Father Nature

      They say if you see a beautiful fair skinned woman in the woods, you should run. For if she sees you, she won’t stop hunting you, even if that meant the earth swallowed your feet from right below you. For many years that story was true. That Mother Nature was as beautiful as she was malicious. Golden locks that were as deadly as raddle snakes. And grey eyes the color of storms. She was not kind. She was not friendly. She was anything but loving. Her husband was the opposite.

      Her husband, Father Nature, as the humans called him, was everything his wife was not. Where she was angry, he was kind. Where she was forceful, he was gentle. Where she brought death, he brought life. Father Nature is a big creature, with the body of a moose but has the torso and upper body of a man. Olive skin with scars and blemishes, antlers of a moose on his head. Golden eyes staring down at humans from eight and a half feet in the air.

      “Why did I ever create them,” Mother Nature snarled.

      Her husband just laid idly by in a grassy spot that happened to be in the sun. He looked at her with the same emotionless expression he always wore.

She was resting against his moose body and continued her rant. “I gave them life. I gave them the earth. MY earth! And this is what they do to me?” She coughed roughly into her hands. Pulling her hands away from her face revealed droplets of black sludge, as her coughing fits brought on for the past few hundred years.

Father Nature simply grabbed her hands in his and held them tight. His face was still emotionless as his antlers started to glow a mysterious golden color. When the color faded, he opened up her hands and the black sludge turned into a golden powder that blew away with the breeze.

“That’s all you do nowadays, you know that?” Mother Nature jabbed.

Her husband kept his emotionless persona and rubbed her back with his hand, fingers feeling the fabric against her skin. It was the one thing the humans had done right. Their perception of her made her beautiful. Although, she was always beautiful. Even when she was a creature of pure fire and bone, she was beautiful. But in a human-adjacent form, he still considered his bride beautiful.

He remembered the days when he was an unstoppable being. A God to be feared. When he spoke the earth would tremble, canyons would form, volcanos would erupt. He could shapeshift, he could command armies of animals and make humans flee by his mere presence. He had a valid reason to be feared. But now? Now it seemed all he could do was turn things into gold.

“Father! Father!” came a high-pitched voice.

      The parents of the world looked around at the surrounding woods for the source of the voice. Until one little chipmunk appeared on Father Natures moose body. “Father! Father!” it repeated.

      “We’re busy, go away!” The woman spat.

      But the centaur like creature put a hand on his spouses’ shoulder and nodded to the tiny chipmunk. “A human is stuck!” It said, “Owl told me to tell you!”

      Mother Nature rolled her eyes and muttered, “Hate that stupid owl…” Father Nature pretended not to hear that bit and nodded to the chipmunk again. But as the chipmunk scurried away, his wife plopped herself onto his body. “You’re not going anywhere,” she said, “if humans are so smart, they can get themself out of trouble!”

      His face was still stone, golden eyes not fleeting from her grey ones. He wasn’t backing down, even when his love sat up and grabbed his antlers. It was one thing, to grab his antlers, but another when she started to move his head around with them.

      He made a quick, deep, grunting sound and got up. Standing nine feet in the air, with the embodiment of nature gripping onto his antlers for dear life. “You’re an ass,” she growled. But when he imitated the sound of a donkey she was not impressed. “No wonder human men suck. They all have your shitty sense of humor.”

      But no matter what she could say to him, he would not let her bother him. He had a duty to uphold, even if no human thanked him for it. He took one step forwards when Mother Nature lost her grip on his antlers and fell. Or, she should have fallen. But she was nestled into her love’s chest. “Alright fine, go save some stupid man. But if they start screaming, I get to kill it!” She compromised.

      With a nod, her husband put her feet back on the ground before zooming off into the woods. A couple of deer began following him, all talking at once and over each other. “A human! A man! Stuck! Under a tree! Humans with sharp things! Humans with loud things! The other humans left it to die! Maybe he is weak? Follow us!”

      As he followed his creatures further away from his love, he saw it. An old oak tree fallen on a human man who looked oddly like him. He wondered if the man was dead, until the deer dispersed and started leaping over the fallen tree. The man whimpered and tried to shout something in the human language.

      The man looked up at Father Nature. There was silence between the two of them, the Father’s face emotionless and cold as always. The man’s eyes full of fear and emotion, and then it screamed in horror. He found it hypocritical of humans, that his form is how they imagine him and yet when they see him, they get scared.

      Father Nature took a step back and laid down in between two trees. As the man continued to scream the God held up a finger to silence him. He grabbed a rock and held it snuggly in his hands. Only when his antlers started to grow did the mans screaming stop, mesmerized by the sight in front of him.

      When the glowing stopped, Father Nature stood up again. He heard the mans breath hitch, but didn’t scream. He approached the man and smiled as he opened his hands to reveal a piece of gold. He placed it on the ground, a few feet in front of the trapped man. The man said something in his human language, but Father Nature didn’t understand it. He turned his attention to the tree and gripped on to the fallen oak. Taking a deep breath, he lifted the mammoth of a tree. He lifted, yes, but just barely high enough for the man to crawl himself out and grab the chunk of gold.

      Dropping the tree made a massive thud sound that echoed throughout the forest. If he were younger, then that tree would not have been a problem. He turned to the man who was still crawling away. Father Nature felt bad for the man, that he couldn’t do more for him or his definitely broken legs.

      Then, a normal moose came out from the surrounding trees. “Do you need my help, father?”

      He nodded and picked up the man who began to squirm. As he placed the man onto the back of the moose he touched the animal’s head with his palm, giving it instruction on where to bring the man. He and the man locked eyes one last time before the moose went to deliver him back to human civilization.

      And it was quiet. Without the mans screams or strange words. Without the animals bugging him about something. Just, silence. At least until his one true love appeared by his side. “I, personally, would have left him to die.”