0 T.B., (The Beginning)

     There is nothing, and then there is everything. There is blackness, and then a blinding, brilliant white light.

     It is warm at first, and then searing; and then it just stops, the shattered remnants of the blaze seeping into my core and bringing me out of a deep slumber I did not know I was in.

     I don’t know who or what made me, or how I came to be – maybe it was science. Maybe it was an all-knowing God, who rendered me in splashes of cosmic paint on the empty canvas of his soon-to-be creation. Maybe the two things are one and the same. But despite all of my confusion, there is one thing I am absolutely sure of:

     I am the life-giver. I am mother.

*****

     Life has already begun to spring up across my surface.

     Valleys bloom in my cradled hands, green and lush; flowers splash my skin like multicolored freckles. Trees dig their roots into my flesh, burrowing for support. Creatures of all shapes, sizes, and kinds emerge from havens of trees and rock and water to stretch their legs and forage for food. Water begins to rush through my veins and birds take wing on my breath, soaring and plunging through a wreath of cloud that halos my forehead.

     Another species, one unlike the rest, has begun to inhabit my surface. They are different than the others, I can tell; they have a complexity about them that the rest of my creatures lack. Though I barely know them, they have already earned a place in my heart.

     They are my children, and I will be their mother.

*****

     I love all life, but I love my children the most. They are young and naïve and unaccustomed to the ways of the world, but they are learning.

     I will help them learn, as any good mother would.

     I take them up in the soft soil of my hands and nurture them with water from my veins. I shelter them underneath leafy canopies and veils of clouds. In return, they take care of me by pruning my vegetation and tending to my creatures.

     We make for an idyllic little family, don’t we?

*****

     My children are growing older. They have their own minds now and are beginning to take flight without me, as baby birds do once it is time for them to leave the nest. They are building civilizations of wood and stone, and dragging furrows into my soil. They grow plants there, plants that bear fruit for them to eat. They kill some of the other creatures that dwell within my nooks and crevices to eat, too.

     But seeds for fruit-bearing plants are numerous, and creatures for eating are plentiful; there are enough trees to build many more homes for my children.

     I am happy to help them.

*****

     My children are wayward. The are rebelling like their own adolescent youths. They have abandoned the shelter of my forests and streams for clusters of metal colonies that they build themselves. They are beginning to spackle my surface like a nasty rash, rough and sharp against me. They no longer tend to their gardens and plants and instead tear up strips of my skin to fill with pavement, a pathway for more metal beasts of their own device. They are taking up too much; too many trees, too many plants, too many animals, too much land.

     I am happy to give them whatever they need, but they are like a parasite now; they are taking more than I can give, and I fear that soon, I will no longer be able to keep up with their insatiable need for more.

*****

     I can’t breathe. My children are choking me with their rancid fumes; they pollute my blood with toxins. My skin blisters and cracks as the air around me steadily heats – the atmospheric blanket that has been tucked against me since my birth is slowly wearing away.  

     They have torn up my skin to make room for concrete; they have ripped out my trees by the roots for fuel for their ever-burning fires. Metal bonds stretch taut across me, constricting me until my skin turns a mottled grey. Even when I weep out of sorrow and pain, my tears fall scalding on my pocked, scarred cheeks.

     My creatures are crying out to me as they are slowly being choked by the noose that my children have become. I don’t know how to help them.

     I think I am dying. I think they are killing me.

*****

0 N.E., (New Era)

     My children are leaving me. They have made my breath poisonous; it is too weak and insubstantial to support their kind. Sunlight can no longer pierce through the thick, impenetrable barrier of smog that clogs my skies. There is nothing left of me for them to ravage.

     They are a disease, and I am the host, I just did not know it when I first saw them. They have left me half-dead; skin cracked, lips chapped, and blood tainted from their presence. I took them in thinking they were my children – really, they were just my killers.

     I watch my children as they drift away into the same black vacuum of space from whence I once came. They take one last look at the mess they made from the safety of a metal aircraft, gazing back at my broken body with cold, unfeeling eyes through a pane of glass. They are on a journey, never to return; they are looking for a new mother, one who is stronger and younger and newer than me.

     A new mother to kill.

     It is only when they fade to a small speck in the distance that I allow myself to weep – but for the first time in centuries, it is not out of sorrow, but happiness; not pain, but relief.

     Fed by my tears, the first flower for a long time pushes up from my dried soil, and perhaps, I think, this is not the end after all.

     Maybe, I think, this is just another beginning.