Sett and Sol

Chapter 1: Sol-The Cronos Chronicles

“It was said that each night Apophis hypnotized Ra and the entourage who sail with him except for the god Sett who resisted the serpent’s deadly stare and repulsed him with the thrust of a great spear.”

-Egyptian Myth

Sol knew only pain and chaos. He was surrounded by screaming bodies, some not unlike himself. A mob all around, pushing and shoving, jostling him about as if he weren’t even there, all trying to escape the grip of the Supergiant Star they were moments ago rushing past. More stars kept getting dragged into its hold, some from their Clusters some just in the wrong place at the wrong time. All of them crowded about, squishing into him from every side, suffocating and squishing him and eventually stalling his momentum, making it harder to keep his spin, without which he was as good as gone. He lamented his predicament as he couldn’t find the strength to push back to gain freedom, his magnetic field was beginning to fail as the massive object pulling him to his death slowly began to be syphoned Its way.

Sett was scared. He could feel Sol’s discomfort through their bond, his pain and confusion, and most of all his panic, and even from this distance could already see the abject dread taking over Sol’s resolve. Sol was beginning to give up hope and so too was Sett, until a plan gradually began to form within his mind, a plan that may or may not work, but it was Sol’s only hope for survival…

………………………………………………………………..

Sett and Sol were born thanks to a supernova occurring around nine billion years after Gaia’s birth, in a nebula about 25,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, in the right arm to be precise, and amongst a large number of other stellar children, almost 6,000 all told, and now all flowing along the center of the galactic plane through a Molecular Cloud, a stellar nursery of safety and security amongst their friends, family and peers. Gathering together in small groups, children would evolve Cluster’s, usually through physical proximity after birth. Anywhere from around 50 individuals all the way up to 500 depending on the area’s resources available and the commitment the stellar children gave to the Cluster. Sett and Sol occupied a Cluster with around 150 other Stellar objects. and just like all the other people around them, they competed for resources, striving for vitality, health, strength and mass, with these attributes giving stamina and strength, anything was possible. Who doesn’t want to live forever!

They were born twins and were gravitationally bound together, but not your average twins, identical twins, the same in every way, physically anyway. When it came to their personalities, well that was a whole different matter. Sol was your basic cool, calm, and collected while Sett was almost the exact opposite…passionate, emotional and impulsive. And their friendship and comradery knew no bounds, as they were as close and protective as any brothers could be. So, it was quite astonishing that it was Sol that ended up making a mess of things.

They had been playing a game, Star-Tag although the kids called it Relievio (the command given to the tagged Cap) against their neighboring Cluster. It’s sort of like Capture the Flag and Tag and Chess all combined. Each Cluster would form into their own tight circles with the ‘Cap” in the middle. The object was to tag the Cap… but as per any competition, it was none too easy to accomplish.

Each team placed themselves in a circular position, using each other’s gravitational push/pull and their own magnetic fields to maneuver. They each then began to circle around the ‘Cap’ at the center, usually one of the smaller kids as much as possible, and like chess, they can be moved into a protector’s spot momentarily as per the rules. From the Cap or the center, there are 4 concentric layers of players circling in predetermined levels of distance from the Cap and in no certain pattern.

In the most outer layer, level #4, was the Tagger. These players can only play offence and their whole goal was to ‘Tag’ the Cap, by any means necessary. Venturing outward, they would try to free the prisoners and Tag anyone on the other team, especially the Cap (the goal for winning the game). The other team could only block and impede the Tagger’s advances.

The next layer in, level #3, were the Captors, they basically hunted down the other teams Taggers to try to ‘tag’ them out of the game, after which they are sent and left in ‘jail’ until freed. The next Layer, level #2 are the Repeller’s, these players can’t be tagged for capture and their job was only to disrupt, to try and run interference for the last level before the Cap.

Now the last Layer, level #1 is the Protector’s. The Protector level has a player limit, their number depending on each Cluster’s size, a sort of handicap for differing sized competitor groups. It is given to keep the game competitive. The Protector could only interact with the ‘Cap’ at the center, so a lot of strategy was needed at their layer, for if they are tagged, they hardly ever make it back to their position, even if they are freed.

Now, if this game were to be watched by spectators, which occurs at the professional level where multi-Cluster games are played every couple hundred light years or so, they are observed from a distance by the many Stellar Beings in the nearby galactic neighborhood. The game had the appearance of, depending on the number of teams participating, several balls of filled with sparkling lights, morphing and swirling from shape to shape, (ever wonder how a Starling got its name?) as they flowed speedily along the current, keeping their separate Clusters, but also melting into one another as they each tried to infiltrate the group to Tag the Cap. And it was a wonder to see, spectacular in its quick and strategic brilliance! And to actually participate? That was beyond words; well, I suppose the kids did have one word heard quite frequently…Awesome!

Okay, now one of the attributes the boys shared happened to be a very healthy dose of competitive rivalry, not only amongst themselves but especially against everyone else in or outside of their Cluster, and to be honest they were both, in their own way and together, very formidable adversaries, which on that fine unassuming day, during a friendly game of Relievio, proved a costly attribute to have as life as they knew it would never be the same.

