A Goddess' Eyes

A green sea of soybean leaves tosses in a gust of summer storm wind. A father creaks in his favorite rocker on the porch of his hand-me-down farmhouse.

His wife is in the kitchen, under bulb light, between floral linen curtains, rinsing frothy bubbles from a dinner plate.

And his daughter, a little barefoot thing in torn jeans and a tank top, adds a rock to her collection along the top of the porch banister.

Thunder rumbles beyond the soybean sea and the dirt road that stretches towards town. Rain begins to sprinkle the ground, spotting the porch's dusty wooden floorboards.

"Pap, where does rain come from?" his daughter asks, her soybean green gaze fixated on the heavy, slate clouds creeping towards her.

"A goddess' eyes," the father replies.

His daughter jerks her stare from the sky, eyebrows raised at her father in wonder.

"No way. How'd she get so high up there?" she says as she climbs into his lap, his pants still hosting the day's sweat and grease.

"Well, she rides the wind, you see," the father explains. "Long time ago, she let it take her. It picked her up. Now, she goes where it goes."

"Oh," his daughter gasps. She's waiting for more. The father smiles, then goes on.

"You see, she didn't want to be down here anymore. Everything she loved was gone. See, she has this special friend. They used to do everything together. They could talk all day, and all night. They spent days dancing through these very fields.

"They fell in love. She was his most precious treasure, and he was the source of all her joy.

"She has long red hair, and blue eyes. She wears a white dress that flutters like wildflowers in the breeze and billows like clouds in the sky.

"And her friend, well... He's stronger than your Pap. He could lift this whole field with a pinky finger. He could pick you up and toss you so high you'd get stuck on a star!"

His daughter giggles, her little tongue poking through her gap tooth with giddy embarrassment.

"Well, it so happened that, one day, his mother got sick. Really sick. And he loved his mother. She was a goddess, too. She ruled the air. He wanted to do anything he could to save her. So, he kissed his sweetheart goodbye and set off, out into the universe, searching for a cure.

"He looked everywhere. He spent months turning every corner of the galaxy upside down, but he didn't find one drop of magical potion, one petal from a legendary flower or one shard of a unicorn's horn that could save her.

"With empty hands, he decided to return home. He missed his sweetheart. And he thought the least he could do was spend his mother's last days at her bedside.

"But when he got here, his path was blocked. His mother had already died. And when her last breath left her soul, it had coursed over the globe, fortifying its edges, creating a dense, protective barrier between her home and breathless space.

"And her son, he was stuck out there, on the other side of his mother's last breath. And his sweetheart... Well, he couldn't reach her. He tries. He tries to come back. He wants to hold her, to dance with her, to caress her red hair and get lost in her blue eyes.

"But he can't. He claws at the sky from the other side. He rips bright scars in the clouds. And he pounds on the atmosphere like a door, but he can't bust it down.

"Up there in the sky, riding the wind? That's the closest his sweetheart can ever get to him. And it makes her sad, to be so close but so far. And she cries."

His daughter ponders for a moment, her bottom lip a split second of a pout.

"I'm sorry that she's sad," she says.

"Well, she's not always sad," the father counters. "Sometimes, she cries when she's happy, too. And when she looks down here and she sees you dancing where they used to dance, that makes her happy."

His daughter perks up, a slip of a smile growing wider.

"Do you think she likes my rocks?" she asks, eyes sparkling.

"I bet she does," the father answers.

His daughter giggles, jumps off his lap and skips down the porch steps. Her bare feet splish-splash in shallow puddles as she rushes to collect pebbles. She fills her hands and raises her innocent findings to the clouds. She spins, powered by laughter, rain kissing her cheeks.

The father smiles as thunder pounds at the sky's door and his fields soak in tears.

"I bet she does."

-

This story was written in response to the Mythmaker Challenge issued by Vocal: "Write a myth to explain the fabled origin story of why something exists."