Welcome to Gaia! ::

She felt the pangs and knew that her time was fading fast. She probably only had a few days, perhaps only hours until the inevitable end. She would have to find someone fast, or the earth and the world would be in utter turmoil. She pulled her self from the earth and wrapped her long hair around her body and then willed it to turn into a covering.

In moments she was sheathed in a mossy green dress that clung to her thin willowy frame gracefully. The body was the only thing that she knew she would ultimately miss the most. It was always hard on her, to have to find new bodies of willing individuals that actually looked anywhere near her original form.

She had been another person a lifetime, no lifetimes ago. The entity that was Mother Earth had possessed each new body willingly offered in order to keep some sort of order to the chaos of weather and earth. And now it was time for her to give up this body and choose another one before the Earth came into disrepair from her absence.
She would only have several days; two or so before she had to give the body up, restore it to its original soul and time so that the individual would have the life that it left behind.

Mother Earth was tired, and knew that the body would start to quickly age the more time it took to replace the body. She always hated this aspect of the cycle. She loved the agelessness that came with her job, and had always grown desperate to replace each body once the cycle of 100 years came to an end.

She made her way out of her earthen cave and into the world above. The coldness of the wind shocked her body momentarily before her clothes adjusted to accommodate the weather. She surveyed the snow-laden terrain and the ice covered trees with a smile, at the work of winter. Winter was the one season where she was able to craft such magnificent works of ice and snow that even the gods were jealous of her talents. She threw her head back into the icy wind and started walking, taking strides that no mortal could have ever kept up with. Each stride took her about fifty feet at once. In hardly any time at all she was on the edge of the wood and looking out on a winding cement road.

Her eyes flashed with anger, the blatant misuse of the Earth made her blood almost boil. She let the anger dissipate and cleared her head as she strode up the road. Indeed many mortals did blatantly disregard what they did to the earth, but there wasn’t really anything she could do about it. She had tried at one time, in one of her former bodies, but the attempt had failed to really do much. She had brought awareness to quite a bit of the human race, and many of them had changed their practices. But it was so few that there was really not much of a change in the earth. She still hoped that the human race would change what they did, or sooner or later they would face the consequences of their actions and they wouldn’t like the outcome.

Suddenly she came to a stop and turned to look behind her. Some metal thing was speeding up the road, causing such a ruckus that she could barely hear her thoughts. She stood, eyeing the approaching metal contraption until it came to a stop in front of her. A young man’s head came out of the side of it and he glanced up at her with a wide grin on his face.

“Hey lady, want a ride?”

Still eyeing him shrewdly, she cocked her head and thought for a moment.

“No thank you. I can walk.” And with that she was off once again, this time monitoring her strides so that they matched that of a human’s. She didn’t want to give herself away before she completed her mission.

“Are you sure, the only town nearby is about a fifty miles north of here.” He spoke again from her left side.

She rolled her eyes at the impetuousness of the youth and kept on walking, choosing to ignore him.

“All right, suit yourself, lady. You try to be a gentleman and they just blow you off. God damn locals.” He muttered to himself under his breath, before he sped off the rubber tires squealing like a pig.

“Mortals, always in such a hurry. ‘tis a shame that they don’t take the time to admire the nature around them.” She commented to herself, and then she went back to her long strides.

I think that it should stay as part of the story, have you tried to expand on the idea of this guy? Will she meet him again?

Jeremy shook his head at the stuck up attitude of the lady he had just drove away from, He couldn’t believe that she would rather freeze in the weather than to allow him to give her a ride into town. And it wasn’t as if the town was anywhere nearby. He’d be surprised if she even made it before nightfall. It was going to take him about an hour or more, depending on how much higher he was going to have to go up the mountains.

He hoped the directions his girlfriend had given him were accurate; he certainly didn’t want to get lost in the mountains overnight. Who knew what was lurking around in this back world country at nighttime? He was certainly not going to chance it. He gunned his motor and sped down the road, not even noticing the sudden curve in the road until it was too late. The next moment he felt the car skid off the road and go flying through the air.

The car rolled down the side of a steep incline of a mountainside, for about ten yards before it came to a stop upside down. Jeremy feebly tried to unbuckle his seat belt so that he could escape the smoking car. But try as he might, the belt wouldn’t come loose, and it was starting to dig into his chest.

He found himself looking to the sky and praying.

“God, I know I haven’t been an acting or practicing Christian, but if you’ll help me out of this, I will rededicate myself to you.”

“There’s no need to make deals with God, she can’t hear you.” Came a voice from the driver’s door.

Jeremy turned and was astonished to see the same woman he had encountered on the road standing next to the car glaring at him reproachfully.

“How the hell did you get here so fast?” He stuttered, still shocked.

She just smiled sadly at him, and pulled the car door off of its hinges. She stared at the door for a moment and then flung it aside. Then she reached over him and ripped the seatbelt out of the buckle, and pulled him out of the car.

“You really should pay more attention to the things around you, if you had done so you wouldn’t have crashed your contraption.”

“It’s called a Ferrari.” He intoned, feeling rather indignant that she had been right.

“I don’t really care what you call it. We need to get moving, dusk is only half an hour away.”

“How are you so sure about that?”

“I know nature better than any other living creature, that’s how.”

“What are you Mother Earth or something?” He quipped.

She stopped walking and turned to stare at him with a look that nearly made him go white. Then she shrugged and began to walk again. He stared after her, his chest constricting with horror.

Could she really be Mother Earth? The thought made his head hurt.

“Wait up!” He cried, then started to run to catch up with her. "You do know I was only joking, everyone knows that Mother Earth doesn't exist as a person."

"Oh, is that so?" She asked, turning to eye him reproachfully. “I find it disheartening that people are so closed minded to the idea that the earth they live on wouldn’t have someone or something to protect it. It’s not like your kind are doing anything for it.”

“Not everyone destroys the earth….” Here his voice trailed off as he realized he had done his share with the sort of car he drove. He felt rather ashamed that while he was defending other people he was actually making her point quite well.

She watched him blankly without any sort of emotions on her features.

“Are you done arguing in favor of your fellow man?”

He nodded sheepishly and followed her as she began to walk once more. After about ten miles, of trudging through the snow she became rather impatient with his slowness and came to a stop. He stopped, breathing rather heavily thinking she had decided to give him a break, He was rather surprised by her stamina and his lack thereof. He had thought he was in good shape, but apparently he had thought wrong.

‘You’re too slow. At this rate we won’t get there until tomorrow morning.” She snapped.

“So leave me behind, I don’t need Mother Earth babysitting me.” He retorted.

“You may as well call me Airathea.” She offered coldly, not moving a muscle.

“Jeremy.” He said, offering his hand to her.

She stared at it, then grabbed it and hoisted him onto her shoulders fireman style and began to walk in long rhythmic strides, closing the distance to the village rapidly.

“Put me down!” Jeremy cried angrily, trying to get out of her grasp only to find his body frozen and unresponsive. ‘What the hell did you do to me?” He screamed, feeling horror creep over him.

“One thing you need to know, Jeremy; I may not like humans, but there is no way on earth that I am going to let one die when I can prevent it. And secondly, I merely stopped your body movements because at the rate I’m going should you cause me to stumble, we could both fall to our deaths. And don’t worry, I’m not going to drop you or let anything happen to you. I’m not as heartless as you may think.”