SEARCHING FOR A MOTHER

The ground rumbled and shook. Again and again, fire spread across the earth, burning it and scarring it. The bombs amounted to twelve, and in the year 2005, brought about a nuclear winter. Mother Earth was closer to dying than she had been in many millions of years. The very species which she herself had given birth to were beating her to death. She wept because she could no longer stave off the destruction which would surely come. Human beings would either kill her, or kill off themselves, but either way, the human race would be destroyed.

Hexate, mother of all things, walked over the Earth. She was the Earth, and the Earth was her. Essentially, she walked over herself. Wherever she walked, sprouted green, live things, wihch would be destroyed seconds later by the people who walked behind.

Hexate had been careless in human creation. She had spent millions upon millions of years creating life on the planet which she was. Even by her standards, it was an incredibly long time.

Disaster had struck. A rock had flown from the sky, and everything was gone. She nurtured everything back to the way it was before, starting over from the beginning. And after forever, she had created a dominant species, the dinosaurs, as they would later be called. To Hexate, they were her children.

And they also, were destroyed by a meteor. Although the dinosaurs would have gone extinct in a few million years, Hexate was devastated. How could she start over again, when all of her work would amount to nothing? But Hexate had no other duty. A few small mammals had survived the catastrophy.

This time, she was willing to experiment. Mammals were not the ideal dominant race; they were small and weak. They didn't survive well in hot climates, and they didn't survive well in cold. They turned on each other, but so had the dinosaurs. Mammals had one thing that intrigued Hexate. They had an overwhelming desire to survive and grow. She was not worried about adaptations in mammals. This would be the last attempt she made at creating anything dominant.

Centuries later, as the mammal grew larger and more powerful, very slowly and unnoticeably, Hexate decided that her dominant species would have large brains, and eventually, they would proctect their mother from any other bombardment from things that left deep scars which could never be healed, and darkened her skies.

And so, the human race was born, and eventually, they advanced. Hexate watched in disbelief as the human beings went from being a dream species, to being bringers of destruction wherever they went.

With a great sense of doom, she realized that she had forced them to evolve too fast, and the fundamentals that were inborn in every living thing had been forgotten. As humans had raced to advance, everything that wasn't nessecary for growth stopped existing. The mutated genes passed on, and ceased to be active in most human beings.

When the genes had mutated, the ability to see nature disapeared. Man and his wife were the centers of the universe. If things did not bend to their will, they would be destroyed.

She worried she had done the wrong thing, as hundreds of animals and plants reached extinction, and she had to take the last few animals to her home, hidden from any human eye. They could no longer percieve their mother, and compassion was lost. The few that did possess the genes to see truely, were at first ignored, then killed, then treated as if they were stupid.

Humans found it easy to kill each other without thought, and Hexate realized that they would all die. And she couldn't do anything about it. Despite herself, she found her heart turning away from humanity. They were her beloved children, but she couldn't like them anymore. They had forgotten all about her.

Pollution filled the air and the ocean and burnt holes in her skies, and killed so many animals and plants. With each breath, the atmosphere tasted worse. Icebergs melted, and the ocean began to rise slowly.

Hexate knew without a doubt that at the rate humans were going they had less than a century left to live.

However, Hexate had also created other worlds throughout her many years. Split off from the original world, each was slightly different. But she was all of the worlds, and she could feel them tearing apart. Only three lacked human life, and those gave her peace. She could sit for years and watch their peaceful progress. What was the point of life if other life would only take it away?

When the bombs dropped, they dropped in three worlds, and Hexate screamed in agony. The blows hurt worse than a hundred asteroids would. Her children were trying to kill each other, and didn't care if she got in the way. She pounded fists into the earth and earthquakes shook the ground. She cried, and floods washed away cities. But she wasn't a destroyer. She was the gentle one. A goddess if they existed. Myths were written about her. And she would not help humans in their quest to commit suicide.

When her tantrum was over, she took on a human form. Woman, because most of the myths written about her spoke of Hexate as a female. She was a young adult, so as to be taken more seriously than a child. When her feet were on the ground, she took a deep breath, and could hardly smell the awful spells of global warming and pollution. Her dress was made of silk, and was a green color which no dye could copy, and it shifted with the light. Her tree trunk brown sandals matched her long flowing hair, and the dress matched her eyes.

She was beautiful, but fierce. Young, but old beyond ages. She hadn't taken on a human form for years.

