Ah, to be young again.
After the small incident with Twilight's planet we all got together to drink tea and share stories. It was refreshing to just mingle with others that are mostly like you. They were small and not all with the same number of appendages... but it was enough for me.
It was just a question of time that they started to ask question about myself. Its always about myself... But they are curious. How can I say no?
"What was that, my dear?" I asked the purple princess.
"I was wondering who was Prometheus' father. You never talk about him. He isn't..?" she asked, hesitant. Ah, of course they would thought that.
"No, not at all. In fact Prometheus doesn't have a father." I replied with a smile, confusing them pretty bad.
"How? That's not how life works!"
"Oh, but you must understand something, young one. Prometheus is... a physical manifestation of something intangible, like myself. He is the trichordian civilization... their hopes and dreams, their knowledge and faith... he is all of that and more. He is a direct reflection of them, and vice versa. He can influence them overall of course, and push them onto a desirable path..." I explained with a bit of difficulty. It was hard to explain, I swear! It's something that it just is for me...
"I think I understand that, but how can be your son? It seems that he just appeared with them, right?" Twilight asked with curiosity.
"Ah, but they were born on my planet... on me. And when the trichordates started to develop intelligence, I got pregnant with him. The moment they managed to band together as a civilization for the first time it was when my son was truly born, and became my full time responsibility" I said with a sad smile on my face. "They were hard times. Every famine or illness that fell upon the small civilization could unmade all their efforts... and kill my son as a ultimate consequence. I could not allow that. So I took a somewhat active role, more than the previous millions of years."
Young Cadance hugged me and smiled at me, irradiating affection. "I understand. The love of a mother is truly a force capable of miracles... and even more if the mother in question is the whole world, right?" she said, making us giggle at that. I giggled at least.
"True. I've been told that I'm pretty scary when I'm angry" I said while laughing... Why is Twilight a bit paler than before?
"G-Gaia... what happened that made you angry? And... what did you do?" she asked. I rubbed my chin in thought. I try to forget about it so it doesn't come to mind as often as other things.
"Well... It was a couple of centuries ago. My son's civilization was in full swing and they consumed resources without thought or care. They dried up nuclear resources to power their energy plants and started to draw energy from... more dirty fuels. They were advancing pretty fast but started to pollute the environment, killing many plants and animals. I was ill from all the pollution and... I wasn't thinking clearly because of that..." I spoke with a small voice. It was hard and painful, but it was the truth. Still... "In a fit of rage I... I razed an entire country. It was a small thing, around five million strong. They were always misusing their resources, dumping hazardous materials on my oceans and turning my soil in barren wastes. I was so mad that..." I found myself out air. So much loss...
"Gaia, you don't have to continue if you don't want to. I'm sorry I asked that" Ah Twilight. Sweet, naive child...
"Suffice to say, it was not pretty. My son and his people got a really big scare from that. They learned though, and started to hear my advice again. Sometimes they just... they just think they're above nature. But thankfully they took the lesson to heart in time" I said with a smile. Cadance quickly tried to save the conversation.
"So tell us Gaia. Do you have any holidays in your world?" she asked me. Ah, the classic 'change the subject' technique.
"Well we do have the Harvest Day, which is at the end of the dry season. It's a several day party that its eating contests and dancing for hours. Let me see... Mhm... Ah! There is also my birthday. While no one knows the exact day they just created a whole holiday for me and they just try and do some kind of pilgrimage a month before it just to spend time with me. Trust me, even a forest can feel cramped with so many people around" I told them with a wide smile. They tried to be good sons, even if they usually forget about what's important. "What about yours?"
"We have Nightmare Night and Summer Sun Celebration, which are mostly seasonal festivals that last one day, and Hearths Warming Eve that is a holiday to remember the friendships we made and how Equestria was born from that... but there are many local festivities in each city and town!" Twilight explained eagerly to me. I suppose that many cultures and peoples have a great variety of holidays.
"Oh, now that we're asking the big things, I got one" Rainbow Dash said as she butted in the conversation.
