Khaos disappeared into the void. It was a relief to finally see him go. I knew I would never be completely rid of him, but I would enjoy my moment of peace, however long it lasted. And I would keep creating. I would make it harder and harder for him to take apart my creations.
Somehow.
In the meantime, I focused on the more immediate issues. We agreed my earth could stay in the space just outside of the abyss. I was happy not to have to pull or push it somewhere else. It had gotten so much bigger. Tartaros seemed equally happy to go back to his space — he found Khaos too exhausting. The rest of us turned to the task of figuring out where everyone belonged. There were a lot more of us now.
At first, Aether and Hemera stayed on one side of the earth while Erebos and Nyx stayed on the other. It seemed the best solution to their problem of light and dark. But the searing intensity of the light shining constantly on one part of my earth overwhelmed the elements. They scrambled and spun to get away. Those elements would cool in the shadows of Nyx and Erebos, only to be pushed by those getting scorched. Before long the earth was spinning out of control as the elements struggled with the heat.
It was Nyx who came up with the idea of rotating around the earth. She felt sorry for the elements and wanted to help them. She began moving slowly around the earth, towards Hemera, which naturally made Hemera move the other way. The two of them soon found a balance of slowly moving so that the elements didn’t get too hot or too cold.
“Night,” Nyx said. “That is what we will call it when the elements can rest.”
“And day,” Hemera said. “It will be ‘day’ when my light shines on your elements.”
“Night and day,” I said. “It is nice.”
I was just relieved the elements were happy again.
Then I could focus on other problems.
“Pontos, must you let the seas flow everywhere like that?” I asked, trying not to sound too annoyed. “They are almost completely covering my earth.”
“Oh, sorry,” Pontos said, trying to gather his waters. “I can control their flow to an extent, but they are rather hard to keep together.”
“Well, we are going to have to think of something,” I said.
“Like what?”
“I do not know.”
I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about the sea, other than it got everything wet and filled every crack and space of my earth’s surface. It was so overwhelming and made it hard to breathe.
“Could you collect it into something?” I asked.
“The earth does not have any depth,” he said.
“Depth? What is that?”
“Some parts that are higher and some parts that are lower, deeper,” he said. “I cannot collect anything without more variety of depth.”
I tried to think how I might do that. I knew how to make the earth bigger. I wasn’t sure how to make some parts deeper as Pontos was suggesting. That made me think of Erebos and Nyx. Together they had created light. Perhaps Pontos could help me vary the landscape of my earth.
“I– I might need some help,” I said, suddenly feeling awkward. “I am not sure how to — how to make the earth different.”
Without hesitation, Pontos approached me. His closeness made me feel strange.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I am seeing how I can help you,” he said. “It seemed to make sense to be close to you for some reason. I like being close to you. You are warm and wonderful.”
His words made me blush.
“I am not warm and wonderful,” I said. “I am just me. We have to figure out how to make greater depths in the earth.”
“Right,” he said. “What should I do?”
“Um,” I tried to think. “Maybe we need some kind of movement between the waters and the earth?”
It sounded so silly. I honestly had no idea what to do.
Pontos began moving his waters over my surface, making finer pieces of my elements rub off as the sea pushed and pulled at them. It created a sort of watery-earthy mixture.
“Like this?” he said.
It was uncomfortable to have my elements pulled apart like that. I reached out to make him stop.
“Not quite,” I said, trying to smile. “It needs to be something that can create more height or depth. That just shifts things around.”
Pontos stepped closer.
I instinctively withdrew my elements, pulling them deeper and more inward. I wasn’t sure how to handle his closeness. His waters immediately flowed into the spaces I’d made. I tried to give him more space, pulling my earth deeper still, only to have him fill those spaces too. The closer he got, I could feel his own heat building as his elements got closer and closer to my core. It was all too much. Finally with a sudden burst, I sent elements up and out, trying to push him away somehow. The force created large, jagged formations which stuck out high above the surface of his sea.
Pontos paused, his water pushed back by the formations.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“Yes. Yes, of course,” I said, taking in a breath. “I have just never created anything with someone else before. It was not what I was expecting.”
“It was quite nice, was it not?” he said.
I could not decide whether it was nice or not.
He looked at the odd things his movements and my reaction had produced.
“Well,” he said. “It has potential. If you were to move them into more of a line, it could form a wall and I could move my water deeper within them.”
