Writing

Title: Birth of the Goddess
By: Misty Talen
Written 2006

The thunder rolled over the valley like a squad of low flying fighter jets. Rain beat against her skin like so many needles, pricking every exposed surface until it was numb. Lightning strobed and flashed blurring her vision.

Deaf, numb and blind she came into the world.

Moving with a swiftness that eluded physics she swam through the air. Trying to get out of the rain, away from the things that deafened and blinded her. She moved with a grace that would put a cat to shame. Still she felt no relief.

For hours she moved thusly, exhausting herself. Further shocking her system until she collapsed seemingly in the same valley where the rain poured, the thunder rolled, and the lightning flashed.

She slept for a time. Too tired to think, too tired to dream the nightmare that had haunted her to this place. The darkness closed on her like a skin tight suit, armoring her against the day that would surely come.


She was so used to her blindness that she extend another sense of herself. Some call it the sixth sense. Some a feeling, an intuition when all else of the bodies input fails. As dawn broke with a crawling efficiency over the land she saw forest and plains as far as the eye could see. She saw a river where when last she looked there had been none. There were animals now that had not been there before. She could see, and that sight blinded her so that she screamed into the morning air and collapsed.


Into herself she sunk, forgetting the sight, forgetting the sound of her scream, forgetting the feel of hot tears that streaked down her face. It was easier this way, more familiar. Exhausting herself again she carefully pried open her eyes to see what the world had in store for her.

The landscape remained the food and sustenance of heart, body and soul was before her. Yet locked in inaction she stayed unable to believe, unable to trust what she saw and the fear that came with it still gripped her heart.


Slowly like the largest worm moving through the wet soil below, she moved towards the river. It seemed to take days to move that distance until she stood before the waters that might cleanse her. Not the pricking stinging needles of the long night’s rain; but the swift carriage of water that could whisk her to safety, to her death. It mattered little and she fell into the water, much life falling into herself.


She let the water hold her, support her as the waves carried her away. Downstream she moved, and saw more of the land. Bright and green, flowers of purple and blue carpeted the landscape. Insects hummed happily above the water, to be eaten by the fish waiting patiently below.

The cycle of life she watched with a newborns eyes. Each was new, wondrous and frightening.

Eventually she moved out of the water, making her way to a grassy slope that the sun had baked dry. Onto it she fell, fell into herself, more comfortable this time than the last. Here there was no current but the microscopic movement of the earth miles below the surface. Here she dried herself, warmed herself from a coldness so deep that the heat hurt, and burned her. Still she remained, remained as the heat burned her anew. Something else, anything else than the long dark night.

She saw something that a rabbit chewed on and made her way on hand and knees to it. Small green leaves in trios and fours covered the landscape. Hesitantly she reached down to pluck a sprig from the ground and began to chew. The taste was new and bitter to her, yet she continued to chew as her stomach began to complain bitterly at her. Who knew how long it had been before she had anything. Had she ever eaten before in her life?

Yet the clover and the flowers sweeter than the greens assuaged her appetite.

Now full, clean, warm and whole she looked across the planes and forest. There was so much there. Would she survive it? Could she survive it? She sat for a long time, for a turning of the seasons she watched the valley grow and die, to be born again when the warm winds came. She saw animals hunt one another, make love to one another, and care for one another. She finally rose, and shook out her long red hair that had grown in the intervening seasons. Her clothes, though she didn't remember having any were long gone replaced by leaf, twin and flower.

She had seen this world come into birth the day she had come to birth. Now it was time to see how this world had faired in her observation, how waking among it she might come to see her own fairness.

Ever giving, the green mother walked her pathways, leaving bright red flowers in her wake. Now it was time.