"Sure. What do you want to know?" I replied with a patient smile.
"I've been hearing things about what do you eat, but they must be horseapples! They were too far-fetched. So... What can you eat?" she asked with a smirk on her face. Oh my, quite a interesting question.
"I can eat everything... and I mean everything" I simply told her.
"W-What!? That's impossible!" she yelled. What a classic!
"Oh but its not. Maybe you can't tell, but I'm pretty old. I'm older than food itself. For me eating its just an optional but highly pleasurable experience." I explained to them "So in time I just tried everything, from rocks to pure minerals and metals. If it exists I probably tasted it sometime."
"What? But... huh... What?" the young pegasus replied. Oh dear, I didn't break her, right?
"Even meat?" Twilight asked while raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah, of course. Its very rich in proteins and, if cooked right, can be in most of the best recipes of my world" I told her sincerely. She smiled and nodded at me.
"You should try griffon cuisine. I've been told that they have the best meat-specialized chefs in the world" she told me. Oh, note to self: Griffons like meat. Acquire griffon recipes.
"But if that's true Gaia you were like, a nomad? You have to if you tried every... er... food on your planet" Cadance asked while helping herself with some tea using levitation. I really need to learn that!
"Ah, for the most part yes, I lived a pretty nomadic life when I was up and working but usually I just slept away for a long time, only getting up when something important was about to happen" I told her, making Twilight more curious about the current topic.
"And where did you sleep?" the young and purple alicorn asked.
"I liked to sleep in a temperate forest. It was a nice place. A small stream with tiny waterfalls made a very relaxing sound and used to made my rest easy. I spent so many time sleeping that I even left imprints on the soil, and the fossil remains of my sleeping place were put in a museum."I told her before chuckling.
"Is something funny? I don't get it" Twilight asked as she got a bit closer to me.
"Oh, nothing. It's just that they are... a bit obsessed with everything related to me. You call big spans of time... Hm... let me check... Ah! Eons, right? Well my sons call those same time spans... slumbers"
"Slumbers?" they all asked. Oh my, such a polite audience.
"Oh yes. My slumbers. The oldest eon is called "The First Slumber of Mother Gaia". Seriously, they even have manuals about the stuff and try to know what I dream during my slumbers and a lot of other useless stuff" I told them while laughing pretty loudly. They weren't laughing.
"What? Did I say something wrong?"
Screwing with Mother Nature is very dumb. Especially when she can consciously fight back.
Yay hugs for Gaia!
6885140 Aye, tis' a terrifying thought.
nice. I like where this is going! Keep it up Hywther!
Don't get why they were dumbfounded at the end there.
6885288 Maybe that her sleep cycles are long enough to be recorded on a geological scale? It does kinda drive the point home just how old and different she is. Other than that your guess is as good as mine.
6885288 What 6885316 says. One of her slumbers lasts for millions of years. That's mind boggling for beings that count their lives by hundreds of years at best.
6885140 "You don't fuck with a godess"
6885140 she already is fighting back earth quakes , floods and 80 degree weather in december on the eastern seaboard
she eat everything... Beside magic! Rainbow dash should dare her to drink rainbow juice!
Wonder if she has ever eaten a live planet? Of course not. She is a planet herself and probably wouldn't.
6885566 so your saying Gaia should "taste the rainbow"?
Hah!
Oooohhh! That pun was awful and i should feel bad for saying that...
I REGRET NOTHING!
*runs away laughing*
MORE!!! If you want to that is
6885445 Yeah, it's a matter of perspective, same for humans and let's say... ephemerals, our "slambers" lasts almost their entire life
6885288
they just learned that she sleeps for entire eons, think of a cave man that fell asleep in the Jurassic era and woke up in modern america... thats insane
Nice ! Gaïa strikes again. X)
Whoa, Gaia got angry before and destroyed an entire civilization that was polluting her planet? Holy crackers. I totally do not want to mess with Gaia who represents the Mother Nature.