We worked together to arrange things better and from our efforts came Nereos. Nereos helped us further organize the sea so that it was less scattered all over my earth. He certainly had a greater understanding of it than we did.
Inspired by the creation of Nereos, Pontos wanted to create more things together. We soon had Thaumas and Phorcys adding curious things growing in the various depths of the waters. My favorites were the ones Thaumas made in the parts where the light touched. The ones which lurked in the greater depths were odd and of Phorcys’s making. He would also create huge waves which crashed into each other, causing great disruption to my earth. I told Pontos that Phorcys needed to be more careful, but he didn’t seem to share my concern.
Other creatures grew in the depths of the sea and we soon had Keto. She and Phorcys became inseparable, always talking about their latest horrors and creating even greater monstrosities.
“Mother,” Keto said, coming up to the surface.
I was busy reorganizing some of the elements they had disrupted.
“Mother?” she said again.
I looked down at what she was holding.
“Is that your latest horror?” I asked. “That ‘mother’ thing?”
“This??” she said laughing. “No. This is a piece of something we are making. No, I was talking to you. You are the ‘mother’? That’s what Thaumas and Nereos call you.”
“Me? Mother?” I said. “No. I am Gaia.”
“Yes, you are Gaia. But you are also ‘mother’,” Keto said.
“No,” I said.
“Phorycs also calls you ‘mum’ or ‘mummy’. Would you like that better?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Maybe ‘mom’ or ‘mommy’ or ‘mama’?”
“No!’ I said. “They are all hideous!”
“Would you like to be called ‘father’?”
“‘Father’? What is that?”
“It is what we call Pontos,” she said. “You are mother, he is father. But maybe you are also ‘father’?”
“I am not ‘father’ and I am not ‘mother’,” I said, frowning. “I am just Gaia.”
I don’t know why I didn’t like the names or why I didn’t like their things. I found the sea boring and destructive and mysterious and — and hard to understand.
“I do not know what to do,” I said to Nyx one night. “I am trying to create. I am trying to make my earth beautiful, but nothing is working. I am happy that I can finally work with my earth again, now that Pontos has gathered more of his seas. But the other ones are so strange. Phorcys and Keto are the worst. Thaumas and Nereos are good. But they spend all of their time in the sea. What does that have to do with me?”
“I do not know,” Nyx said. “It is hard, but I am sure you will figure it out.”
I was glad for Nyx. She knew what it had been like before. She understood, even if she didn’t have an answer.
I simmered and thought over the matter. Pontos didn’t seem to care what Phorcys and Keto did. How could he not see how awful they were? He was so totally absorbed in his work with Nereos.
“Pontos,” I said, trying to get his attention.
“Yes?” he said as he passed. He kept going, following Nereos somewhere.
“Pontos,” I said again. “I need to talk to you.”
“About what?” he said as he passed again.
“Pontos!” I said with a rumble.
He stopped.
“What?” he said. “Why are you angry?”
“I want to talk to you,” I said. “I want to create a new thing. One which is not quite so much like Phorcys and Keto.”
Pontos shrugged.
“Why not?” he said.
I tried not to be annoyed, but his disinterest in what I wanted made it hard. I kept it to myself, determined to have a more calm and helpful being. Maybe one who could be more like me — of the earth — and not like him. We worked together and made Eurybia.
Another being of the sea.
I was rather disappointed not to have someone for my earth. Still, Eurybia was an improvement. She kept the others in check, dampening the waves a little and re-guiding some of their splashes. She was definitely more thoughtful.
“Mother?” she said.
I tried not to cringe. It was the least horrible of the horrible names and the one I finally allowed them to call me.
“Yes?” I said.
“Why is it that the elements of water are different above your earth than the ones below?”
“Do you mean Ouranos’s heavens?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Why does it not touch the earth? What would happen if it touched it? And what do the heavens do?”
“Ouranos keeps to himself,” I said. “I do not know what he does, or what his elements do, but I know he is more powerful than Khaos.”
“Who is Khaos?” she asked.
“He is the being of the void, the space beyond the heavens.”
“What does he do?”
I thought about how to answer her. How to describe what Khaos really did?
“He removes all purpose and design from the things we create,” I said. “He destroys creations.”
I felt rather proud I’d been able to put it into words.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because he wants nothing,” I said, starting to get annoyed.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because,” I sighed. “It is his nature. That is the void.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because he was from the beginning. The rest I do not know.”
“Oh,” she said, and finally stopped asking questions.
If I Had Words 
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