Like a Goddess

Altrea sighed happily in the brisk air as she walked down a familiar neighborhood sidewalk. Maybe now, after 35 years of sketching and doodling, she would catch her break. After years of pursuing her passion for drawing, she managed to get an interview with a printer who wanted a new look for a T-shirt brand. The owner saw her portfolio and they had a great conversation about the company and what they wanted to inspire. Altrea’s

drawing style was unique and the woman who spoke with her gave all the signs of being impressed. She took another deep breath and smiled, shrugging in her thick coat and scarf.

The engine of a small car hummed down next to her. “Hey, Al! Need a ride?” A young man’s bright familiar face beamed up at her.

“Hey, Bunk,” Altrea greeted her neighbor who frequently attended barbecues at their house. “How the heck did you know it was me in here?” She reached up with gloved hands and pulled her fur hood closer to her face.

"Because you are the only one I have ever seen who walks like a goddess,” Bunk laughed from the window of his car. “It couldn’t be anyone else.”

Altrea shook her head and rolled her eyes. “What does that even mean - you are nuts,” she tried to say seriously. Then, before a smile bled through, she composed herself and stuck her hands in her coat pockets. “However it is you recognized me, I don’t need a ride. I’m on a walk for the sake of walking.”

“It’s just – you were walking fast, so I thought maybe...” Bunk shrugged.

“I appreciate it, but no. Just staying warm. See ya ‘roun.” Altrea did smile, then. Bunk was a good guy, if a bit poetic in his descriptions. He nodded and shot two fingers from his eyebrow in a solute, grinning, before accelerating and disappearing up the road.

Altrea began walking again, and wondered what it was about how she walked that suggested any righteousness. But she found that whenever she tried paying attention to her step, her posture, where her eyes roamed as she moved, it felt fake and forced. It all seemed weird because she was too focused on her movements. She wondered how her husband Scott would describe how she walked. Did he even notice anymore? Altrea smiled. Yes, he did. He might be a crass redneck about it, but he notices.

Her phone vibrated in her coat pocket. Pulling it out, she saw a text from her middle boy Simon who was as old as her marriage to his father. He’d finally gotten a car that summer and had been driving himself and his friends all over the neighborhood for the past six months. His text said: Don’t be mad.

“Oh shit,” Altrea muttered, and stopped walking to wait for an explanatory continuation. The text bubble on his side of the conversation was flashing the dots that meant he was typing. Belatedly, she figured she should let him know she’s reading.

“Whats up?” She texted.

Finally, his words came through: We were hanging out at the park and I was chasing Marty and he ran into an intersection. He looked first, but didn’t see the car turning left behind him and they didn’t see him and he was hit. I’m sorry.

Altrea thumbed the “call” button and her heart quickened as she waited for Simon to pick up.

“Is he badly hurt?” Her voice was already shaky. Marty was two years younger than Simon, and a track star at the high school. She could hear sirens approaching on Simon’s end in the background.

“His head is bleeding, but he’s talking, and his leg is hurt. The ambulance is here now.”

“Where are you?”

“Spring and Peninsula.”

She had Simon ask the ambulance where she should meet them, and he told her which hospital. Altrea ran the seven blocks home, grabbed her keys, and headed that way. At the hospital she saw and hugged Simon. No matter whose fault anything is, everyone’s heart was hurting. They talked the accident through again and she told him to drive straight home as soon as he felt settled enough to do so. She told the receptionist who she was, and was ushered to the room where Marty was being treated for a concussion and being prepared for surgery on a broken leg and hip. He wouldn’t be running for track that year. Depending on how he healed, he might not ever again.

She tried to not let Marty see her cry, stuck by him, and when Scott arrived afterward, they did their best to settle each other with hopeful words. He said he’d stay the night with Marty and be there when he woke up. She kissed him and went home to reassure Simon and their older brother Douglas and sister Chloe that Marty got through surgery. They were asleep when she got there, so she plopped onto the bed in emotional exhaustion.

Two hours later she was awakened by her phone. It was Scott.

“Al, there was a blood clot. He’s in surgery now.” She’d never heard this strain in his voice before. He was trying to not break on the phone. “They - they just don’t know...”

She couldn’t say anything, and just let the tears flow. It was about waiting and seeing. “I’ll be right there,” she said. She knew what she had to do.

