Home of Humanity

On top of the podium, she looked out at the crowd. Greens and browns and bright blues surrounded her in a sea of earth conservation effort. She inwardly smiled, knowing how far she came from the paint chipped house she had grown up in. Looking at what she accomplished, she adjusted her blue suit as she stood up proudly, her chin up towards the sky and gave a silent thanks. All these people cared. Sure it wasn't everyone in the world, and sure there will always be polluters. Still. It was a start, and with more publicity and knowledge there will be hope for a brighter future. She squinted at the setting sun, then back to a tree in the distance she noticed a bird circling overhead. She remembered the day the earth had spoken.
*

"Don't forget your jacket!" her ma yelled out to her, as the screen door slammed behind her body rushing down the whitewashed porch stairs.
She knew she had left it in the house. She did it on purpose; Ortainia hated confinement. She bounded to the foot of the cliff that led off her property and scanned the horizon. Parental rules told her never to go that close to the cliff, but every so often she would, just to be able to gaze beyond the life she lived and stared at the eagles perched on ledges deep below in the valley. The setting sun shed a pink glow on the land giving the earth a warm haunting appearance.
She loved this time of day.
At that moment she turned in the opposite direction and stared straight out at the field of brown, tall stalks of grass, swaying with the wind. Her brown hair pulled back were coming down in wisps around her face, cheeks becoming rosy with excited energy as the first crickets of the night were being to make their high pitched chirps. The heels of her worn sneakers dug strongly into the earth and she took off running to the forest on the other end.
The underbrush scraped her legs as she pushed her way between the trees, but she didn't care. She lived for the freedom of the sky and the earth. When she ran, she wanted nothing more than to keep running forever. Towards the sun, and just take off with nothing holding her back but herself.
As she laid in the small clearing that she usually made her way to, with a beam of sunlight on her face, animals surrounding her from every angle, life and death, all at once a sudden realization of what it all meant came to her. She was no longer just an animal, she was no longer just a child, she was Mother Earth. Not in the sense that she was in charge of the planet, more or less, that everyone who breathed was Mother Earth. It was their job to make sure the earth would live. Their child, the planet they have grown upon and thrived was their charge. They were more apart of the earth than the earth was a part of them.
She sat up suddenly and stared at the dirt beneath her body. This was her land. This was her home. And she knew what she had to do.