Dreamers (dreamersunited) wrote in emmys_writings, @ 2008-01-23 00:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | character creation, originalfic |
Create A Prophet
Betony collapsed on her bed, it had been a long day. It was also an awful day, as was every single day since a few years ago. She sighed, looking at the poster, the ever-present reminder of her mission.
It all started in eighth grade. Betony had a teacher who was extremely enthusiastic about nature. Her teacher promoted all sorts of environmental safety. They had contests during weeks. The people who recycled the most might get a prize one week. The next week might be the person who conserved the most water at home. Their largest project was the fundraiser for the Save the Rainforest environmental group. The class had a bake sale and raised enough money to adopt two acres of rainforest land along the Central American coast. Then over the summer, Betony had joined an ecology summer camp that went around to different areas and talked about different environmental issues surrounding each ecosystem they visited. Betony then joined a group of friends who decided to have a tree-planting program to add more trees to the public park.
Betony sighed, looking at her poster. She stared at it intently. It had always called to her. It was a picture of a scarlet-clad queen. The queen was awaking from a nightmare in her tower room; she was screaming as she awoke. You could see the early dawn light shining into the window and two robins calling on the tree outside. Her nightmare was scattered above the canopy of her bed. There was a desolate landscape, dying humans and dying animals and dead trees. Animals ate each other. Humans ate the animals. Humans then ate each other just to survive. Then the end scene, all the other forms of life that remained were dying at the foot of a great tree, the World Tree. This tree was the source of their life.
Betony frowned a little, "If I were to be blunt, I would say I am the Scarlet Queen. I cry and scream and no one will hear me. Not until they, too, are in my dream. Just like Belladonna said in the story she read to me about the Scarlet Queen by Laurie Cabot. No one ever listens to me anymore. Ever since I spoke my views about how I don't like the president and how I want to protect nature. It is all ignored, overlooked. I am failing. But, like the scarlet queen, I am called to do this until someone does hear me. I really hope that will be someday soon, but it’s unlikely. Very unlikely."
Betony was not happy as she thought about the school day. It had begun as any other day. She arrived an hour before first bell and did whatever was left of her unfinished homework, which was not much. She always saved the quickest stuff to do first thing in the morning. Then, she went to go and talk with her friends. Since she was fond of helping the school with any environmental-related service projects, she had been doing two jobs at school. During the school day, she made and decorated posters advertising the “Clean Our Campus—Spring Cleaning Project.” That was an event during which students signed up to meet on a weekend and clean up the campus and plant with some previously assigned teachers. The second job she had was helping a senior girl “advertise” her social justice project because the girl didn’t have time to post her posters around school. During her free time after school, Betony’s shirts often spelled out her mission as well. They said things like, “Earth Day Is Every Day,” “Protect Our Natural Treasures,” and “Nature Can’t Be Restocked.” She tended to speak a lot about what she liked. That’s why she was such a good friend to the group of true pagan kids in her neighborhood. These girls were the ones who were very interested in the faith, not the fictional witches. These were also the girls who cared about the earth just as much as she did, even if they did have different faiths.
At school, she had done an announcement for people to get forms from the Campus Ministry office for the “Clean Our Campus” project. That had caused a food fight. She had taken hours after school to get out the food remains and there still were some crumbs and sticky stuff in her hair. It had knotted near the ends from all the junk caught in it. She planned on sending emails to her environmentally aware friends about the project. Then she would do a few anonymous emails to some more popular kids that she didn’t know as well. She hoped the event that happened last time wouldn’t happen again. The last time she sent emails to semi-popular kids she was acquainted, one of them had sent back an email that read: “I don’t need to do anything, tree-hugger.” That email had come twenty times within an hour from only two of them. The two just kept sending it. It had been annoying and frustrating. She had been very upset about that. It was just a note about how it would be nice to take care of the Earth on Earth Day. She hated how much everyone hated what she wrote, said and did. She wanted people to learn that if they lost the Earth, we’d lose life. However, everyone takes stuff for granted as long as they don’t lose it and to lose Earth would be an automatic death. Spreading her message was something she had a lot of courage to deal with, but deep in her heart, something also willed her to do what she was supposed to do. Her eighth grade teacher had just encouraged it. Her real sources of her calling were the ecology camp and the story of the Scarlet Queen.
“Each of us is chosen
There’s a mission just for you
Just look inside you’ll be surprised
What you can do.”
—“The Power of One” sung by Donna Summer on the Soundtrack to Pokemon the Movie 2000: The Power of One