prometheus’ panicking inner child—which at this moment was curled up in the corner of the dark box of his soul screaming—there was a tiny sliver of hope that the overbearing king of heaven would take his description of this actually perfectly respectable plot of land to heart and would leave, thinking it beneath his dignity to stay in a place with such poor reviews from the local tourists. Unfortunately, scouting a location for his new summer home did not seem to be Cronus’ primary objective. He didn’t move a muscle, not even to flex for no reason. That wasn’t a good sign.

“I’ve been watching you, Prometheus.” Cronus used his quiet voice, the one that seemed to say, ‘oh, hello. You’re breathing my air and I don’t like it. But don’t worry, everything will be just fine because I have come up with a compelling solution to this most vexing problem: your lungs will look just wonderful mounted above my fireplace.’

Prometheus hated when he used that voice.

“Oh, really?” Prometheus chuckled nervously. “Why ever would you want to do that? A silly thing to do really. Yes, I just come here to…um…make wine and…um…grow potato blossoms.”

Cronus lifted his unamused eyebrows and gave Prometheus a deliberate yawn.

“That is,” Prometheus hurried to assure him of his innocence of any wrong doing of any sort—especially, but not limited to, planting treason, plotting to overthrow the very god who now claimed to have ‘been watching’ him—and certainly not raising a secret race of being who could very well be seen as a mockery of the gods. No, certainly not that. “there’s nothing interesting to see. Just the same old…grapes.”

“No god grows grapes. There are undercreatures for that.”

Prometheus found it a depressing testament to Cronus’ brute nature that he pegged a lie for a fully absurd reason. Prometheus did grow grapes, frequently, in fact; it was a wonderfully relaxing pastime. He had never felt any need for “undercreatures” as Cronus glibly called them. But no matter how he would grow grapes at any other time, it was true that he was not here in this spot for horticulture; he was here to see his son. And his son was here to not be seen by Cronus.

“Oh, Prometheus. You’ve been acting strange for almost thirteen years now. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice?”

Prometheus wanted to sarcast that if he had been acting so strange for thirteen years, why hadn’t Cronus confronted him about it twelve years ago? Fortunately, better sense saved him from his tongue. instead, he gave a neutral, “How so?” and reminded himself, don’t give anything away until you have more information.

Cronus gave him a superior stare. “You spend almost all of your time in this backwoods bilgeswamp of what you claim is a vineyard and yet you never seem to have wine worth a satyr’s left hoof.”

Prometheus swallowed. “Doing and doing well are two very different things.” He said.

“Don’t give me that, brother. We all remember that wine stint you had thirty-five hundred years ago. There wasn’t a deity that could fly straight for nearly two centuries at the end there. Your wine is the stuff of drunken stories, even among those teetotalling dryads.” Cronus’ expression took on the whist of a past well lived. “You remember that Niad in Delphi that got so drunk her descendants still have a hangover? Good times.” Cronus thought about it for a moment more before his face again hardened into its customary angry mask. “So don’t give me lies about not succeeding. You haven’t been growing fruit or making wine here. Not even you could hide it that well.”

Stolen story; please report.

It was a rare near-compliment from Cronus and an even more rare near-deduction. Still, it made Prometheus’ stomach turn. Even while Cronus was reminiscing about “good times” and almost complimenting him on this or the other thing, Prometheus was acutely aware of the power disparity between them and even more so of the erratic an dangerous nature of his ruling brother. No interaction with Cronus ended well. This one had the potential to be disastrous.

Prometheus attempted to change track. “What do you think I’m doing here, then?” He asked.

Cronus smiled a predatory smile. “You’re raising something better than wine.” He said. “And insolent subordinate that you are, you weren’t even planning on sharing..”

Prometheus felt his heart constrict. “You…” He started but couldn’t continue through his fears.

“I found out about your little pet?” Cronus chucked. “Yes. Remarkable idea, I must say. I should know, my children were quite a treat, but immortality and all causes terrible indigestion. You’ve solved that, though, haven’t you?” He sighed then. “I can’t really say I blame you for keeping it secret, thirteen years to grow one morsel is quite the investment, even for the everlived. It's a pity that—”

Prometheus had listened to all this with rising bile and sinking heart and heard no more as he damned all the consequences and took off toward his hovel where Epimethius had last been. He nearly tore the door from it’s hinges as he burst into the home, afraid that he would find no more than a pile of bones scattered as remnants from Cronus’ feast. Instead, he found a clean room with Epimethius sitting quietly in the corner where he had been reading “The Mysteries of a Dialectic Life,” by Androgenese. He looked peeved to have been interrupted so rudely, but for once Prometheus didn’t care about the teen’s attitude as his relief overwhelmed him and he sank to the floor near tears. He only had the chance to take two unsteady breaths before he heard Cronus chuckle behind him.

“Good show.” Cronus said. “You are very invested in this project of yours.”

Prometheus said nothing as he mentally glared at Cronus while carefully keeping his face absolutely neutral.

Cronus laughed outright. “You worry too much, brother. I would never eat such a valuable investment of time and power before you had a chance to work out the reproduction cycle. I’m smart enough to know that we’ll want more than one meal from a delicacy such as this.”

Prometheus felt his relief at finding his son still alive warring with his revulsion at Cronus’ deucentric assumption that Epimethius was some sort of cattle to be raised and and eaten by the Titans. He closed his eyes for four seconds, then inhaled deeply and stood to face Cronus again.

“You should be quick about it though.” Cronus was still talking, “I expect fresh meat at the next feast of the gods.”

Prometheus nodded mutely, not trusting himself to speak, desperately trying to contain his rage. Epimethius was, after all, still mortal and if Cronus found out what was really going on, he would undoubtedly eat the boy immediately, without a second thought.

“Yes, Lord Cronus.” Prometheus hated himself while he said the words, but he continued to maintain a perfectly neutral expression until Cronus, with a final predatory grin and a hucking sound deep in his throat, disappeared in a vortex of impenetrable dark. Only once he was certain the god king was gone, did Prometheus allow his eyes to narrow, his face to grow red, and his fist to go halfway into the outer wall of his house. He muttered somewhere between three and forty-seven choice expletives in the general direction of Cronus before he heard footsteps behind him and—fearing that Cronus had come back—whirled to face Epimethius. Suddenly, Prometheus was perfectly aware of three things: first, though they had stepped back out the doorway, the teenage Epimethius had been within easy earshot of everything that Cronus and the placating Prometheus had said. Second, there was a fist shaped indent in the wall where Prometheus’ hand had been just moments before. And third, in an entirely unrelated vain to the first two things, Epimethius was growing up so fast it made Prometheus want to cry for something different altogether.

“Who was that?” Epimethius in his classic (or what Prometheus guessed would someday come to be seen as classic) teenage way seemed significantly less concerned than he should be after hearing that the king of the gods intended to eat him. Or, for that matter, at finding his father punching a wall.

“That,” Prometheus waved his hand at the defiled ground where Cronus had stood. “Was your uncle Cronus.”

Epimethius raised both eyebrows. “That was the king of the gods?” He scrunched up his face, “He was a lot smaller than I expected. So what was all that?” He waved a hand in the air as if to indicate the whole conversation that came before.

“All that,” Prometheus closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “was our timeline moving up, fast.”