That being said, this was a nice little chapter to read.
If Gaia is SimEarth... then does that make her son SimCity~?
6885140 Don't poke rocks at glass wasp nests.
6886247 Not a civilization, a country. There is a difference.
I can imagine Gaia's fit of rage to look like something from the movie 2012.
6886323 No her son is Civilization V
6886909
I was actually going to say that but I decided to go with another Maxis game...
6886925 Understandable, but I think CIV 5 fits better.
6886714
Oh, whoops. I always get random words mixed up sometimes. I dunno why.
6886800 Very close approximation. Because of the climatic change caused by the emissions of fossil fuels the whole world was already suffering from hurricanes and the like very frequently, but when she got mad she just gave them exactly what they wanted.
She unearthed a vast amount of concentrated uraninite in the middle of their city. She unearthed so much and concentrated it to a level that reached critical mass, became very unstable and... well... you can deduce what happened next.
Adorable as always :D
6885566 Woah! Kira! Wording, please!
6887404 so she did a Fallout moment, "War, war never changes," Unless it's a sentienant plante have a really bad time and does a local explosion in the middle of a city.
6888143 Yep. she basically nuked the equivalent of France in extension with a big, nuclear explosion. A unintentional ironic moment since the countries of her world were pretty desperate to get their tentacles on atomic fuels of any kind.
Note: In game you can actually spend so many nuclear materials that you get an alert similar to the ones when you have mass extinctions and the like, making the sapients more aggressive and open to wars to obtain resources
That was awesome! Good work.
Yeah while it's funny to read about it if it where to be reality...
Ahhh i love this
6887404
So she either compressed it and made it implode to create an explosion or she mad a neutron reflector to make the material go critical. Considering it's Gaia we are speaking about, it was probably the former
That must of been a sight to see. Probably much bigger than Tsar Bomba by many times.
Wait a minute, If her slumbers equals an eon and the title is Gaia's Slumber then....
Equestria, you might have some visitors coming for the next millennia.
I don't understand the ending quote. The only reason to do something like that would be if the ponies were struck with realization. After all, she only said that she sleeps for several thousand years at a time..
Uh... Why weren't they laughing?
6902194 6915083 Obviously they must laugh since it's pretty common to sleep for millions of years. Who hadn't done that before?
Now seriously, they hear numbers but they don't really realize how much time that is, as many people IRL do. When I talk about geologic eras with a 'common person' they just can't grasp what it truly means, and that's not even including tectonic movements and how the mountains were made by them. That's why they don't laugh about that.
Twilight and the other ponies are just now starting to understand how old Gaia really is, and the consequences of that.
6915143 'The consequences' HAH! So I was right, kinda..
6915143 Fudge, further proof of my oddity. If need be I 'can comprehend' that much time, but currently there is no immortal being for me to compare eternity to other than the big bang, which is non sentient.
I must say that i love this story, you have made art here, and for that I thank you.
why no update on earthday. does Gaia not get a birthday???
This is an awesome story dude
7277362 Glad you like the story! And yeah, it maybe is a bit cliché to appear there but in most cases its not because they want to, and Gaia decided to go there because (as far as we know) its the most 'natural' place, monsters aside
I didn't know my writing looked 'expensive' as you say, I just try my best and most of the time errors and misspellings are left and right hehe.
That last one is a first... How come I made your teacher a brony? I'm curious
I was listening to this song (one of only a handful to ever bring a tear to my eye) in the same playlist as John Barleycorn (which I discovered via a fic here) and I realized that it felt appropriate to this fic:
(I think it's the combination of evolution and a mother goddess figure in the lyrics which does it)
I like to imagine that, for Gaia, gold and silver are akin to sweet food. Coal and Iron are akin to junk food. And Diamonds are that exotic dish that you rarely have, but it's just so good.
More? Please?
7434776 Puh-LEEZE... I've been waiting on a different story since 2012. Six months is NOTHING!
7541369 I've been waiting for a story since 2004 bro bring it on I can wait