The clay was supple in his hands. Forming, conforming to his will. Shifting with pressures present, unfelt, seen, understood. His fingers were nimble. His imagination was vivid. His goal was both beautifully simple and extremely complex: make a companion for the Titans. In the years, the thousands of years, since he and his brothers had come into being, Prometheus had discovered two truths: first, life alone was unbearably boring. Second, life with his fellow Titans was unbearably unbearable. He intended to solve both problems with one elegant solution. He pulled the clay into tiny little strands, rounding them, adding bumps where joints would be, curving the newly formed fingers so that they were nearly closed into tiny fists.

The problem, as he saw it, was as two-fold as his truths: his brother, Cronus, was overbearing, and the rest of Mother Gaea’s children had as much imagination as a flock of seagulls—which Prometheus was personally inclined to think was the dumbest of all his family’s creations.

He smoothed out the forehead of the tiny creature and added hair, wispy light hair, almost ethereal in nature, not an easy thing to do in the gritty medium he had chosen.

There was no specific reason that he had to make his experiment out of clay. He had initially toyed with the idea of using gold, an easy medium to work with, but he had worried that his creation would take the attributes of the material—beautiful, but cold and ultimately useless. He shuddered; he had enough company like that from the other Titans. A whole world populated with mortal versions of his siblings…perish the thought—he had moved on quickly from that idea.

His next consideration had been brass. However, he did not think a people so obstinate and unyielding as brass would survive long in a world of Titans.

Iron was a promising option. But he worried that a people made out of iron would be so industrious that they would neglect the more important considerations of art and beauty, entertainment and people. He was not making companions for his loneliness just so they could work themselves to an early graves and be buried in piles of assets.

What was left was clay: the most common and corrupt of all the materials, but also the one with by far the most potential. After all, try growing a garden in a field of gold or bronze or steel and see what you get. Only clay was supple enough to make creative beings capable of beauty and intrigue, surprise and friendship. That is, capable relieving the ineffable boredom of his immortal conclave.

Having completed the body, hands, and head of his creation, Prometheus set his will to the most ambitiously difficult part of the whole project. The face was a study in patience and precision. Set the eyes just a fraction off, make the nose just a little crooked, leave the ear canal just barely too small, and he may well be condemning the whole race to extinction before it was ever born. After all, of the five senses that he had finally decided to gift to his creation, four would be situated in the face. He pushed and pulled and smoothed and creased with minute movements, applying just enough pressure to guide the clay without smearing it.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

When he was done with everything but the eyes, he paused to examine his work. A tiny face stared up at him. Both he and his siblings had been born from the joining of Gaea and Sky as fully formed an deific beings with nearly unlimited power. Prometheus himself had seen how disastrous such a full bestowal of power without an equal measure of wisdom had been. The early days after their arrival there had been destruction and ruin. Infighting so fierce that it had nearly rent the earth and heaven in two before the petulant siblings had realized that their own power could be checked by the power of the others. Even with this realization, there were sundry foolish events that, Prometheus was convinced, could have been avoided if only the power had been granted in equal measure as wisdom gained. His brother Atlas, poor fool, was a prime example. So caught up in his own power and so incapable of wisdom of thought (or, indeed, original thought—Atlas’ power residing primarily in his forearms and back and not in his head) had he been, that he had arrogantly decided to forestall any competitors to his position by ensuring that none such could ever be born again. It had been a tremendous effort for him to lift the sky, thus separating mother Gaea from her lover and undoing the coupling that had begot Atlas himself. At first he had stayed there out of bull headed determination—then he had realized that he was stuck. Having once lifted the sky, if Atlas now tried to replace his burden, then the force with which the sky would once again rush into the arms of his love would not only kill Atlas himself, but would very possibly destroy the rest of the Titans along with every living thing on earth as the entire surface was terraformed in a cataclysm that may even flatten mighty mount Olympus. Atlas had been stuck there for nearly ten thousand years now and Prometheus didn’t see him moving anytime soon.

In order to avoid similar events and hopefully improve the decision making process of his experiment, Prometheus had decided to make them “grow up”. That is, they would start utterly helpless, unable to walk, unable to talk, unable to even feed themselves. As they learned the basic rules of kindness and strength, they would grow to be able to act for themselves, but without any power or trust, only once they had lived long enough to learn true wisdom would they be fully formed and able to act autonomously with a full measure of their power.

Prometheus inhaled a massive breath.

The eyes were all that he had left to sculpt. The eyes were the face of the face with equal measures difficulty and importance. The eyes were not the soul, neither were they some window thereto as Mnemosyne was fond of philosophizing, but they were the manifestation of the soul and should Prometheus do these incorrectly, the whole race could end up violent and hateful. He no longer sculpted the clay; now he caressed it to his will. He started from the outside and worked his way in, taking nearly as long on each eye as he had taken on the whole of the lower body.

At the moment he finished the second, perfect pupil, the gray-brown clay began to bleed color. At first it was the eyes which radiated vibrant turquoise in splashes around the pupil, resolving into perfect circles as the rest of the eye faded to a soft white. Then, a pulse of pink-orange light under the cheek worked its way to the surface and slowly became a swirl which spread across the body.

Suddenly, the now warm, tiny body shuddered in Prometheus’ arms and then the chest began rising and falling as it started to breath softly.

Prometheus stared at the infant with something akin to wonder. Had he really just created this beautiful little creature?

“Welcome, Epimethius.” Prometheus whispered to the creature.

The child’s face scrunched up as it began to cry.

“Yes,” Prometheus said, “you will provide great entertainment to me. You and your kind will give my life interest once again.”