the golden age come and passed

Apollo watched through slitted gold eyes as the beast swayed and spoke, claiming far more than any creature's due. He finally lashed his tail, once, making a noise of disgust deep in his throat. "Nonsense," was his firm, cold answer to the discourse. "You are no more a lord of the sea than a gazelle is lord of air. He may soar through it as he leaps, but however hard he tries to follow an eagle the earth drags him back once more. You, beast, may swim as much as I do, but you would drown if you sought to follow the whales to their deeps. You create rivers and change the lands? Bah. Beavers can do as much." The creature had admitted to having a limited lifespan, however long it was, and that made him as mortal as Apollo himself. No true god, no equal to the Fallen One. No, just another form of life on the same miserable wreck as the rest of them.

"Death is death," he continued. "It does not matter how your years compare to this mortal shell - they still end. They say humans lived to have more years even than yours, yet they were vulnerable to any beast with tooth or claw or hoof. And where are they now? All of them dead and gone extinct like the mammoths and the cave lions that fed on them after the dawn of my race." He fixed a cool gaze on the elephant, traced its shape with his eyes. "When will your kind go extinct, beast? Long after my brethren and I, I wager."