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Once she is done singing, Rhea learns of Python who harassed her mother. And so, the four-day-old goddess goes on her first hunt: the earthborn monster at the oracular shrine of Delphi. Later, some poets will say it took only one arrow while others will say it took a hundred, but they will all agree that Khruseie killed Python easily, as is expected of a goddess.
(She did not. She bled ichor all over where the temple would later be built, and never lost the scars from those venomous bites. Python is a fear she never really loses, but gods are not so weak as to feel petty mortal emotions such as fear, so she agrees with the account that she slayed the monstrous snake quickly and easily.)
By the time she was presented to the council, Artemis had already gained her gifts: her hunt and all the conditions therein. Rhea stands before her king-father Zeus. He does not say, welcome, daughter, as he had said to Athena. He does not say, come here, child, as he had said to Artemis.
"Phoebe suits you," he says. He gifts her a golden headband and a chariot of swans and leaves.
"Phoebe Rhea," Artemis murmurs to her quietly, afterwards, "Your name is Rhea, as Mother intended."
"Mother does not dare call me Rhea."
"Then I will."
It does catch on, interestingly. None of the older generation dare call her Rhea; always Phoebe or Khruseie or any number of epithets they can find. Her siblings? They have decided that they will call her nothing else. She blames Artemis. All of them stick to her like annoying pieces of glue, no matter what.
Rhea gains prophecy after slaying the Python, the Oracle of Delphi being her major shrine. Sometimes her hands bleed golden ichor from the strings of fate that ties them, so Artemis applies ointments and talks about being careful. Rhea Smintheia rains plague upon cities, the death toll rising and rising, and Ares tells her that maybe she should make it a little more violent next time.
When she walks mortal land and helps raise cities and civilization, instead of talking about how little the tiny mortals matter, Hephaestus walks alongside her and helps them build. When she brings destruction upon the same mortals, Persephone visits her and asks her if she wants to gossip.
And on and on it goes.
Hermes steals her cattle as a baby, and absolves himself by building her a lyre. He sticks to her side after that, and eventually, Rhea knows to expect him. Dionysus, similarly, ascends and watches the general attachment everyone has gotten, and glues himself to her side. The two of them trail her like little ducklings, according to Persephone, baby gods who have chosen they will learn godhood at Rhea's knees.
Rhea doesn't know if she's particularly good at being a goddess. The mortals pray for protection, for guidance, and sometimes she does not bother. When the satyr Marsyas insults her skill, she has him flayed alive for all the watch. When Niobe dares to speak ill of Rhea's mother, she and Artemis shoot their arrows until the queen has but two children left. Most of the time, her prophecies spell doom and death.
The fact remains that Rhea prefers harsh lines and cruelty because it is her very own armour. Athena, Artemis and Hestia have all obtained their oaths of eternal chastity, but she has no taste for it. All she knows is that sometimes, gods' eyes linger on her just a little too long, until she retaliates. They look and go no further because her heat and light is scorching, because gold of her eyes burns, and her hands are always itching with strings of prophecy tying them, digging into them, releasing steady drips of ichor, and touches of illness ready to materialise within a moment's notice. They try at revenge, like Eros' petty plot to humiliate and hurt her with Daphne – poor, sweet Daphne – but it matters not.
Phoebe Rhea, Khruseie, will never become another Demeter. And if most of Olympus is terrified of her in the process, then fine.
This is what I am, she scoffs to Ares, this is what we are. We were bred for violence. How can we not embrace cruelty?
He laughs with her before they go to spar again.
It is the same reason she never hides her eyes, even though she knows it makes the elders uncomfortable. Why should she hide her face so her mother feels some semblance of peace? Why must she soften herself for a sliver of affection from her father? This is what she is. It hurts, when Zeus always says Phoebe, and never my child or daughter. It hurts even more, when Leto flinches at the sight of Rhea, even if she tries to hide it from her children. They send her to Uncle Poseidon who trains her in prophecy, but he is only civil at best and sends her away as soon as it is done.
Python lingers. The mortals write hymns and poetry and create art of her great victory, all the while Rhea encourages them. She has the Muses compose a piece too. The snake, she thinks, will probably linger for the rest of her immortal life, the great fight that brought her in the fold of the greatest and strongest, the Olympians. Still, she cannot forget venomous bites and angry hisses despite her best tries.
Admetus is kind. She does not even remember why Father sent her here, to serve some mortal, stripped of most of her divinity. She knows her siblings are worried, that even Mother is unhappy, and that she will be a goddess once again in eight mortal years. If the circumstances were different, she might have even loved the mortal king. As it is, Admetus remains a dear friend and she does not dare make a single move that might have this punishment extended.
She regains her divinity. Another eight years pass by in the blink of an eye. Rhea refuses to be part of the plan with the golden net, but turns her head the other way as it takes place. She can only be grateful her father never finds out she knew.
Everything sails smoothly, until Paris is brought to choose between three goddesses: Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. He chooses love. So, the Trojan War begins.
The Achaeans think Khruseie the cruelest of the gods fighting against them. And why should she not be? Wilusa-Ilium-Troy, whatever they called it and whatever they will call it in the future, it is hers. This is her city, these are her people. Now, they are here with their ships and their weapons, waging a war that will only serve to hurt everyone.
