In the beginning, when Chaos yet slumbered and Nyx had not yet spread her wings, there were but two primordial powers: Chronos, endless and faceless Time, and Ananke, immutable Necessity. Theirs was not the union of husband and wife, as we know it among gods and men, for they were without passion. Their embrace was law itself, their mingling the very fabric of being. Together they brought forth an eternal, grey, and foreordained river—the sequence of all that was meant to be. This river flowed from nowhere to nowhere, and its every moment was equal to the last. In this kingdom, there was neither joy nor sorrow, only dispassionate "duration."
And then one day, in
the procession of nameless moments, in the embrace of Chronos, the soul of
Ananke stirred for the first time. She, whose nature knew naught but the
preordained, for one unthinkable moment, felt a yearning. She wished for color
to appear in this grey river, for something unforeseen to pass in this eternal
sequence. It was the first and only flicker of will in the realm of absolute
necessity.
And from this fleeting
desire, from this divine anomaly, Kairos was born.
He was the very
opposite of his father. If Chronos was old, mighty, and grey-haired, Kairos
came into the light as an ever-youthful god, swift and elusive. His feet were
gifted with wings that he might run upon the surface of his father's river,
never sinking into its viscous current. His visage was strange: from his brow
hung a thick forelock of golden hair, but the back of his head was bare and
smooth as polished stone. In his hand he held not a scepter but the edge of a
honed razor, for his touch was either a blessing or a wound, but never
indifference.
Chronos beheld his son
with a mixture of pride and terror. He saw in him a divine spark, yet he could
neither measure nor foretell him. To him, Kairos was a flaw in his perfect,
infinite equation.
When the young god
grew, he began to play in his father's kingdom. He would dart across the grey
river of Time, and where his winged feet touched the water, wonders would
occur. In one place, the river would suddenly boil—and two mortals, by a chance
glance, would fall in love for all their lives. In another place, he would
pause for an instant—and in the mind of a philosopher, a world-changing thought
would be born. He might touch the hand of a warrior—and he would perform a feat
to be sung of for ages. Or he might pass by, and the missed chance would lead
whole kingdoms to ruin.
He was neither good
nor evil. He was only Opportunity.
Chronos grew wroth.
These outbursts disturbed the measured flow of his river. He tried to seize his
son, to subject him to the common order, to force him to flow in sequence. But
whenever he reached out his heavy hand, Kairos would slip away, and the old god
would grasp only emptiness—his son's smooth, bald pate.
Their strife might
have torn creation asunder, had the Moirai not intervened, they who spin the
threads of fate. They appeared before father and son and gave their decree:
"O, Chronos, thou
art the master of all that is. Thy river shall flow for eternity, and neither God
nor mortal shall escape thy dominion. Thine is the 'how long'. Thou shalt
measure the life of each being, counting out the years, the days, and the
hours.
But thou, Kairos,
child of anomaly, shalt be forever free within thy father's domain. To thee is
granted dominion over the 'when'. Thou shalt not measure, but decide. Thy
moments shall be woven into the fabric of Chronos, as golden threads upon a
grey cloth.
And let it be so:
mortals shall be born and die in the river of Chronos. Their bodies will age,
and their lives will shorten. But their souls, O Kairos, shall live for thy
touch. Their entire life, however long it may be, shall be but a waiting for
those rare moments when thou dost pass nearby and offer them thy golden
forelock. And the greatest wisdom of mortals shall be this: to know thee when
thou approach, and not to miss thy fleeting gift."
And so, it has been
ever since. We live in the river of Chronos, and time carries us inexorably
forward. But the entire worth of our life, all its joy and all its pain, lies
in those moments of Kairos that we manage to seize by the ever-escaping lock of
hair.