This Earth (Short Story)

     To this day I still remember with precise detail the day I met someone I shall never ever forget. I was walking down the street on my way to a restaurant when suddenly a woman appeared out of nowhere. I don’t know where she came from she just stepped out in front of me. I just said excuse me and tried to step around her but she grabbed my arm as I passed her, yanking me back and into a nearby alley. Of course I did my best to fight her, but her grip was like iron. I hadn’t really gotten a good look at her before but I finally noticed how odd she looked. Her age was unplaceable. Her features all contrasted sharply with each other and yet somehow worked together to create the strangest looking woman I had ever seen. Her skin was golden like the sun, with barely detectable wrinkles feathering out around her forest green eyes. But the strangest thing yet was her hair; it seemed to be made of hundreds of bird feathers, black and glossy. She finally spoke with a voice that was wild and ferocious, yet at the same time filled with kindness and safety,

    “Do you know who I am?” she asks. When I try to speak my voice is small with fear and confusion.

    “N-n-no I-I don’t.”

She opens her mouth to speak once again and I braced myself for her voice, 

    “I am mother earth.”

I stand frozen for a second and then I laugh. I laugh so hard tears come to my eyes,                           “you’re kidding right?” I say between guffaws, “I mean, you actually expect me to believe you are some mystical being that is the spirit of this earth? I mean I know I’m gullible but really do I look that stupid?!” When I finally stop giggling I saw that her green eyes had turned a sickly grayish color, the color of the sea under a storming sky.

     “You humans have lost all faith and belief in me. I am the one that makes a new seed sprout into a strong tree, I am the lion chasing down a lamb, and I am a mother cradling her baby close. I am the one who keeps your soil fertile and I make the droughts as well. I come and breath life into innocent babies growing in their mother’s womb and I can take that away just as easily, and yet you humans scorn me; you mock the very idea of my existence. You take and take from my endless offerings of food, shelter, love, and you give nothing back! You leave nothing but ingratitude and destruction behind!” her voice is a terrible howl of wind and wolves by the time she finishes speaking. I can hear the truth ring clear in her words and sit on the dirty ground, stunned.

    “W-why are you here?” I ask in a small voice. Her expression softened as she saw I believed her and was rightfully awed.

    “I am here because you humans are using up my gifts, you are taking without thinking of the consequences like fat, greedy little children and you are slowly but surely destroying this planet, destroying me.” As she spoke her voice slowly changed from fierce and disturbing to despairingly sorrowful, filled with the anguish of every lost soul ever to grieve. I can feel her words bend around me and whisper their truth inside my head.

    “But why me? Why are you telling all this to me?” I ask. She sees me wince, as she is about to speak again but this time her voice comes out as that if a normal woman, soft and clear.

     “It is not just you that I come to, there are many, similar to you, to whom I have chosen to show myself. So I donned the closest thing I could to a human form so that you could all better understand me. I have come to all of you because I need to remind the people who can still see, the people who’s minds are still clear enough to believe, that I am still, and always will be here. I am here to spread the message that if you do not change the way you are all treating this planet I can and will take it away from you.”

     And with that she vanished. I sat; dumbfounded in the alley thinking over everything that had just happened to me. After some amount of time I got up and walked away. My only though was, what now?