Studying sunbirth was good for me. It was a relief to be on my own and not have to worry about other people and their significance. It was good to be able to focus completely on a fascinating and abstract subject and forget about Plato for a while—both the philosopher and the planet. I loved my children, and I loved Plato and the society we had built struggling to implement his ideas. But Homer calls the gods “untiring” as well as “deathless.” Taking on mortality, and living through that slow physical process of aging, had made me understand for the first time what weariness meant. The study was a form of rest, renewal, and rebirth. It was fun, too. I like learning things, and suns are very close to my heart.

After a timeless while, I was interrupted by the sudden appearance of my little brother Hermes. He draped himself over the accretion disk of a sun forming from a particularly fascinating dust cloud, one full of ancient iron. For some reason, probably simply to irritate me, he chose to make himself so large that the disk looked like a couch he was lounging on. He looked like a youth on the cusp of manhood, an object of desire but filled with implicit power. “Playtime’s over,” he said.

I shot up to the same size and balanced poised in the same orientation against the glowing dust of the nebula. “What are you doing so far from civilization and everything you love?” I asked.

“Running Father’s errands, as usual,” he said, pursing his lips. “You know nothing less would get me so far away from people. What are you doing out here in the bleak emptiness?”

I thought it was beautiful, in its own way. “I’m fulfilling my primary function and working on how suns begin,” I said. “For a god of travel, you do seem to hate going places.”

“I’m not in charge of exploration of the wilderness,” he said, bending to adjust his elegant winged sandals. They and his hat were all he wore—not only at that moment, but practically all the time. He enjoyed displaying his exquisite body and being admired. “I like travel and trade and markets and the way people arrange systems of communication. I like going to places. This isn’t a place. I think this is the furthest from being a place of anywhere I’ve ever been. There’s nothing out here for me, no civilization, no offerings, no possibilities for negotiation. Nothing but atoms and emptiness.”

“Did you know people have equal significance?” I asked, suddenly reminded by what he had been saying. I’d promised Simmea I’d tell the gods. Putting together the chronicle was only the first part of that.

“To us? How could they have?” A frown briefly creased his golden brow. “They’re mayflies.”