The Asphodel Gang

It’s midday on Ogygia and the four members of the Asphodel Gang are posing for a portrait along a shoreline of the Ogygian Sea. From left to right stands mysterious Alea, mid-30s, an ethereal celestial messenger; Andros, the sole survivor of a now-destroyed planet that once was the largest world in the Herculean System; and Hermes, 67, another celestial messenger and, possibly, the avatar of Homer Willcott, uncle and legal guardian of Clea Norman, Homer Norman’s mother. Hovering overhead is blue Calypso, the 12-billion-year old leader of the Ouranians, an ancient hive entity. And, projecting skyward in the background is the Asphodel Tree, the last relic of the Asphodel Grove and the last descendant of the Ancestral Tree of Life, whose saplings the Asphodel Gang heroically salvaged from Sedna, another planet in the Herculean Sysyem, prior to its destruction in the Ouranian Wars.