A god looked at shivering, half-finished humanity and decided we deserved better than the dark.
Prometheus, whose name means forethought, stole fire from the workshop of the gods and carried it down to us hidden in a fennel stalk. With it came everything fire makes possible: warmth, metal, craft, the first real distance between people and animals. Zeus had withheld it on purpose. Prometheus handed it over anyway.
For that theft he was chained to a rock at the edge of the world, an eagle sent each day to tear at his liver, which each night grew whole again. He never once apologized. He had already decided we were worth it.
Carried here as the flame itself, still burning. Printed heavy on garment dyed cotton, for everyone who has paid for giving people what they were told they could not have.
