Delanos and the Constellation
by Shane Reid
Delanos didn’t often notice the comings-and-goings of mortals. He preferred to turn a blind eye to their whims and their complaints. Offerings were left out and although he indulged, he didn’t always listen to their prayers. He was a busy man, and there were many who called his name. What could he do? He was only one god, and could not answer the prayers of thousands.
He watched his brothers and sisters attempt to, as they continued their duties. They swept the sunlight from the clouds, tidied the ocean waves, weaved the fields into produce, and remained the miracle-workers for mortals so they didn’t have to lift a finger to tend to the world they lived in. Delanos hated it all. It was why, when he was created, he delighted at the thought of a night sky to himself.
He was alone up there, happily so. He didn’t have to watch the mere whims of his siblings clean up the mortal world, almost groveling to keep the humans in their blissful ignorance of what they created. To the gods, it was what they always had done: they had domains, they had labors of love, and they thrived in it.
Delanos didn’t entirely feel the same. He had a white lake to swim in that took different shapes some nights. Sometimes he liked the round perfection of a sphere. Other times, it was the teasing smile of a curve. There were nights when he couldn’t bear to even glimpse the world below, so he stole from them the ability to see by his moon’s light. Once he made his decision, he untucked the stars from their beds, his children by default, and let them dance their routines through the sky.
Some of them were intrigued by what they saw below and thought themselves clever, able to trick even the smartest of gods and mortals. Every one of those stars fell, crashing to the ground, winking out of existence before Delanos could save them. He tried—every time, he tried—and every time, he created another star in their honor.
He had favorites, of course he did. He strung them into constellations and told stories through them. He let them have a central part of his night sky, so the mortals would seek them out, trace the tales, and know that he tried to caution them against too much glory in life. They didn’t always listen but it was the meager hand Delanos offered.
Mostly, he liked his nightly domain because he was furthest away from his pitiful brother who bore heat and light upon the world. He didn’t like how his brother, Helios, enjoyed the mortal world so much that he wandered into it. Had fallen into it. Had found a mortal whose lips spoke Helios’s name like it was wine and he wanted to gorge himself. That little mortal had disappeared without a trace, and Helios had relentlessly searched for him for a long time. Delanos’s moon smile grew each day his brother gave up the sky to let the sun rest and the moon rise.
Delanos was powerful, holding the might of darkness away so mortals could rest without plunging them into a total unseeing existence. His hair, long and white, draped over the moon’s curve as he lounged on it, twirling his hand in the white pool below him. He enjoyed the stories his siblings carried from the mortals: the man on the moon. Some thought they saw his face and though they searched, he knew they never would. Perhaps it was Delanos making ripples in the water.
It was sprawled out on the curve of the moon that he felt the first shudder.
A fire burned throughout the immortal realm that connected him to all of his brethren, even if they shared different domains. It was the summoning fire that Helios’s mortal used. They all pretended to ignore the fact that he’d given Iphis, the visiting scholar, a personal call, just as they pretended to ignore Helios’s heartbreak after Iphis had been taken from the island he’d studied on. Helios had approached Delanos the week after Iphis had gone, unable to reach him, and begged Delanos to create a message in the night sky and bring Iphis home, somehow.
“What have you ever done for me, brother?” Delanos had asked.
“You would be so cruel to let him live alone out there?”
“I live alone up here,” he replied. “What is one other mortal’s suffering compared to that of a god’s? You drank from your cup of misery and sacrifice. Now leave us to do what we must while your precious mortals continue destroying our work.”
Delanos had heard sonnets where the sun and moon were fated to love from afar, never to meet, but never the story of brothers who pleaded and bargained and refused and sent away, cursing each other.
But then the fire came, burning leaves to summon a god who could not come for hours.
Delanos watched with private interest as Iphis relentlessly prayed and offered a sacrifice.
He laughed and closed his eyes when the prayers were answered. He ignored the little human.
Until the shudders resounded and began to break apart the world below as it was cloaked in Delanos’s night.
