The Many Names of Atlas Stella Cornelius

Firefly stood in the middle of his grandfather's office, eyeing the older Knitten with a mix of fear and curiosity. All of the stories he had ever heard about the man had been to put the fear of him into him.

"Your grandfather is a cruel man with no sense of light in him at all."

"He would be mean to you just because you are a child."

"He never smiles. He only yells."

Cornelius Eddington stared back at the small boy before him over the rims of his glasses. "So your parents just left you here, did they? Finally, decided that any sort of responsibility was beyond them, I suppose."

Firefly sniffled and nodded a little. "Daddy did not like that I wanted to go to school."

"I suppose not. That grifter is against all tradition and moral," Cornelius muttered and leaned back in his chair. "I made mistakes with your mother, I will not make those same mistakes with you. Spare the rod, spoil the child, indeed."

"I don't--"

"Quiet." Cornelius hissed. "From this moment on, you will speak when spoken to. You will reply with yes sir or no sir. Gone are the days of misbehaving, do you understand me, Thadius?"

"My name's not--"

"Do you understand me, Thadius." Cornelius's voice boomed as his horsewhip twacked down on the leather top of his desk.

The child jumped and stood stock straight. "Y-yes, sir."

His little ears were ringing. Fear trembled up his spine because he was presented with the fact that his parents were right about his grandfather being mean. Not that this was the first time he had ever been yelled at before. This wasn't the first time he had a fear of violence tremble through his entire body. However, this was different because he didn't know how to calm this sort of anger pointed at him like he could with his parents.

"If you want to live in my house, your name will be Thadius Harrison Eddington. You will answer to this. You will go to school and when you are not at school, I expect you to be studying hard to catch up with the rest of your class. I expect you to be behaved and disciplined, do you understand?" Cornelius said, standing up behind his desk.

"Y-Yes, sir," Thadius nodded his little head.

---

Days blurred into weeks that blurred into years. Thadius worked very hard at keeping his grandfather happy, but the man was difficult to please. Anything but excellence was punished. Thadius was pushed to beyond exhaustion a lot of the time but took to school like a duck to water. Learning became his escape and he threw himself into learning, even if he had times when he struggled.

His grandfather believed in strong body and strong mine was important and made the child train like he trained soldiers before when he was active in the military. Often Thadius was tired during lessons but he tried his best and made good grades to bring some pride to the old man.

When he was ten, five years almost to the day of arriving at the gates to the estate, his grandfather fell ill. He was a quiet old Knitten, coming upon his 200th year of life, but he was healthy and strong up until he wasn't anymore. Thadius would sit next to his grandfather's bed after school and tell him about what he had learned that day. The old man would quiz him over what he learned and was still fairly sharp even though he was very sick.

"I am proud of you, Thadius," Cornelius said one night over dinner. "You could have just given up completely when your parents left you here, but you pulled yourself up and turned into quite the respectable young man."

Thadius blinked and looked over at his grandfather and mulled over what was said a moment before responding. "I don't know that I would have been here very long if I had given up, General."

Cornelius shook his head. "I would have relented, I think. You were but a lamb left to take brunt of a feud you didn't start. Instead you...," The old man took a breath and sighed some. "You surprised me. All I have ever wanted was for my daughter to be happy, but I see now that she would have never been happy, no matter what I gave her. You were left here for only wanting some sort of structure in your life, thrown away as if you were a burden to be shed."

Thadius looked down at his plate. "Yes, well, I guess I should be grateful that you didn't turn me away."

Cornelius frowned and reached over, putting a worn hand on Thadius's shoulder. "I am so sorry that things turned out this way. You deserved better but it took me being sick before I could see that I was punishing you for crimes that weren't your own."

Thadius tried to smile at his grandfather, but it was forced and tired. "You just need to get better and we can both get where we can actually get to know about one another."

Cornelius nodded. "I think that would be good for healing us both."

---

Cornelius's health only got worse from that day. Five days after Thadius's 11th birthday he stood in the rain next to Debois and Miss Elisa as a priest gave a funeral sermon. His grandfather had died a few days before, having met in a closed room with his attorneys to make changes to his will just hours before he died.

Thadius was cold and numb, the voices around him muffled as he stared at the ground. What would he do now? Everything he knew for the last five years was crashing down around him. Would Debois raise him from here? Would his parents be called? He hadn't seen his parents since they left him at the gate. They hadn't written or called. He wasn't sure he even remembered what his mother's voice or face were like.

Debois put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it gently. "Come along, Master Thadius. There is no reason you should be stood out here in the rain getting sick."

"I'll make your favorite for dinner," Miss Elisa pipped up as she and the butler ushered the younger knitten back to the house.

Thadius let them lead him from the gravesite. He was just too numb to even think. He wanted to cry over the grandfather that he started to get to know over the last year, but he did not have it in him to cry. They got him into the house and sat at the long dining table.

The house was so quiet that the silence echoed. He could feel it in his bones and looked around at the empty room around him. He eleven years old and alone in the world. He had nothing and no one anymore. Would he be allowed to continue schooling? What would happen to him? Where would he go?

He laid his head on the table and watched the rain wash over the windows. His fingers clutched in his shirt and he let loose a low, soft sob. He let himself break down and cry. If Debois or Miss Elisa heard him crying, they didn't say anything to him when they brought him food. He ate alone in the big, empty room and went to bed soon after. Everything after that day would be different and the next morning he would hear his original name again.

"Oh Firefly~" his mother's voice echoed through the house in a gleeful sing-songy voice.

Dread settled into his chest and he hid from his parents as they roamed the house searching for him as Deboise demanded that they leave. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but he knew that they were arguing. He wanted to go back to when his grandfather was alive. He wanted things to be back to normal, but normal would not be normal for him for a very long time.