Sett was playing Tagger as per usual, while Sol had been allowed to play his favorite position as one of the Protector’s. He was heavily engrossed in the strategy of the position when he was unceremoniously removed from the game with a sneak attack, as three competitors blazed their way through their Cluster and one managed to get by the Repeller’s, giving Sol no choice but to sacrifice himself to a tag to save the ‘Cap’. He was successful in his bid and quite livid at the same time!

Sol hated to lose but more so, he hated being left inconsequential to the game. Forgetting himself for a moment, he angrily propelled himself toward the opponent’s jail, miscalculating his trajectory, and not considering Sett’s position, with whom he was gravitationally bound, he accidently slid past the jail and the rest of the Cluster’s, toward one of the most massive Stellar objects Sett had ever seen. Accidentally yanking a couple dozen other kids along the way with his gravity magnetic field. The Game had drifted into the wrong place and Sol made a mistake and the worst time.

And that’s how a simple game turned into the biggest fight for survival they had ever faced, and one Sett wasn’t sure they could win.

………………………………………………………………..

Sett and Sol, like other stellar beings, could as individuals control the material within their structure, displacing some gaseous elements for some heavier metal elements, and then ‘sending’ it all to one side of their body. This is how they moved about, using their own and each other’s body masses they could change direction, and along with their individual and mutual magnetic fields were able to navigate the stream they road along in the galactic plane, and by exchanging elements the two could also manipulate their ‘Center of Mass’ between themselves. As they switched up their weight a change in the size of their orbit would occur and they could even switch up who was doing the orbiting. They got so good at it that they could hurl one another almost a full light year away, usually to scavenge for certain rare materials, stuff that wouldn’t harm their structure but that would add sufficient mass and energy. Gold and Iron were favorites of theirs, Sett swore Gold was the tastiest material he had ever had and chased it down like no other.

And so, it came to be that as a last desperate attempt to save Sol, Sett began sheering his out layer, He and Sol’s Common Envelop, and flaring it outward towards Sol while simultaneously spinning himself as fast as he could, a rotation designed to back himself away from Sol but with the intent of pulling him away from danger by holding on to him with his magnetic field…and it worked! But it worked too well. Sol did manage to extract himself from the massive object that had gotten a grip on him, but because he had ingested so much of Sett’s outer layer, he became too massive and as he swung past Sett their gravitational binding and magnetic fields inexplicably snapped, hurling Sol one way and Sett the other. It happened so fast neither could react. One moment they are right next to each other and the next they could barely see each other, as Sol was flung above the galactic plane, and over the horizon, his twin (no longer identical) fell below it, each travelling about 20 light years away from their native home in the galactic plane, Sol landing somewhere above the Sett far below, never to see or hear from one another again.

And in the end, a Star rises and another Star sets.

Sunrise, Sunset.

………………………………………………………………..

Sol was devastated. Dazed and confused, lost, alone and scared, He began to look around. He had slowly come to rest in an unoccupied area (thankfully, He thought with a wimp). Right away Sol realizes his luck, he seemed to have taken up a galactic orbit in a water and oxygen rich neighborhood. He had a nice stream of both bordering separate sides of his heliosphere and an abundance of elements such as hydrogen and nitrogen to eat and he knew he could build a life here. Although without Sett he wasn’t sure what kind of life that would be…he had never been without Sett before and knew he would never stop missing him.

Finally settling into his predicament and succumbing to his misery, Sol literally exploded in his grief, scattering the remnants of Sett and His own Common Envelope, the material given to him to allow for his escape. This material would eventually evolve into Sett and Sols Progeny, the ten planetary bodies of our Solar System. First to coalesce was Jupiter with Saturn quickly on his heals. Then Neptune (Poseidon) and Uranus (Ouranos) joined the gas giants adding stability to the systems interior, while and the birth of the most distant child, Pluto.

These Gas giants had voracious appetites and continued to flow back towards their parent, Sol, in search of resources from the left-over material He ejected, but thanks to the birth of Vulcan (Hephaistos), whose massive rocky/metallic body mass kept them at bay with his overpowering magnetic field and unequalled magnetic field. He created safety and security and plenty of room for the birth of his younger siblings closer to Sol. The genesis of Planets arrayed outward from the Sun, first Mercury (Hermes), Venus (Aphrodite), Terra (Earth) and Mars (Ares), all rocky/metallic bodies and unique in their own ways, but nowhere near as massive and majestic as Vulcan.

Finally, lamenting the loss of Sett while nursing the children Sol began to see little parts of Sett in them, maybe not physically exactly, but in their actions and personality’s. Well, maybe just a little superficially as Vulcan had the same golden hue that Sett liked to have engulfing himself making Vulcan a focal point of Sol’s attention, much to Jupiter’s chagrin.

And Sett? Sol could only wonder and speculate about his brother’s journey as he reminisced about their early adventures and drifted off into slumber thinking about that one time they came upon that stream of ethanol. All that booze, now that was something neither of them could have ever expected, and neither would ever forget!

And so it is, that even to this day, we all refer to the Sun’s falling below the horizon as the ‘Setting Sun’!