He slipped into his white lake, folded his arms on the edge of the moon, and peered down.
“Oh,” he murmured, a deep smile forming on his lips, as Iphis drank the ichor of the gods and gouged crevices deep into the earth’s foundation. “Aren’t you a surprise?”
Quietly, he enjoyed the destruction and the resounding cracks that rent the world into tiny fragments.
Thousands of Delanos’s children fell that night, enamored by the new god of ruination.
When Helios brought the sun the next morning, he cried for both the mortal he’d loved and the ruin of the earth he tried to bring joy to. For the first time, except for Delanos, a god roamed alone and sought not to bring good to the mortals but fire and ruin and chaos.
Night came again. Iphis split mountains apart with his hands, stole some of the other gods’ power as he dived into oceans to tear apart the plates beneath, and gathered storm clouds to flood the new canyons he’d made. It was awful. Delanos loved it. Two gods, uncaring for the end of the world that was starting to happen.
Helios appeased the higher gods to stop him. They offered him death for Iphis but who was a god to choose the death of another immortal? Helios retreated.
Once again, he approached Delanos.
“Brother,” Helios beseeched. “Stop him. Cloak his vision in darkness. Blanket the world from sight so he cannot see where he will ruin. Please, brother, grant me this. End his heartache.”
“Brother,” Delanos echoed. “Watch your former lover. This is not heartache. This is healing. This is chaos in the name of a god who left him alone. Now, he battles you. He seeks your attention himself. He makes rivers for you to cry in and yet you still ignore him. Does his rage disgust you so much that you won’t approach him?”
“He is chaos and I am peace,” Helios said. “How do we ever join together? He is hurt in a way I cannot fix.”
“Have you tried to?”
Helios loved joy and praise and prayers. Delanos hated being an immortal, content to dive in the inky lakes of the sky or bathing in the coolness of the moon.
After years of watching Helios’ and Iphis’ endless battle of ruin and fixing, Delanos watched one night as, beneath the sleeping sun and wakeful moon, Iphis gouged a crater in the world and swallowed another island. He wreaked havoc and it tasted like mercy, Delanos thought. So he sent a gift.
He created a supernova to get Iphis’s attention.
When the eyes of the new god of ruination sought out the moon god, Delanos’s smile grew. Moonlight spread further, more luminous, reaching more corners than he’d let it ever show.
“Show me your chaos,” he said, “And I will show you how true gods do not shy away from it.”
And they toyed like that for a long time—Iphis’ destruction; Delanos’ moonlight to show only them. Isolated gods, alone in their solitude, neither wanting anything more. Why would they? Light brought scrutiny from those who were not meant to see what had been created. This was private. A ruination that continued, just for them.
Delanos, with his long-standing hatred for the mortal realm, could never blame Iphis for wanting to destroy what hadn’t saved him when he’d begged for mercy. For wanting his former lover to have hope that each morning he let the sun hang in the sky the destruction would be lessened. It never was. Delanos, on his throne of stars, watched it happen every night, and guided Iphis through his path of revenge.
“Let out your hurt,” he whispered through the night sky, as he watched a broken heart pour out the decayed parts to make way for healing. “Don’t they deserve to see what they did to you?”
For the third time, Helios approached him. “Stop helping him.” Anger snapped through his commands. “Stop, or you will find that the moon will have no place in the sky.”
“Oh, silly threats are nothing to me, brother,” Delanos laughed. “Bring your fire and your heat. Let us battle for the skies. But remember why. You cannot love him in his entirety. You loved him for his softness and kindness. You loved him for something you asked him not to give up.”
As he spoke, he realized why he watched Iphis, night after night.
“Does he not deserve love while he breaks, too?” Delanos asked, before he banished Helios from his domain.
That night, he sent a star down to carry Iphis up to him but he refused and rose on a storm cloud, hidden until he saw Delanos’s face.
