she wore tiny golden bells,
the coyolli, round her
ankles so that when
she would hear them
sounding as she walked
she'd remember to hold
her head up to the sky and
smile for her son..give thanks
and ask the gods for blessings
for his safe return.
her son Metzli
was off planet, in the
war zone, yes, the war zone...
she used to shudder
when she thought of how young
he'd been when he'd first left home
to join the alliance's peace keeping force.
he was only seventeen then
and some thought he was already too
old, way past the age of leaving home
to carry out his duties for the alliance.
they believed he had been given special
treatment because he was the son
of an elder priest and Huixtocihuatl's only one.
Her husband has other wives and children but
their son is the first one, and was born special...
Metzli is also a priest, but
a warrior priest, that might be hard
to understand if you are not aware
of the Mexica culture, that used to be governed
solely by a warrior cult, now, all these millennia later,
it is headed by priests who seek the peace. Metzli had
to be given the necessary training to be able to
live in the hostile areas and venerate
all life at the same time,
to be a model of the new human.
a warrior priest does not intentionally kill,
only in self defense, and only in rare cases
after all other powers have been exhausted
to try and convince or subdue an adversary.
this has rarely happened in the years since the
blue children began to come into their own and
caused the fall of the last empire, with their
psychic powers.
the people living in the outworlds are those who fled
during the worst of the crisis, of the war and destruction
that followed as the empire sought to end the world instead
of allowing it to change. some of those who left earth
are still very damaged with the greed illness,
some are sympathizers with the old empire
and would like to have that old system back again.
but above all they are
life, beings whom we want
to co-exist peacefully with
and not harm.
she was told by her sisters not
to worry but rather to
imagine her son enveloped
in golden light - in a
protective egg of gold light -
gold like her bells...
© Odilia Galván Rodríguez, 2008
