FetzenSarsanelesa
Mother of the Shifting Stone
She did not quite know when she first felt conscious, the darkness giving way to that torrential landing, digging deep into troubled soil. Her first scents were the cacophonous amalgamation of sulfur and fire and stone too hot to walk on far in the distance but all around. The first things she heard were those voices. The confused mutterings too distant to recognize and too alien and old to refuse even if she had the desire to. In her luck, they guarded her. Though it was clear through those years there was little she needed guarding from. If anything, this hostile world needed to be guarded from her.
She learned that she could harness that destructive force, direct it and steer it and she did. The home she knew where she grew up would have, clearly, been buried without her presence. It had become a bastion of survival for all; because of her. The planet could not touch it, could not harm it. Not while Sarsanelesa protected it. As a young woman, she made perhaps the most dangerous choice. She left its walls and went to face the mountain itself. And from those huddled inside, all they could see was her stoic stillness. There was no need to move a single muscle.
The rocks and the ash and the heat pressed towards her, the mountain roared defiant threats and still, she stood opposing it, unharmed by its assault. She raised a hand up into the sky, and with a clenched fist she pulled it back down and the earth receded, the heat abandoned and the mountain calmed. What had been named “the Mountain of Spears” for the decades it had been so active, thrusting spears of stone and rock and heat outward for miles, had suddenly gone silent. The people watched this, they witnessed it, they celebrated it.
In that very moment, the woman who arrived an infant and a stranger, who grew up by the kindness of those who had found her, ascended from stranger to goddess. One who commanded the earth and one who mastered the land.
No matter where she tread, the earth acquiesced to her path. She wished to walk a path, so the ground allowed her footfalls to strike solid. If the terrain ended in hostility, it bent proverbial knees as she approached. Sarsanelesa soothed all the mountains and stood between earth and all cities. Every step cooled the earth where she tread. And upwards she peered, to the smog choked sky. Ash and dust rained down in suffocating chunks.
She knelt before the form of a woman prone, half buried in the dust. And she laid a hand upon their still head. Too far gone, she thought. So she continued on. Closer to the final mountain that let its rage bellow across the land. It spewed its hot anger across all it could touch and threatened to bury everything built upon this world's ground. And she walked still. The earth beneath her feet gave her a path and the air around her cleared as she strode onward. As she walked others fled away, desperate to escape the choking fumes in vain. They were all dead, unless they weren't.
“Flee while you can!” One choked their words out. She ignored them. By now she knew of the importance of theater in this action. She made her power visible and she let the people see that they were being saved. She strode closer to theat last raging mountain and stopped when she felt its heat. “You will be silent.” She uttered. Staring up at the distant peak. Her voice boomed over the wind and the storm of earth and fire. And its fury began to wane. The tumultuous debris lessened and the roar from its roof softened until the earth it spewed, spewed no more. The lava crawling down its sides began to cool and harden. And the last mountain fell silent and still again.
The lava that had once been licking at her feet, was solid rock. It was cool to touch, safe to walk on. And the city at her back seemed to lessen their panicked apprehension. Slowly people came to investigate the sudden peace and quiet. Then when their realization began to settle in, they dropped to their knees. The savior of their world, who had ended its fiery cataclysm stood before them, taller than any mortal man or woman could possibly be, this was no human being to them This was a goddess come to save them, to preserve them, to rescue them.
Sarsanelesa flatly rejected this worship. She rejected the title of goddess but did not reject their reverence. Hero and savior, but goddess no. She touched her hand to the shoulder of a woman at her feet, and bid her rise.
“Why do you kneel?” Sarsanelesa asked.
The woman looked up. “I am, but a woman.” She said. “We are not even equal among our own mortal men. How could I rightfully stand on my own two feet before you, revered one?”
Sarsanelesa exhaled curtly. The earth rumbled as if to mimic her anger. “Take me to those men who demand your servitude and your kneeling.” She said. “Take me to them so that they may weep on their knees.” The woman looked at her, fearufl and confused, but not for herself, for Sarsanelesa. “And what is your name?” Sarsanelesa asked.
“I am Anita,” came the reply.
“Introduce yourself as Anita,” Sarsanelesa said. “And do not do so, with your head held low. Now come.” And Anita led Sarsanelesa into the city, their boldness, and their posture made others join their walk. Sarsanelesa stopped. She saw a woman huddled and afraid, halfway hiding.
“You need not fear these streets anymore.” Sarsanelesa said to her. She looked up.
“I do,” She said. “I do not belong with you, by the decree of the men up there,” She pointed to the high palace.
Sarsanelesa’s eyes flashed viciously. “Were you, denied?” She asked.
And the frightened woman slowly nodded.
“And this, will be my second decree.” She said. “The innate features of your birth matter little. Your womanhood will not be denied to you again, under the pane of their death.” Sarsanelesa looked up at the high palace, and held her hand out to the frightened woman.
“What is your name?” She asked.
“Solarienne,” She said, “No last name, my last name is as dead as my old first.”
“Then walk with me Solarienne,” Sarsanelesa said, extending her hand out. “Witness women, all women, rise above this world’s power mongers.” Sarsanelesa said. Solarienne smiled finally and she walked with Sarsanelesa, proudly for the first time in her life. And Sarsanelesa walked with the women of the capital, to the High Palace, and they all witnessed her, end the power that oppressed them since before the cataclysm of Ealos Vershaa.