The Attempt to Go Back

When This World was new, and while Jupiter and The Six helped to establish the survivors from the First World in it, there were those he could not settle, who sought to rebuild all they had lost.

This group, many of whom had been hedonistic Helios hangers-on, left to build a new tower. They began by trying to locate the stones of the tower that was but Mother had buried them when she lay down and became the earth.  

To the forest they turned and began to fell it, beginning the construction of a New World large enough to house the survivors as well as the Tree of Life, a small party having gone in search of it.

Jupiter often visited, seeing both hope (for a grand shelter) and doom (for it could never be what they wanted) in the project, hoping to make the builders see it as he did, as it truly was; but they would not do so.

Neither could, or would, they foresee their eventual defeat- for you cannot recapture what has passed, to go back and undo the past.  The future is the only place one can go, can seek, can plan for.

---

Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt and including the required theme of Defeat.

Construction of the Statue of Liberty’s Pedestal. CC2.0 photo by National Parks Service, Statue of Liberty ca 1875.

Myths of our Solar System (9): The Earth God

The Earth God was feeling overworked. As the usual God of the common people he was
the most regularly contacted deity and under constant pressure.

As the commonest he was forever looking up at the greater deities, those with temples and
statues, and wishing he could rest in such a place of silence and tranquility rather than on
the altars of every home in the land, right in the hubbub and chaos of life.

However the Earth God had always been a clumsy fool, unable to sell himself and had
found himself bottom of the heap.

Today he was feeling particularly stressed after another poor harvest had struck and he’d
been thrown out of many homes again. But it was no wonder things went wrong when he
had so many people to attend and so little time in which to do so. And so many complaints
and appeals to deal with as well: it was not for him the simple bliss of specialisation. No,
he was called upon for every problem under the sun. Pregnancy, good crops, wealth,
deliverance from every evil- all these things fell under his remit. No wonder things
occasionally went awry.

Well. They went awry a lot as it happened.

Oh, if only. If only he’d done better as a young one, if only he was less of a bumbler. If
only he had staff. And more sake.

Myths of our Solar System (8): Mother Earth, mother of all in This World

As The Chaos that existed in between the First World and This World whirled about her,
Mother stumbled forward across the rock. Broken by the woe she felt and seeing that her
children would have no future in this desolate place, she laid down and became the earth,
giving her body and her form so that her children might have a future.

As she transformed, Mother spread herself out as far as she could, covering whatever rock
she was able to- stretching across valleys and plains alike (even up slopes onto plateaus
where she felt able) and out from where the First World had stood all the way to rivers and
lakes and the sea, nestling around the bottom of mountains and other pieces of rock that
she could not cover.

And then Mother Earth decorated herself. This was something she had always had a
certain flair for, having designed and made most of her own clothes and furniture in the
First World and decorated her and Moon’s chambers. Designs and ideas that were copied
by the woman folk of that place.

Across This World Mother Earth made the plants grow from out of her new form. Grasses,
flowers, trees: all sorts, all colours beautifying and enlivening the brown covering she had
initially given the bare rock.

Then, after the bodies of the dead servants had been given to her, Mother Earth turned
each group of them into the first examples of each and every species that now live upon
This World.

Mother Earth then watched as the demon who had destroyed her love reappeared,
admitted what he had done and wrestled to take control as he had wanted to do in the
First World, his minions fighting as he stood back.

Later he was forced into the Underearth and Mother Earth, alongside the rock beneath
her, has kept him and his followers there as best she can. Continuously she feels the
pricks as he finds ways to try and force his way up and through to the Overearth once
more.

Myths of our Solar System (7): Mother and Moon, leaders of the First World

At the start of the First World the people all ruled together. In time, however, many grew
tired of this and two people were chosen to rule, a husband and his wife, and a council
was formed to assist and advise them, each representing different parts of the First
World’s society.

Mother and Moon were the two selected. Brought together by Mother’s twin sister, Venus,
they were seen as the great lovers of the First World and were beloved by all so that no
one sought to replace them. Although there was one man, the husband of Venus and
close friend of Moon, who had been passed over for rule because there was something
about him that people distrusted: he was not even selected for the council.

His jealousy and desire for power would cause him to force Mother and Moon apart, an
event that would destroy the First World. For what he did not know was that as their rule
went on, the pair, without knowing it, had become increasingly linked to the structure of the
First World so that its very existence became dependent on their love.

The end started when that man, who would wreak much havoc in the following years,
had begun to poison Moon’s food with a substance that made the man changeable. His
behaviour began to move in phases, the periods of which were as erratic as his moods.
One day, hour or moment, he might love Mother still but it never lasted and eventually
he would become a ball of hate or indifferent even: sometimes barely recognising her
existence, sometimes not knowing who she was. Such was the cloud that the poison
brought to his mind. This new character pained Mother deep within. Her Moon had
become someone else.

*

The arguments between Mother and Moon begun before The Betrayal and, as they
went on, the servants noticed the stones of the First World begin to move just a little, the
intensity of the movement depending on the ferocity of the argument. Although sometimes
they noticed that the arguments they overheard had no effect at all.

In the meantime Moon’s mind became more addled and he began to be unable to
distinguish between Mother and her twin sister, Venus. Now Venus had noticed this and,
having become estranged from her husband, the man seeking to separate Mother and
Moon for his own ends, and having over time become jealous of the love between Mother
and Moon, Venus saw that she could use these moods in order to destroy their love.

In order to do so she started to dress in Mother’s clothes and enter Moon’s chambers
to visit him when no one else was around so that her identity could not be pointed out.
Quickly the plan began to work and despite having to sometimes bear the brunt of Moon’s
temper, Venus also felt his love on his better days and, unlike her sister, went to bed with
him, with the hope of one day being caught.

And one day she was. Though Moon was confused at the sight of two Mothers before
him, the resulting argument with the angry one was sharp and short and shook the entire
First World, such was the depth and pain of the feeling Mother held within her bosom.
Before she left her naked husband and sister, Mother slapped Moon with such ferocity that
the poison’s hold left him and Moon saw what he had done. And that there was no going
back.

That is when Mother and Moon drew away from one another forever and tore the First
World apart, bringing it to its end.