While Time might sleep, His deathless spawn, Thought was never free, ever wracked as he was by observation, curation, and rampant calculation. Alone among the Deathless Ones, sleep was denied Him.

They, his fellows, primal children of creation accompanied him in his orbit about the double-helix containing the bianary suns that nourished Palatial Green, the fairest planet in Creation—more fecund even than lusty blue.

Thought, alone among the Deathless ones failed to slumber. He new well what the others dreamed through, that he, as were they, was beholding to the teeming factors of Automatonry. The ambrosia that he sipped lightly as his nightly rejuvenation was effected, they, the other deathless ones, thirsted for mightily, pined for like temporary babies at the breast, when the Twin Suns kissed and they woke.

This was an irritation, for the Deathless Scions of Baal, orbiting the double-helix, the very fountain of Temporality, expressed themselves in thought, a cacophony of infernal thought as they awoke and basely complained in their petty dozen, dozens, of their need to feed. When the Twin Suns kissed, and the deathless Scions of Ball, the blessed of Titanry, awoke, Thought’s contemplation was ruined, dashed to ribbons.

He alone, could keep thought to himself, and so judged, ‘My fellows are as beastly as any horde of temporaries, lacking that tragic kind’s courtesy to die.’

When the others thought, their thoughts were heard by all, ignored by the automatons, echoed in the minds of their kind, and were curated by Thought, in their bland, banal order. For when titans thought, to one another they talked.

Wrath brooded across the River Iss upon his Bleakstone Throne, surly-jawed, red-eyed and clench-handed, angrily thought between gulps, “Nothing but ambrosia to drink—I thirst for hope, terror and the hate of millions to slake!”

Faith, ever slumberous, half-woke upon her plush bed of white lotus, her blonde hair lush enough to clothe hulking Wrath himself, if he were possessed of decent needs. She, rosy-cheeked, yawned, “Ambrosia, my dear sustaining friend,” and sipped daintily, knowing that her cup of morning would brim ever full.

Art, beside his turning wheel, rising from his maiden-hair cot, groaned, drawn to the issuance of this day’s new form, but exhausted by rejuvenation and unable to ply his deft hands. His deep need for a drink of golden liquor to spurn his sluggish Ichor to life, pained his expanding mind. With the fatalism of the addict, Art chugged his cup of ambrosia with no pleasure, intent only on resting form from chaos.

Fate, awakening in her wicker chair, her blind eyes opening to see only tomorrow and feel its victim’s sorrow, was nourished by her pixie-like automaton, placing the reed of dawn one end between her lips, the other in the golden bowl of Ambrosia filled by the weeping suns. There she sipped, her aching hands coming slowly to life as she brought her distaff into play and began the end of another, distant day, working in silence.

War woke upon his bed of scalps and skin, a savage grin creasing the space above his scarred chin, his eyes black motes, every glance at his mechanical attendants informed by anger and frustration: from one he seized a platinum cup and drained it, spitting half the quaff into the eyes of another, from whom he seized another goblet, and used it to smash out the glassy brains of another, snarling in acidic ire. There the beast and least of them turned to grasp his sword, which he sharpened with the metallic chest of the automaton he had just wrecked, grousing, “I should drink blood, not wonder!”

Love awoke beautifully upon her ever-renewing wedding bed, grown of golden sheep’s ear, her red hair and lush ivory skin, bathed in ambrosia by the handsome temporary brought to wake her from her slumber by the singing automatons. She cooed, “Lover, you are so good to me,” meaning it in every fiber of her being.” But when night came, and slumber ruled, her fitful dreams of being chained to a mortal bed once again would send the automatons into panicked action, and her lover would be cast before her admiring suitor, War, to slay at midnight as Herald, on his ethereal pier above them all, snored.

Herald, this morning, with his acute attention to detail, sensed that something was wrong with Time, that their, that their Father rested uneasily, that a new age must dawn—another prime child of creation must be born or reborn. Herald snorted his thimble of ambrosia, the most astute among them other than Thought, glanced at Thought and declared, “I am off to The Well, brother.”

Hate, hearing him, rose up in her velvet hammock, tossed her raven hair, pursed her ruby lips, and hissed to her autonomous attendants, “None of your potion. I will have Life!”

The automatons, wheeled back and away from her hammock as she keened with her serpentine tongue, tall, pale, lean and beautifully sleek. The keening brought her bastard sons, the fruit of her bitter womb sired by war: Discord, bobbing his two heads, Panic his blank face having no lips or eye lids, and Rout, whose half-human face narrowed to a wolfish snout. These terrible three perked their ears and listened to their mother queen, “Seek Pheobus Khron of Sirius. Bring me ovum, fetus, babe, milk and mother, each of you three. Your mother must feast.

“Yess!” they hissed, and loped off towards the automaton-crewed skiffs in terrible obedience.

Pan, waking among his cool heather, tossed his brown head of hair, shook his head in discord, and presented his flute to his attendants, whose autonomous song hummed in concord as they fluttered about him, draining ambrosia from the dewy heather into his woody flute, which then glowed like the sun as the liquid coursed down its length to wet his five-fingered tongue.

Pan piped, and looked across the heather to his bride, smoking her ambrosia through crystal hookah spouting seven amber tubes in the likeness of curious snakes.

Song, casting green eyes upon Pan her lover, shook her ochre curls free of the morning dew and the clinging automatons. To them all and to none as if one, she sweetly smiled as she smoked from each emerald-eyed snake’s mouth. With each breath, a song of thought spun like an animate cloud across the heather, released as sound by the notes from Pan’s seven-reeded flute, to whirl along.

Their love song spun across the palatial spans of Green, soared above the green hills and the blue lakes, to waft along to the pillars where The Sisters Three broke their fast:

Fruit, fair skinned and fair haired, drank honeyed ambrosia from the swarming automatons maintaining the form of bees, and she preened, “I do so bear…”

Wisdom, gray of hair and clothes, chewed her ambrosial dates with care, pondering, it seemed, each worn tooth employed as some risk dared, cooed, “I do so care…”

Death, bald, black-eyed and ashen of hide, worked the ambrosia offered to her from automatons shaped like rhytons creeping upon feet of glass, lathered her hands with the stuff of life, shaped a torrent of an idea between her hands in the form of tangled strife, and crowed, “I do so glare.”

Fate, working at her loom, sniffled and wept, “To be a blind spinster enslaved by such vile sisters—Oh, Thought, here me and divine this falling tear.”

Thought, did not think, but felt...and declared, “We are base, damned and mad, beyond Death and her cruel redemption. Feed if you must, but in Sirius Slaves keep your trust.”

Pan piped and Song sang, across the Palatial Idyll of Green.