Nikita Gill - Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters

You were so strange and vibrant in your ink-black glory, even I, your own mother, did not know how to name you.

Your siblings, their names came easily because none resonated with the vivid silver purity and vibrant green poison of you. You were named eons after your birth because often names become manifestations, but rarely, do manifestations become their names.

So, instead, I chose to let you fly free and ink the universe with the dark shroud you were born in, your screams echoing into a cosmos that did not know how to be ready for your dark requiem, your cries a warning to prepare for what was to come from your birth.

Oh, Nyx, daughter of mine, mother to both violent death and restful sleep, gentle dreams and putrid nightmares, home to all things both terrifying and glorious, patron saint of murderers and lovers alike, I never told you how to inherit the paradox, or how to make it your birthright.

You, who wove stars into your hair as a girl and equally let them freckle your skin, held the moon up as a looking-glass and bewitched existence for eternity.

You, who turns the nightly view of man-made cities instead into the jewelled throats of queens, hiding evil inside your bosom whilst holding sacred in your womb.

You, who turns childrens sleep into fairytale lands and knows how to make your brother Hells innermost sanctum your home.

And yet, lest they forget how to honour the night, they will forever remember that it is from your ribcage they received Hemera and Aether, the miraculous day and the singular light.

Why are passions prettier in the dark?

I hear mortals ask each other.

Are demons allowed to fall in love?

Children ask their mothers.

Yes. We are. Before their very eyes.

When we sweep through their lands,

I wish they could see the tenderness

in the way the darkness takes the nights hand.