The New Goddess

It's an undesired atmosphere where the dancing dirt graces the face as the obnoxious air threatens the very right every individual was born with, the breath of life.

It's a forsaken land where once nature was the tranquil mother that pardoned humankind as soon as planting the seed of trees with the same hands that plucked her grown child off her bleeding womb.

Broken families, lost individuals, starved health, ruined wealth, and shaken hopes adorn this place where no one deems a country.

Some name it a burial ground of living dead.

And other call it the lost Nirvana or the found abyss.

As such ill-fated mortals, the dead cold wind grew hungry and began biting their bones.

Some living bones belong to a bleeding and wailing mother, nameless with hardly any soul left.

She used to have a name but now, with no hope and no loved ones to call it shot the desire to memorize it. So, she started searching for a reason to remember her name before forgetting it forever.

The distant howl of a creature initiated her quest like a battle horn.

A STRUGGLE FOR PURPOSE.

AND FOR HOPE.

As she treads, the dead left on the ground greets her. But the living eyes her to find the taste of raw meat.

Her sapped feet kiss the land that the sky's shower has divorced.

The world has forgotten the need to satisfy their desire, but humans never deserted. Be it the hunger for food or the thirst for the body to satisfy their lust.

With hardly any humans left, no one looks for any humanity either. And some front to endeavor both in one.

A couple of lusty crook men carrying an unconscious little boy glimpsed the mother. She did not stop pedaling, but her eyes did.

They fix their gaze to the innocence being snatched away to the darkest corner of the place.

It's a boy. No, it's a child.

He is barely five years old. What will they do to him?

Should I stop them? Can I? The men are heavy. Their minds are driven with unreason.

But he is just a child. I may not be his mother, but I am a mother.

No, I am still a human. Am I?

But he is.. just a child.

A string of convictions ravaged her brain.

The suffering mother oppresses the perfectly humane greed to survive.

Without realizing herself, she finds herself holding an industrial rod watering the dead ground. But with the blood of one of them.

And the first thug hugs the floor. The second crook bearing the boy stared at her.

The crook tosses the last fragment of humanity left in him. Thus, the boy flies along with a man's solid punch to the mother's weary face.

The terrain embraces both the mother and the boy.

Grunting and washing the earth with her blood, she realizes her fate of saving the kid. She cannot witness another child succumbing to death.

She can only think of an inhumane trade that makes sense in her mother's gut.

"Take me and leave him," She pleaded to the unkind.

Ogling her shredded clothes twists his mind to show kindness as his mind conceives.

But his lewd eyes lost interest gleaming her abdomen.

Deep and violent crude stitches with blood oozing out like water out of the leaking can.

Disgusted but determined, the crook yelled at the woman, "then close the blood and open the legs."

Helpless, she has begun obeying his order until a familiar staggering growl that is often distantly heard is caught closer.

And it gets closer and closer.

The pulse-pounding glimpse of the diabolical brute hound trembles their survival. The unbearable stench forces the mother to drop her breath.

The loud and bitterly savage snarl of a predatory hound swayed the crook.

Its devilish eyes studied the ideal prey in the room. The crook's luck and lust have shivered.

The hound lunged and clamped the mass of the crook's red face. And the face got flushed with brains and blood gushing out.

The woman collected her mask and draped it on the boy's face. Scooping the boy out of danger's clutches, she escapes into the blistering sun but dared to look back over her shoulders.

The crook's face was gone, and the hound is grinding the heart. "What a weird way to find out he had a heart," she judged.

She resumed her survival with unplanned purpose and unknown direction.

They reached a ruined temple.

The sun sneaks in from the wreckage, and the chapel is filled with silence and the occasional chant of the dirt.

The gods are gone. The smashed statues and the interiors conceal them from unknown dangers lurking from outside.

The faceless, destroyed giant goddess statue is watching them.

Seated on a bench remains, she gazes at the boy in her injured but caring arms.

She is not delusional. She reminds herself that the boy is not her kid but couldn't help herself stroking the boy's black hair.

Not sure if it's her touch or his spirit, the freed boy's eyes blink awake like from a bad dream.

Yes, it all seemed like a nightmare in the summer's afternoon.

The boy's eyes perceive her soul-weary face, otherwise beautiful as one's mother would. His subtle voice squeaked, "I am Adam. I have no one. The hunger ate my family.

She acknowledged, "I am Venus. Nice to meet you, Adam." Her tearful memories of the lost child greeted the found child.

There was a mother who lost her children.

There was a boy who lost his family.

They had no one.

But now, they have someone to care for. The mother and boy have HOPE.

As the goddess's heart-shaped locket as the witness, there born a family.

A BROKEN ONE BUT BEAUTIFUL.

Holding the boy, and glancing at the heart-shaped locket the mother, ponders if the only endured divine is embodied by the heart.

And if the goddess has a new name - The LOVE.