Rhea knows prophecy, after all. Ilium will burn, and the Achaeans will be doomed soon after.
Troilus dies in her temple. Rhea screams and rages until Ares himself materialises to hold her back from destroying Achilles.
"That is not his fate, you know this," Ares says, "Father would not have us interfere so much."
Rhea only screams more.
Achilles kills Hector on the battlefield, and dishonours his body. Her father cannot expect her to not retaliate, to only interfere as much as gods are allowed to, can he? According to Perspehone, he apparently can.
("Was he yours?" Artemis asks her one day, many years later. They're in Renaissance Italy.
"What do you mean?" Rhea responds.
"Nobody was sure about Hector's parentage," Artemis explains, "Not that we told you. Some thought he was yours and Priam's, or yours and Hecuba's, or simply Priam and Hecuba's, blessed by you."
The topic of Hector of Troy does not make Rhea smile often, but tonight, it does. "You all are wrong and right at the same time."
Artemis realises immediately. "All three of you? Really?")
Rhea guides Paris-Alexander's arrow to kill Achilles. It does not bring her any satisfaction. Her sons are dead. They will stay dead. Her city will burn. She does not need to curse the Achaeans' journey home – they will all face hardships – but she does anyway. She does not need to have Orestes kill his mother Klytemnestra (Kassandra was mine, cursed or not, mine, my priestess, how dare you think you can touch her–), but she does anyway.
Let the minor gods whisper how cruel she was, to not save a single soul as Troy burned, and then to curse the Achaeans who burned it. Let them talk about how Khruseie never saves and only seeks vengeance. She has prophecy, and prophecy is above all a cruel mistress.
(Her siblings still know better, nosy that they are. They keep sticking to her in the aftermath of the war.)
Rhea watches Odysseus' disastrous journey home like it is the greatest form of entertainment she can get. She laughs at every misfortune. He killed Scamandrius, she thinks. His ideas led to the pact of defending Helen's marriage, more of his ideas led to the debacle with the horse. She doesn't even have to do anything to him – he does it himself, angering Uncle Poseidon in his own hubris. If she has any sliver of mercy left for him, then it is only because of Odysseus being Hermes' descendant.
She sends Asclepius to be raised by Chiron. This one will be a healer, her senses suggest, but that will not exempt him from learning how to fight, at least. She is right, of course – he becomes a healer better than even her, but when he restores the dead to life… Zeus does not like that.
Rhea understands. Bringing the dead back to life is forbidden, to do it would go against the natural order, and it cannot be tolerated. But as the lightning strikes her son, none of her siblings are able to restrain her from going and aiming her arrows at the cyclops who created the Bolt.
She should not have, she knows. It was reckless and dangerous and looking at the touches of mortality that mar her skin once more, it was always going to have consequences. It isn't regret that she feels – the burn of the pure wrath she felt as her son was struck down says otherwise, the satisfaction as she killed the makers of that damnable weapon says otherwise – but more of a sort of resignation.
Rhea would never take well to her children dying, much less being murdered in cold blood. Father would never take well to his authority being challenged in any capacity.
Even after her stint as a mortal gets over, after Asclepius is resurrected and made a god, even after talk of the whole affair has muted significantly in Olympus (Artemis and Persephone's glares might have something to do with it), Zeus does not forget. And he most certainly does not forgive: this much she knows, as she enters the throne room for a private audience and leaves for her temple with the feel of electricity all over her.
It becomes a recurring thing. Not as often as it could have been had the circumstances been different, though, she admits. After all, Rhea is still a daughter at the end of the day.
If Rhea was male, her relationship with her father might have been much more strained. Rhea with her powerful domains and cruel streak and all her strength, in a son, that would be cause for concern. In a son, it would be a threat. In a son, Zeus would fear that the cycle would continue, that she would depose him as he did his father and crown herself. But daughters are silent and obedient to their fathers and perhaps that's all the king counts on. That no daughter would dare oust him. He has shown disapproval often, but then, who hasn't? Most of her qualities have never been desirable. Still, she is safe from the worst, and that counts for something. So she is grateful.
There is scorching electricity on her skin, but she can turn up the heat on the sun chariot and fool herself into thinking something else. She is always Phoebe and never his child, never his daughter, but she is on the Council and acknowledged and among the most powerful of his descendants. Rhea cannot interact much with most of her demigod children, but Asclepius and Aristaeus meet her regularly.
By the time modernity rolls around, Rhea has long since reconciled herself with the fact that she will never really have her father (on bad days, not even her mother, not really), but she doesn't need to have him.
She has Artemis' unwavering support and the hunters that jokingly call her their 'weird aunt'. She has movie nights with Asclepius and Aristaeus, and she has game nights (mostly Monopoly) with Hermes and Dionysus, as well as any other of their siblings who want to join. She can go to Hephaestus when she gets a sudden idea and the two can get lost in their, as Aglaea calls it, 'inventing haze'. She has shopping Saturdays with Aphrodite and library Thursdays with Athena. She has Ares and Persephone who are willing to do the most idiotic things with her, including grocery shopping (and grocery cart racing) at 3 AM like they're mortal teenagers.
She is fine. She must be fine, because if she keeps thinking of the mother who is afraid and the father who is always angry and the children who keep dying, then she will get nowhere.
Apollo Jackson exists to break that bubble.