Out Cold
With a sigh, Elizabeth walked back into her classroom after having escorted the children to the buses. It had been a long day. One of those that never really seemed to go right.
She frowned as she surveyed the room. One of the things that hadn't managed to go as planned, was that they had run out of time to finish cleaning up before going to the buses. There were papers on almost all the tables and some on the floor. Pencils and crayons littered the various parts of the room. As much as she wanted to go home, Elizabeth was not about to leave this mess for the custodians to clean up. They already had enough to do as it was. Sighing again, she began the task of picking up everything in the room.
Elizabeth worked methodically, going from one side of the room to the other, but despite her efforts, she missed a crayon that had been behind her. As she stood to move to the next area of the room, her foot slipped on the errant crayon. Although she tried to right herself, she fell backwards onto the floor, hitting her head and falling unconcious.
As Elizabeth was knocked out, her soul was removed from her body by the spirits who worked for the Powers that Be. Any damage done to the woman's body was repaired quickly as she was placed in a bed on Feejhu's small space cruiser, a strange silver relic around her neck.
A particular goddess that had waited, for some reason, to choose a guardian, bonded herself to Elizabeth, causing a relic to form on the strange chain so as to house the soul. Soon enough, the unconscious woman and her bonded goddess were being sent back to the world of the living, one to reinhabit her own body, and on to be housed in a temporary vessel.
Quite shortly, Elizabeth was waking up and faced with a youthful green girl - a rather pregnant green teenaged girl - with six arms and a warm, friendly face. And the girl was curled up in a warm blanket, eating a cookie and reading a book.
Elizabeth moaned slightly as she awoke, rubbing her eyes before opening them. Having expected to see her classroom, she gave a gasp when she saw her surroundings and then started again, when she realized she wasn't alone.
The....girl...didn't appear to be threatening, but Elizabeth couldn't deny that she, at first impression, seemed to have been kidnapped. Perhaps by this green girl? Although noticing her advanced state of pregnancy, that hardly seemed likely. She did not yet notice the silver chain around her neck, nor the thing hanging from it, her attention focused on looking around her and at the green young woman sitting just feet away with a book.
Well...there couldn't be any harm in asking what was going on, right? Elizabeth reasoned with herself to keep from panicking. Steeling herself to speak to the girl, the teacher cleared her throat.
"W-where am I?" she asked, her voice shaking more than she had intended.
Feejhu looked up and smiled gently. "You are on my ship right now. The spirits put you here so that I could inform you of your upcoming duties as a guardian - the mother to a reborn deity from another world. Well, not quite deity so much as powerful being but same thing to us really." the girl explained with a smile. "The necklace around your neck is currently holding the spirit but it won't be there for too long, when the kid becomes a toddler."
"Did you have any specific questions? New guardians generally do."
Elizabeth sat there in silence a moment, her mouth hanging open slightly before she found the means by which to speak again. Had she head the girl correctly? At the mention of a necklace she looked down and noticed the chain around her neck, the charm bearing a resemblance to a snowflake.
"Wait a minute...back up. Spirits? Guardian to a deity?" The woman looked slightly shell-shocked.
"Don't ask about the spirits. We don't know about them either. They're weird, work for the Powers That Be or something, and we haven't got a clue how or why they pick guardians the way they do." Feejhu said with a sigh.
"As for the guardianship, yeah, they picked you and pretty much you're going to be raising a kid."
"I...I see...And a child you say. But not just any child. A deity," Elizabeth said, mostly to herself. She stared down at the necklace as she spoke, playing with the charm between her fingers.
"I," she started, still staring downward. "I always wanted a child, but I never expected to get one in this manner. I suppose you're used to people freaking out most of the time when they get this news. It's kind of funny how it doesn't bother me so much...." she smiled akwardly.
"It looks like a snowflake. Does that have some significance, or do they all look like this?" she asked, lifting her gaze once more.
"And...do you know what things I should expect? What I should be prepared for."
"Most likely it means you'll be receiving the Winter Goddess. Or one of snow but generally the more prominent deities go first and ice was already assigned and winter has not. So yes, most likely Winter." Feejhu explained with an assured nod. "Usually the relic takes on a shape to represent the deity it contains in a way."
"Well, in a certain amount of time - no one ever really seems to know exactly how long - you'll go to sleep and have an odd dream where you go and have to see sort of what the body of the deity looked like at death - though not really gruesome or anything. They just look asleep - and when you touch the body it turns into a baby and the relic goes away. Then both of you wake up and you have a kid."
"As for powerswise and personality, I have no idea what you'll want to prepare for. Just a child in general at first. She probably won't be gaining powers for a little bit."
"She? It's a girl then..." Elizabeth smiled nervously. "Well that solves one mystery I suppose. A goddess of winter...." Still still had difficulty wrappering her mind around the whole thing. Part of her knew there were more questions she should be asking and things she should instictively be wondering, but she was too overwhelmed to be as clear-headed as she might have hoped.
"What now?"
"Well, when I send you back home but as soon as possible." the girl stated with a nod. "If you have no further questions, I can send you home."
Elizabeth chewed on her lower lip as she thought, but after a moment shook her head.
"I can't think of anymore at the moment, although I know I will be wondering things at a later time. So I guess my only question is this: What happens then? Is there anyone I will be able to go to for help if I need it?"
"Yes, certainly. We'll keep in contact with you and there's some contact information for this ship left and one of our representatives on Gaia left in your home. Now, if you'll follow me?"
Feejhu led Elizabeth to a funny thing that looked like a floating plate. She helped the woman to step onto it and instructed her to close her eyes and count to ten. When she reopened her eyes, the woman was once again at the school, the only proof of the visit being the relic and some contact information left on a nearby table.
Elizabeth gently touched the relic around her neck, still trying to decide if this was a dream. It felt real and she was back in her somewhat messy classroom, so that suggested to her, that what she had experienced was nothing but reality.
Glancing at the clock, she noticed school had only been out for 45 minutes and she certainly hadn't had this around her neck before. Experimentally, she tried to remove it - to examine it from a different angle - and found that she could not lift the chain above her head, nor was there a clasp of any kind that could be undone. Shaking her head, she glanced at the papers sitting on a table she knew she had already cleaned and noted the information provided there.
If this was a dream, it was a very convincing one. If not....well Elizabeth knew it was going to take several days before she came to terms with it, and even then, she figured it wouldn't really hit her until she actually saw the child.
A goddess.... she marveled again. Not able to concentrate on the task of tidying up the room any longer, she absent-mindedly grabbed her coat and headed out the door.
