Red became orange.
Orange spoke to yellow.
Yellow whispered to green.
Green swam to blue.
Blue gazed at purple.
I gave them all names.
I saw a world. An emergence of peaks and depths.
This world was filled with purity and reciprocity.
I imagined my first children.
Roots flew from my back and married the soil.
I blew seeds from my mouth and watched the forest bloom.
The scent of berries wafted through the air and infused with the scent of fresh herbs.
It was a lush paradise of fiction.
I sang as I joined the water and imagined more of my children.
From my body came one-legged ones.
They swam in unison with the power of the moon.
I returned to the land and imagined more.
Two-legged ones, four-legged ones.
They ran, they slept, they bathed, they ate.
All in harmony.
I looked and yearned to add more.
They were gentle and delicate.
Skin like toasted sand.
Eyes drank the sky.
These children were different.
Words fell from their bodies.
A strange cadence and rhythm.
Love swelled from me full of appreciation.
I returned to the water with my one-legged children.
I felt the flow of the currents and the pull of the tides.
The ocean carried me and nurtured me while my children flourished.
I missed my two legged and four legged children. As I returned, I felt panic.
The land had changed.
No.
It had morphed into something different.
Smoke billowed from metal.
Dust clouded the air.
Poison tainted the soil.
It came for the ocean next.
I searched and searched for my children.
The four-legged ones were far and few.
The two-legged ones were unrecognizable.
They were mangled by greed and deceit.
I tried to walk among the world they created.
This world they thought was worth dying for but I found nothing.
No trace of harmony, no scent of herbs, no mark of kindness.
I had failed.
I failed this world for thinking it could be grown with seeds of good intent when it was grown with the red wave of malicious hunger.
I sighed, sobbed and cried for my children and the world they were born in.
Could I try again? Or is the mistake doomed to be repeated?
I closed my eyes. I waved my arms wildly, knocking down what remained of the natural world.
I cried and screamed until fire erupted. It engulfed the ground and morphed the sky.
It never should have been. It never will be.
I never was Shadow Woman.