by Zee bo Bee
An old woman walks down the street of a crowded urban street. She is dressed in rags of faded tartan and pulls a shawl around her shoulders to ward of the blistering cold of this winter's night. She is shabby and shoddy in appearence and her gait is that of one bent over with age. A few people look up from their steaming cups of coffee but dismiss her as a homless. "Not my problem," they told themselves to ward off feelings of guilt. She sits down in a dismal alleyway and curls into herself. Lying in a fetal position, she seems to be murmuring something. Again and again, the same words. But no one knows what it is.
People are buzy, they go on with their lives. Their idle chatter, over their steaming mugs. Besides, it is too cold to go outside to listen.
The stories say that the Cold Woman was the most beautiful thing human eyes had ever seen.
I walk the streets with a resigned flair as I look at the world around me and take it all in; the lights, sounds, smells...
In its own cold and clinical way, this new world is actually rather beautiful. But it is not the kind of beauty that my heart is used to. My heart lived in a time long lost. It was a time when the Forests went on forever, and when men spoke of the Earth and its Elements with reverence. It was the time of Magic.
People do not notice me as I walk pass. They do not praise my name, nor do they lower their eyes in reverence. Butw hy would they, when I am but a shadow of my former incarnations?
These days, there is only one of me, and she is bent, and crippled and small. But then again, even in times of old, mankind has never been good at seeing anything beyond their noses. Even then...
She looked like the goddess of the dawn when she entered the village that morning;
I remember a time when women did things in my name, and when men would throw great feasts and offerings to win my favour. And I usually granted it to them, for it was a time when men were responsible and we kept the world in check.
Men took from us, they took land and water. They took plants when We granted them harvests and animals when they went to hunt. But they knew and they learnt; that to take from the Earth was to return it in some other way. They learnt from our kindness but also Our wrath, for We are not without anger and we are not above retribution.
We were the keepers of the Earth and the world was all the better for it.
The sun was shining for once, and it glittered off her white skin and lit the golden hair that flowed down to her knees.
But peace is never forever. There have always been war amongst Gods, but the war that was coming was unlike nothing we were prepared for. It started with the birth of a new God, an entity fairly new to our world. We were deign to let this new God coexist in our realm but it was not made to be so.
The new God stole our followers and punished our believers and when we finally decided to fight back, we were already much too weakened. Better retreat and live off the crumbs from this new God's plate, than be stamped out by force, forever.
And so we have existed for so long, in shadow and in myth. And despite His efforts we were kept alive by the small smattering of stories and fables told in our names. No longer did we have the powers to influece the Rain or the Wind, but we were alive. And for a short time, all was peaceful, once more.
But before long a new wave of Gods swept the earth, and they were man-made and they had names. The Gods of Science and Technology and along with them, the hounds of Internet and Satellite, and they sought to wipe out our existence completely from the face of the Earth.
We fought this time and we fought early. We appealed to the new God to join us in arms. "They are still young," we reasoned, "and you are of great power! Together we can beat them before they hold sway!" But our cries fell on deaf ears. He would not listen and he would not heed.
But he is young, younger than most of us by millenia, and it is always the place of the young to feel superior to their predescesors.
Her face was magical in its beauty, her eyes black in her white face.
And now it has come down to this. I walk down that dark street and stop by an alleyway. I sit in the corner, my back against a brick wall and I am shocked at how the cold effects me so. Never was there a God who was effected by the elements...but I am no longer...
I curl myself up in a last attempt to keep warm. I pull my shroud of rags and faded tartan around my shoulders, but it does not keep out the cold. The world is changing. It is heading for a new age, one that is as different as the old as flowers are from cars.
"It is the way of things, to eventually pass from existence," I tell myself over and over again, an imaginary mantra that keeps away the cold. The world will go on without us to take care of it, but whatever chaos it entails is for men, his new God and the even newer Gods to face. But all things move on, and it is my time.
I don't know how long it will take, but I know it will be soon, and so I lay my head down on the cold snow-strewn pavement, and wait for my last breath.
Some fell to their knees to worship her.
............................................................................
An old woman walks down the street of a crowded urban street. She is dressed in rags of faded tartan and pulls a shawl around her shoulders to ward of the blistering cold of this winter's night. She is shabby and shoddy in appearence and her gait is that of one bent over with age. A few people look up from their steaming cups of coffee but dismiss her as a homless. "Not my problem," they told themselves to ward of feelings of guilt. She sits down in a dismal alleyway and curls into herself. Lying in a fetal position, she seems to be murmuring something. Again and again, the same words.It was around twelve at night when she put out a palm, stroked the earth and said "you take good care of yourself now," before she breathed her last breath. And there it happened, unknown to all the people around, bustling to get out of the cold, too absorbed with their lives to make a mark of a noteable moment in the history of the planet; the Death of a God.
PEACE OUT