Although time in her room stood still while her body lay on the bed, Altrea emerged and headed to the wooden, iron-bound and riveted door that appeared at the foot of the bed. She moved as though she didn’t want to wake her body, and easily unlatched and pushed the door open, letting a dim light cut into the room. She left her body and closed the door behind her as she entered her receiving room in the palace.

“Your Empyrean Grace.” Stately’s voice painted the room with the title, and the palace guards all turned to see her, as well as the appointed server and the Auspices who had gathered in the Circle of Light in the center of the room.

“Thank you, Stately,” she murmured.

At the palace, she wasn’t Altrea anymore. Here, she was known as Etherea,

Welkin Goddess of Integrity. With a deep breath, she strode nobly to her spot of discussion in front of the door. Her brown leather leggings and blue, laced-up gossamer long-vest felt as familiar as her own skin. The shirt she wore had white, loose sleeves that flowed from her arms like a mist, or like smoke, whichever was warranted by her body temperature. The light top coalesced around her torso and was contained by the encompassing vest, sometimes swirling out of the ripples of flowing movement. The silver boots she wore created a shield of protection around her that was as strong as her sense of faith and confidence at any given moment. She rarely needed that protection, however, since she hadn't left the palace since her sentencing.

When she stood still in the center of the carpeted dais, she tried to not think of Marty, and made great efforts to stay composed.

“We all know why I’m here today,” she said. Stately approached her with a goblet of flickering moonlight, filled with a creamy herbal liquid that was slightly warmer than her own body temperature. It soothed her, so she relaxed a little more and was able to focus on what needed to be done.

“We are deeply concerned for your son,” Stately spoke gently and nodded in respect. “We have been researching the castling of the situation since it happened.” He looked at the board of polished oak he held, with papers tucked into the leather strap tied around it. “I’m afraid the Auspices have divined that your son’s operation will not end happily without a sacrifice.

“As I expected,” Etherea responded. She took another sip of moonlight infusion and looked at each of the Auspices. They un-grouped and stood in a line, each ready to be addressed individually. “Auspex Molon,” she said to the youngest who was in charge of gauging the strength of the unwanted situation. “Is it this dire?”

Molon stepped forward. “I’m afraid so, your Grace. The blood clot will not be reached in time, and it will cause his brain to stop functioning. He could be alive on machines, but never in his own mind. You and your husband would have to be in charge of ending his life support.”

She nodded. “Auspex Lundice.” The second, and female, of five Auspices stepped forward as Molon stepped back into line. “What would stem from this?” She could guess, and didn’t really want to know what the impact of the death of her son would be – she would do whatever needed to be done to keep it from happening regardless.

“You may start healing, but your husband would flounder in despair. One path has him drinking constantly and you eventually lose each other and he kills two of a family in a drunk driving accident.” Lundice flipped papers on her board and kept reading. “Your other children would learn to live on but be set-back in their work and schooling due to emotional compass bearings. Simon would blame himself, and there is one path that has him falling in with the wrong people and doing drugs to alleviate the pain of guilt. Another path has him becoming famous for BMX biking due to a desire to live dangerously as his own form of atonement for initiating his brother’s death.

She flipped another page, and Etherea glimpsed sketches of the cosmos on the first one.

“Douglas works past it, and Chloe goes through therapy about the loss, though mostly having to do with her worry about how Simon is handling it. You will pour your grief into drawing for the T-shirt company, and be seen as inspirational in the emotional quality of your images.”

Etherea breathed deep and looked up at the stain-glass, domed ceiling that was just beginning to lighten in her realm’s morning. She would be with the T-shirt company. It would happen if she let it.

“Coglon,” she summoned the third Auspex. The one who sees the effect of her sacrifice on the subject when she castles the event. She looked away from the dome and met the eyes of the man who was now standing forward.

“Marty goes through therapy. His mind is intact, but the quality of his running is dubious. There are various paths dependent on his efforts and spirit.” He looked down at his own papers as though trying to figure out which possibilities to list to her. “He can chance pain and weakening of the hip and leg by eventually continuing his running, or he could pursue mentoring other runners, or quit altogether and … it looks like he might become a basketball coach or just live with you guys with a depression – there are many paths,” he reiterated as he looked up again.

“Thank you,” she nodded. “There’s really no telling, then, as I thought.” Coglon nodded and stepped back into line.