It was interferring, and she had promised herself not to meddle, but she was going to figure out how to save the Earth, and in doing so, herself. If she was lucky, this world would still have people alive when she was finished. There were two others, and although she could be everywhere at once, she could not do anything when she was in more than one place.

The sanctuary she resided at was where she appeared as a human. Silently and unnotibeably, as if she has always been there. She was as permanent as the windows, and when she was gone, no one would notice.

For as long as humans had been around, there had been several females taking care of the animals and plants, which amounted to more and more each day, as they reproduced. When the females were young, they would be taken to the sanctuary from orphanages or sacrificial ceremonys, or from awful lives. They were always free to leave, but Hexate had chosen well, and none ever had a desire to leave. The girls came from all over the world, but they understood one another, and although they had arguments, they were peaceable, and had the instints which made them nonviolent.

As a security measure, Hexate had put into them a defense mechanism that would force them to defeat anyone who managed to find the sanctuary and intended to hurt the life inside.

Seven years ago, when the last group of women had grown old, and died, Hexate had carefully chosen twenty girls to take over the jobs. She was in a large room, where wild animals could come in when it rained. A saber-toothed-tiger rubbed against her side, as she looked around.

The animals were not raised in normal circumstances, but at this rate, they would never really be released back into the wild, and did not need the same caution.

The girls would be in their living quarters this time of night. Hexate walked through the house filled with frogs and lizards and exotic plants and spiders, which the girls did not particularly favor. The animals knew who she was, and loved her immediatly. Oh how had humans gone so wrong?

When the girls saw her, they gasped, and bowed, and some began to cry. "Mother!" they cried. "Lady Hexate! Gaia! Protector of all that is cherisable in this universe!"

Lady Hexate smiled benevolently, with a bit of guilt, since she had never visted her daughters since she had put them here. The guilt was a human sensation, and was rather interesting. Guilt must have disapeared, for how could one live with the knowledge that they had stolen the life of another?

After a few seconds, one of the girls stood, trembling, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Oh, Mother! We never thought we'd ever see you again! Have you come to bring more animals?"

Hexate was not at all used to speaking, especially in the English that girl used. "No," she replied after a few moments. "Not animals. Not yet, although many species may be going extinct as I speak. I presume that you have seen the bombs?" She gestured at the television set the girls had been clustered about. She had no idea where it had come from, and she didn't care. They were free to leave, but if they had told anyone about the sanctuary, they wouldn't have been able to return.

"Yeah," one girl said, staring at the set. "We can see every thing they're doing to the earth. We saw the bombs drop, and saw how many people they killed. You're too late, Lady Mother. Humans can't be changed."

Hexate stared at the girl, who hadn't looked at her. Another girl moved closer to the one who had spoken, as if Hexate was going to strike her down on the spot. Instead, she laughed. "You all seem to expect that I can wiggle my nose, and the world will be cured. It is much more complicated than that. This world is the cross point of all the worlds. All of the worlds overlap and layer, but the closer you get to here, the thinner the layer gets. I can only be in one world helping, but first I must search through all of the worlds and find an heir for my powers, should I die, since I am now human, and have your flimsy bodies. A breeze could blow and all of the human race would be floating around in orbit."

The girls seemed suprised that a goddess could joke. "You won't die, Mother. You can't. You are everything. If you die, there is nothing!"

"Ah... But Alys, what is nothing? Are you able to describe it? It must be something. When you die, you become something. But a pessimist could just as easily say one becomes nothing because the soul no longer exists. What was the soul will, in another state, and it will join what is." None of the girls, who were all in their teenage years seemed to understand at all. "What I mean is, if I find an heir, the heir will become Mother Nature in the event of my demise."

Alys tilted her head in Hexate's direction. "You mean... You want to go out into the world?" She shook back her rings of black hair. "Maybe first you should see how humans really are. They've changed in the last few centuries."

The maidens were not human when humans did something wrong, but they were when something good happened. It was amusing in a disturbing way.

"I know how humans are-- in every world. I am now a human. Haven't I the instincts which every person has?"

One girl, who reclined on a sofa, with a black parrot perched in her thick black hair, opened her eyes, which were a stunning shade of blue, and said. "You're without a daemon. How will you pass?"

Hexate felt self-pity, which she had never felt before, and the feeling was as awful as an eyelash in an eye. The only difference was that an eyelash could be removed. She was without a daemon, which would be a problem if she had wanted to go into that world, which she really had no intention of doing at the moment. And she wasn't a human. The girl, whose name she couldn't recall, was right. Hexate had no daemon, which wasn't a problem, but her perception of how everything was had changed dramatically, and she had no guide and no way to find the world she was going to save.

