The Cerulean Orb

Soft dirt trickles down her back like warm rain drops. She hasn't felt that in a long time. But now the time has come. She brings McCloud over her right shoulder and swings down in an arc, piercing the hard earth. Once again, dirt dribbles down her back, in her hair, and over her arms.

This would be easier wet. She unleashes a downpour, pounding water onto the weedy, grassy area. Down again comes the McCloud, her back, arms, and leg muscles tighten. His thick prongs sink deeper into the dirt, spattering muddy water that has yet to soak into the resistant earth. She remembers her youth. Digging this same patch of earth, her robe stripped to her waist, firm breasts, bouncing with each swing, raining tears from heaven.

She switches arms and continues to plunge McCloud into earth, wrenching up hunks of grass and weed, over and over again until the entire area is nothing but shredded clumps of dirt. Her hands and arms tingle. The power vibrates through every cell in her body. The hard rake comes next, strewing roots which desperately cling to the earth. Finally she slips her hands into the softened moist mounds and grabs the clumps, violently shaking them until they release their hold on the dirt. Earth rains down in brown ropes. Black spiders and red spiders erupt from the dirt, making their way up her arms, crawling frantically in defense of what's buried below.

The small bites are nothing to her. They would kill someone lesser, but not her. She'd forever been Gaea right hand maiden. But Apoppi seduced her. Gaea would not allow it. Would not have it and punished Terrama in an unforgivable way.

The time has come. She runs her fingers through the soft, fragrant dirt, her fingernails pack with mud until brown half-moons fill the space between nail and finger. The smell of fresh clean dirt washes over her wave after wave. Gaea, how she misses it. Her fingers scrabble through roots and rocks, enmeshed to her elbows. She works and tills, fingering the earth until the last bit of yellow light shifts into the blue of twilight. It didn't have to be this way, but now the time has come.

Finally, broken and chipped nails hit a hard surface. She wrenches the first one from its earthen grave. It glows white against the dark background. She pulls another, and another, until every piece of her son rests in a pile beside her. Her tears rain down a monsoon, mixing with the blood of her hands and arms. She cries for her dead son, Tapram, for Gaea's merciless wrath.

She uses her son's hip bone as a shovel to dig deeper. Moon's cyclopean eye droops, watching in anticipation as Sun finally leaves her patrol. He owes Gaea for his other eye and will be happy to see Apoppi rise once again. Bone cracks against the granite sarcophagus. Terrama exhausts the rest of her power breaking the unbreakable seal she enacted years before to keep her lover safe from Gaea.

As Terrama fades out of existence and Apoppi rises, they stretch across the void and reunite in a cataclysmic moment for eternity. Gaea, Moon, Sun, Stargods and demigods, matter, anti-matter, space and the space between the space, fall into their abyss, pulling every spec of totality from every corner until the black oneness is complete.

In a time without time, a milli-quark light pulses and grows between the blackness. Gaea, Terrama, Apoppi are no more, Tapram grows once more, but this time he is she, and she is he. Balance embodied as one.

Two neoteric moons crest over the newborn cerulean orb.