“Auspex Badien.” She looked at the elderly lady as she held out her goblet and Stately took it to put back on the servant’s tray. “Any other options?”

The white-haired woman stepped forward. “The only other way to keep the clot from hurting your son is to decide to move back to your hometown. Your terra parents would be overjoyed and then use you and your family for social excuses and to augment their feelings of importance in life. It becomes overwhelming and you and your husband divorce when he doesn’t handle them, or the small-town and winter effects well. He moves.” She looked down at her own paper – just one page. “Your son Douglas lives on his own there, but Simon follows your husband to Tennessee, Chloe marries a boy from your hometown because he got her pregnant but he’ll beat her, and Marty becomes the high school gym teacher where you graduated. You would be sending T-shirt designs through the mail and online, still working your new job.”

Etherea rolled her eyes. Trading one sacrifice for a handful of them! She wouldn’t even consider it. “Thank you, Auspex Badien.” As Badien stepped back, Etherea looked directly at Auspex Timbel. The oldest of them all, Timbel had watched her grow from a child, he saw for her father and mother in the Welkin realm, and comforted her the day she incurred her sentence of continued sacrifice.

“What do you have to tell me?” she asked with a tired smile.

“My dear,” Timbel said, stepping forward. “You will be told that someone else got the design job, but the company will have you in their database, not forgotten. You will continue to work the desk at the Inn, and you will continue to enjoy the lively and creative conversations you’ve always had with Marty. However he decides to handle these challenges, you and Scott will be there to guide and encourage him.”

Etherea smiled and approached him for the official change, her misty arms changing to smoke as her heated fear changed to a cool confidence. Her heart was calm and she was breathing easily with the choice of her sacrifice.

“Well then,” she said to Timbel, presenting herself for the final oath. She’d gone through this when Simon climbed a shelf and nearly crushed Marty by toppling an old tube tv, but she castled it by not getting the great personal assistant job. She’d come back to Welkin when Douglas was ridiculed at school and near such depression that he wrote about suicide, but she castled it by losing her only hand-written copy of a book she was proud of having written and planned on publishing. Chloe and her girlfriend on drugs, Scott and his near death with a can of propane, all avoided by her giving up what would have been dreams come true. This was her lot in her terra life, this is what was arranged, this is how she had to learn about self-sacrifice for the wellbeing of others.

Timbel drew an orb of light from inside the wide sleeve of his robe. It fit in the palm of his hand, and a focus of light wobbled off of it like a small searchlight until it found Etherea’s face. Only then did Timbel speak.

“Do you, Etherea, Welkin Goddess of Integrity, choose to castle the event of ‘Marty’s blood clot causing his death’ with the event of ‘Altrea does not get the employment of t-shirt design’?”

“So it will be.” Etherea nodded.

The light launched into the air of its own accord, as though overjoyed, and disappeared in a flash, a beacon of acceptance that flared in the large room for all to witness.

“So it will be,” said Timbel, smiling wisely. Etherea looked down from the flash of light, and thanked the old friend with a grin. Timbel put his hands on her shoulders. “Go to your son, who will be saved from his blood clot.”

“Thank you, Timbel.” She looked, then, at the other Auspices. “Thank you all. Your work in this endeavor is appreciated to a degree that is so great it cannot be measured.” Then she turned, taking a deep breath of relief, and strode stridently to the wooden door behind the round carpet of discussion. She yanked it open and disappeared through it.

Sitting up from the bed, Altrea put her face in her hands and cried. She was so relieved that Marty would be okay, she was nearly euphoric. But Scott might not know things were going to be fine yet, and she would appear strange for not acting anxious. She composed herself for acting the part of the unsure mother, then got her bag and left for the hospital. She had gotten off the phone with Scott only ten seconds before, as far as the terra world was concerned. But when she got to the hospital, she knew, from the lengthy discussion and decision-making in the Welkin, that Marty would survive, Scott would not suffer emotional strain, Simon might have some guilt but not despair, and Douglas and Chloe would continue in life untainted by this potential tragedy.

It’s worth the loss of a dream, if it means my family is okay, thought Altrea. With a deep sigh she entered the hospital and found Scott. He met her with a hug, and they awaited the inevitable announcement that the surgery was a success and Marty would be fine.

Terra life would continue as it should.