Mother Earth's Red

She glides to her favorite spot atop Olympus Mons. There she unfurls, dimension by dimension, at crater’s rim. Her miles-long filaments caress the volcano like a sentient mass of ghostly seagrass; photons coruscate beneath maroon skin. Life, her burden deep within, gnaws at its tether.

The sun dips beneath the blue horizon, stars and Earth come gently into view. In the course of a long sigh, moisture seeps from her thousand piercing eyes into a luminescent mist, sinks through floating red dust to solid ground. There, combined with the faint light of sun and star, a product of her being sparks into existence. This she quickly stomps out. Now is not the time.

A stream of neutrinos pulsates from her mouth, channeling to Earth. “Dearest sister,” she says. “I have watched you come so beautifully into your own: the landscapes, the seas, the magnificent flora and fauna. Envy of all the planets! But you suffer discord, are trod upon by your own. Oh, how it breaks my heart. How it gets me angry! And now, those who abuse you set their wild eyes upon me. Well… let them come! All of them.”

With that she gathers up her filaments and descends the volcano. Deep within, her burden breaks from its tether. There it rises, howls at the stars. Soon it will be time.

First published in JOURN-E: The Journal of Imaginative Literature in 2022.