#21 Sun

“Sometimes I don’t understand how you just spend each night staring at him,” taunted Helios, as he fastened the reins on Pyrois, one of his four horses, with blood-red skin, wild eyes, and flames for a mane. “He’s just a mortal, and an eternally sleeping one at that.”

Selene flushed and quickly undid the reins on her own two horses, which were calm, snow-white, and shimmered like starlight when they moved. “Maybe I just like how he looks when he sleeps,” she sputtered, walking away towards Olympus to clock out.

Helios laughed after her. “Then I believe you have bad taste, sister.”

Day was routine for Helios. It starts at dawn, where he passes by an irritated Eos who is holding up the curtains (“You’re late again,” the youngest sister would grumble), followed by banter with his younger, infatuated sister at the stables when they changed shifts, and then the sky would be his.

Well, at least he wished it were really his. When he was a child, his father Hyperion would take him and his sisters to ride on Uranus’ back, showing them the ways to navigate the skies — his inheritance to them. How one day, Helios would bear his father’s name.

But all was over when Zeus overthrew Cronus, and soon after appointed a pair of cocky little shits to rule the Sun and the Moon. Helios’ birthright was taken from him and reduced to a job.

For now, Helios would comply with the rules of Olympus. But one day, he will crush the life out of Apollo.

*****

For those less familiar, Helios, Selene, and Eos are titans and personifications of the Sun, the Moon, and the Dawn. Also, the sleeping hottie that Selene is obsessed with is called Endymion and there's a gorgeous painting of the myth by Girodet.

Illo not great, but eh. Art challenges aren’t meant to be a space to make good art, just to make art everyday 😂 at least that’s what I tell myself.