Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia nor do I profit financially from writing this short piece.
Author's note: Inspired by my best friend, by my own heart, by the weakened yet still flickering spirit of America, and by the good people of all walks of faith everywhere.
He wears a cross around his neck. He always has since the days England and France had found him and spoke to him about God and religion.
He wears a Star of David next to the cross. He always has since the days the first Jewish settlers came to his lands and spoke of their loneliness, their desires to breathe easier in the face of an ever growing Christian population.
He carries the feathers of birds and the teeth of bears the tribes of his lands had given to him long before the appearance of the English, French, Finnish, Danish, and Spanish in his lands. Tears leak from his eyes when he feels the pain of those ancient peoples when they're attacked for doing what's right by themselves, by the land, and by all Americans.
He attends Wednesday mass and early Sunday morning mosque gatherings. He wears a bindi where his third eye would be. He casts a circle to honor and venerate Mother Earth, and he calls upon his Watchtowers to protect him and his people.
In his home, he has placed statues of Vishnu and Krishna, of Lakshmi and Durga, of the Buddha, of Zeus and the Greeks, the Celts, Isis and her consort Osiris, Thoth and the Norse. He even found a rare Anansi statue, the trickster spider god of Africa.
In the mornings, he shuffles a Tarot deck while having a book on astro-physics close by. He believes in something, he believes in nothing, he believes in everything.
He is Alfred F. Jones, the living personification of the United States of America. He is of one religion. He is of all religions. He is of no religion. He is of a land where others come to break themselves free of their roots yet to cherish them all the same. He is of a land where no single God can rule over all, the ideas and diversity of so many too great and wondrous and sacred to force upon each other.
He is the United States of America, and his embracing the world the way that he does is what truly makes him the hero.
Author's Notes: Yep. Kind of at it again here, my fellow Hetalians. For those of you wondering about the fate of Dark Intentions, I have the next intermission to write and to restart Chapter 7 just yet. Aaaand I keep misplacing my paper with which countries are assigned to which chapters. (My bad.) I really have been super busy with work and with writing the third installation to my Arc of Fantasy series, Ravensrealm, under the pen name of Elise K. Ra'sha. (For more information on my originals, please see my bio page.) Hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it! This is likely to be a series of one-shots at this point, about all of the things that I feel make the USA a great nation. It might be my own personal bias since I was born and raised here, but I've lived in different parts of the country now, and I've seen a lot of what makes my country a wonderful place, and it has nothing to do with outdated notions. Thanks again for reading!