"It is complicated," replied Hexate, simply. She turned away and began to walk slowly out of the room, her human mind aching with the need to understand how the world was going to be destroyed, while she had created so many other worlds. And how exactly had she done that? Oh! It was so simple, and yet, everything she had known for so unimaginably long, was undiscernable. The information was still there. The meanings of everything flew through her head, but she couldn't catch anything. It was like trying to remember a dream, and ten times more exhausting.

She needed to rest, which she had never done before, because she had been so busy doing almost nothing. "I am going to sleep," Hexate announced to her children. "I will find somewhere. No need to show me." She knew about sleeping. She had watched human civilization evolve.

"Mother?" one girl asked, following her into the hallway. "How long are you going to stay here? I have so many questions. And none of us really know much about our worlds. There are no guys here either. Besides the animals, we have nothing to occupy our time with. We sit in there and do nothing."

Hexate's mind reeled as she contemplated the concept of nothing for a few seconds. Her head began to hurt worse, and she shook her head. "Oh. What about embroidary? Or knitting?"

The girl raised her eyebrows incredulously. "Dude! We aren't old ladies!"

The children had become so much ruder over the past century! "Well... what do you want? I--Can we talk about it tomorrow?" She didn't mean to be inconsiderate, but the combination of her confusion, and all the pains of all the worlds converging there were awful. Maybe her mind would clear up by the morning.

She walked up a flight of stairs, as house cats circled around her ankles. They followed her into a bedroom, which was reserved only for her use whenever she visited. "Sleep now my children," whispered Hexate, kissing each upon the head, as they curled up or stretched out around her a few minutes after changing into a sleeping robe. Now, in most worlds, it was indecent to walk around naked, which was what she would have done.

Her last thought before falling asleep was that she need to find an heir quickly, but first she had to find a guide.

For awhile, the twenty girls talked about Hexate, and wondered what was going to happen. They didn't know half the story of what had happened to their worlds, but they knew what was going on, and even as young as they were, they knew that it was bad.

"Do you think she will solve everything?"

"Of course! She's like, a Goddess!"

"I dunno. It has become worse now."

"Yeah! She waited so long."

They soon began to sneak up to the room and peek inside at the sleeping woman.

Two girls hung back in the living room. Their names were Tianna and Nas, and they were best friends. They came from the same world, which was the world that Hexate was trying to fix.

Nas was the girl who had followed Hexate. She was a skinny girl of average height with long dark brown hair and brown eyes. Standing with all of the other girls, she didn't look different, but a vibe around her attracted attention. In the group of girls, she was the loudest, most outspoken. Yet unless she was involved, she would be the one settling all of the disputes.

Tianna looked at Nas. "I wonder if we will even be able to talk to her," she remarked, pushing her long blond hair back. "She seems to be in such a hurry." Tianna was probably the most beautiful of the girls. She looked liked a model, and was tall and thin, with big green eyes. But the thing that made Tianna so much nicer than anyone else was the fact that she didn't seem to notice how she looked. Or if she did, it didn't matter to her. If she was normal, living inher native home, by looks, she would have been a model, by talent, a comedian, or by personality, she could have changed the world.

Nas shook her head.

"You're thinking."

The brunette giggled. "No, I'm planning."

"Ah ha, " Tianna said. "I knew it."

"I talked to Mother. She'll talk to me again."

When Nas said the word mother, she thought of her biological mother. Mariah Belagotso Norie had been a beautiful woman with long brown hair that fell over her face when she hugged her. They were rich, but her father was abusive, and had beat Mariah and Nas badly before. On one family cruise, Nas remembered her father holding her above his head, and spinning around, and she raised her arms up, laughing, because it was the first time she felt loved by her father. She remembered waving at her mother and older brother, who were disapearing into the interior of the ship. And when no one was left outside, her father began to talk to her. He asked her questions about what she wanted to do when she grew up, and what her favorite animal was, and she was confused. A few minutes later, he lifted her onto the guardrail, and told her that if she wanted lunch, she had to walk across it. When she clung to him, he shoved her over the rail, and pried her hands loose from his shirt. She had fallen, slamming into the water, and all she could see was the pure hate in his eyes. She was nine years old.

Sometimes at night, although she would never ever admit it to anyone, she remembered her life as a young child, and cried.

I'll update soon. Please review.