There was a time when the Grove of Epiphany twisted around roots that cradled both knowledge and divine madness. Students came from across Amphoreus to walk among its halls and its echoing siilence. All were equal in ignorance. All, except him.

Anaxagoras. Anaxa, or Naxy if you want to piss him off.

They named him Scribe Supreme, the Divine Body of Cerces. He who housed their (ever so slightly, but you defend them with your life) dying will and carried their fragmented thoughts. When he first arrived, they gave him duties and a long, overwhelming list of matters. You stood behind the sages and as they left, you gave him his robes.

He wanted none of it.

He had experiments to run and equations to argue with. He was supposed to be a philosopher, not a glorified secretary for a Titan.

And then there was you.

A nymph of Cerces. Born of will. Where he bore them inside his marrow, you simply…spoke to them. No prayer. No ritual. No collapsing from the strain of channeling a Titaness consciousness.

You were their favorite (you always are! Just the cutest ever). You knew it. Anaxagoras knew it. The entire Grove knew it, if they weren’t too terrified to say it aloud.

“You cannot resign,” you told him once, arms full of sacred texts he was meant to deliver to the Seminar Wing but instead had been used as kindling for a combustion trial. “They say you haven’t finished your work yet.”

“I haven’t started my work yet,” he snapped, half-drenched in fountain fluid.

“They say that’s your problem,” you replied, without looking up.

Each time he tried to quit, the Grove found some reason to keep him. Another divine anomaly. Another prophecy that only he could interpret. Another statue appearing that looked suspiciously like him, weeping tar, with “LET ME LEAVE YOU STUPID SLINKY TOYS” carved into its base.

And everytime, it was always you who was the one to clean it up.

You handled the students’ complaints. You rewrote his manic (insane crazy man…) lectures into something legible. You fetched his misplaced robes from the trees from when he threw a tantrum in the lab alone, the roof from when he tried to jump over a tree to, quote unquote, “end the connection with Cerces,” and once, from a very angry goose (god knows why it’s there. Don’t ask me. I don’t know what I'm doing.)

He never thanked you. But he noticed.

“If I blow up the library by accident, will they finally fire me?” He mumble.

“No,” you’d appear behind him, face neutral. “But I might tie you to a chair.”

The truth was, he didn’t hate the Grove. He hated that he was needed by it. That Cerces’s voice, when it slithered through his thoughts, sounded too much like inevitability. And he was a philosopher. He was supposed to defy inevitability! It’s like being an artist but being told what to draw everyday! How do you express yourself through chains! Cowabummer!

But you, however. You didn’t just believe in Cerces. You understood them. You didn’t worship, you spoke. They spoke through you, with the underlying tone of softness and joy. They never tried hiding it. Favourites need to they’re beloved!

Where he smoldered, you glowed. When his mind broke into spirals, you were the one who reached through. Not for them, but for him.

And maybe that was why he never left.

Because deep down, beneath his fury, he knew he’d fall apart without you. You were the one constant in the tangle of divinity, the only voice he trusted when everything else turned to ash. You were the one who remembered him when everyone else saw only the Titaness.

But today, he was miserable.

He’d woken up too early. Couldn’t go back to sleep. Spent the entire morning whining like a feral child. Now he was on the floor of his chamber, sprawled and pathetic, one eye glaring up at you as you hovered above him, still looking infuriatingly composed.

He narrowed his eye. Growled.

“You,” he hissed, dragging out the word like a curse, “are an awfully annoying thing, nymph. Get off my back.”

He lobbed a scroll at you, which missed and hit a wall.