Like this, Iphis was beautiful. As a mortal, he’d been plain yet attractive, he supposed. But as an immortal, he was heart-stopping. Deep grooves ran over his face, cracking him like a statue repaired. His skin was stained and infused with the storms of the clouds he moved on. Swirls of pale grays and rain roamed beneath his skin, breaking free at Iphis’s will.
“Hide in the darkness with me,” Delanos offered. He made room on the moon for him. Iphis’s warm skin next to him made him realize how cold he was up there. The moonlight’s touch was often chilled. “I know how you began. Tell me, have you spoken a word to anyone since you became immortal?”
Iphis shook his head.
“Can you?”
He nodded.
“Talk to me,” he requested, the question light. “And tell me if you’d like to know what true worship feels like.”
Iphis turned wide eyes onto him, those eyes remaining from his mortal days. They had not changed and Delanos found himself conflicted at what soared and broke free in his soul.
“Tell me your beginning,” Iphis said, and thunder cracked through the night. “I would like to know who wants to worship me.”
Delanos grinned.
“My siblings, who lord over the planets, fought relentlessly. Absolute world-ending battles. The skies became their warzone to the point where even the su—” He paused, not wanting to mention Helios but Iphis waved him on. “Not even the sun god would come out for fear of being caught in the middle of their fights. One day, my sister destroyed my brother so wholly that the crash of them colliding created a tear in the skies. From that tear, light spilled out. Light that was as white as bones, so blinding the gods said it hurt to look at. It dripped into the abyss of the sky below my brother and sister, and got caught before it could hit Earth.
“That light was the moon, and I felt myself being created with the forming of an element that needed tending to. The moon. The night-time. My job was to prevent total darkness from swallowing the mortal realm below and guiding paths that kept my brother and sister apart while they rebuilt themselves at the furthest reaches from each other. They try hard but I was created from that, and I think that scared them.”
Delanos laughed quietly.
“I had to plan cycles of the moon to honor my brethren and allow for phases,” he kept on explaining. “But I created my children as my stars and I found that I could toy with the mortals further some nights. Other nights, I am simply uncaring to do so.”
“Your children are the stars?” Iphis asked.
“In a way.” Delanos quirked a smile at the younger god. “They tell my stories. They are my voice when I do not have one.”
Something broke in Iphis’ face as he nodded.
“I would like to have a voice,” Iphis said. “Destruction is a message but it is not a voice. Not truly.”
“Oh, Iphis,” Delanos said in that way Helios once had. “I would tell your story through the whole night sky. The moon would illuminate you. I would worship you.”
“What was your sacrifice?” Iphis asked.
“Look around you,” Delanos told him. “The night sky is mine alone. My burden to watch my children as they seek more than what I can give him and plunge below. It is isolation that I learned to love. It is being held away from others, created from anger and a fight that wasn’t mine to endure.”
They talked all night and when Helios returned the next morning with his son, Iphis turned his back and disappeared. It was the closest they had been since Iphis’ mortal days.
“Does it hurt, brother?” Delanos asked, as he tucked his children back into their beds, winking out their starry brilliance. “To know you could not give him everything he deserved but I can.”
“What can you give him?”
Delanos shook off the moonlight’s dregs while Helios began to paint the sun. “A voice. Isn’t that what he has always wanted?” As he tipped his head back to survey his brother’s sun, he gave up his ruling for the time being. “I will make Iphis a constellation of his own so that when your beloved mortals look at the stars, he will be remembered for the good he possessed, the kindness you loved, but they will know who he is now. He will be worthy before and after in my night sky, Helios.”
That night, Delanos spun a story, and called the constellation Iphis’ Incandescence, and he kept that constellation closest to the moon, so that he might remind himself of the mortal-turned-god who broke his love of solitude.
Shane Reid (he/him) is a trans man from Liverpool, UK. He loves to write about dreamy realities, escapism, and big feelings. He is a writer and poet, and when not typing away, he can be found working through his endless TBR. His words can be found in the Best Served Cold zine, Engendered Lit, and drip lit magazine.