For a Mother
14 Dec 2024Astraeius
Oh, pleas were shouted, tears were spent,As we were from your bosom rent,
Oh, cherished mother, though we cry,
We'll not watch idly as you die,
With rage in heart, and spear in hand,
To our last breath, we will defend,
She who, once, with a lullaby,
Taught us to say, to our fears, goodbye.
I had promised myself that I would not love her, this mother whose face I had never truly seen. I had promised myself that I would look at her and feel not a whist of longing, not drop of joy. I had promised myself that I would scant recognise her, as certainly she would not recognise me.
She would remind me of a time long gone, and I would answer her that I wish to live in the present. She would sing me deeds of our great ancestors, and I would tell her of the things mine own two hands have accomplished. For every enticing word, I would have a stoic rebuke. To every appeal to my sense of duty, I would offer naught but an irreverent reply. I had thought myself untouchable. And then, I met her.
And as my eyes first fell upon her, I felt as if though I had lost myself. I will not say that my breath had left me. It had not. I was breathing deep, full, breaths. Rather, it felt as if though my lungs took in not air, but something thicker. As if though I were inhaling a spirit, and every nose-ful was making me drunker. And, as a drunk, I stared, stared until my eyes teared up and my mouth grew dry from being agape. Because there she was, and she was magical, and the mere sight of her made me love her, in spite of my promises. This mother upon whose face I had never gazed, and yet whom I knew since birth, deep in my heart.
Gaia. Tellus. Terra. Many names did our ancestors give her, many more that I cannot pronounce. Since the days of our birth as a people, we have been giving her names. Gagarin, first amongst those of us who travel the stars, called her blue. And blue she is. But so too is she pale, the white clouds that shade her twisting upon the oceans like the foaming crest of a wave. And, once you draw closer, so too is she green, and red, and brown, and golden, as those are the colours of the lands on which she gave birth to us.
Because “Mother Earth”? That is no name. That is a truth, one that no number of centuries of separation can deny. That no government, no Emperor, could ever dream of making us forget. If this system was the cradle of humanity, she is its mother. Our mother. What ungrateful children would we be, then, to let her die, we that have the arms to save her?
I know not if this battle will be the last. I cannot dream to hope that it will mark the end of this horrible war. And I am certain, in my soul, that it will not be the last we see of this enemy that has been hunting and killing since long before we first looked up to see that there were stars above our heads. But it need not be.
Let this be truly the battle for Earth. Let us fight for the souls still trapped upon it, and for the land upon which they are threading. Let us fight for life, and for that small, beautiful, planet, from which all of our lives have come. Let us fight for that blue hue of hers, that it no longer be marred by the green caustic cloud that looms above. Let us fight because it is what she deserves of us, we who have so often mistreated and too easily abandoned her.
Let us, then, fight for that mother that first taught us to fight, that taught us the struggle through which we have conquered the stars, so that she may yet be mother to many lives more.