MOTHER NATURE'S REVENGE

Hurt the least of creatures and you hurt them all....

She slammed the doors, hundreds of them, and the roof fell in.

It had to: there never was a slam like that, but then she had never been anywhere near as angry as she was now. She was livid. Worse than that, she was furious and when she breathed out she levelled forests with that fury. That was a measure of her ferocious temper.

The slammed door flew into splintered fragments and she cursed. There never was such language heard anywhere on the tortured planet and mountains pushed tendrils of rock into their ears to hide their fragile hearts from the blast of swearing. Even rivers ran dry and the land withered. When she cursed like this all life seemed to halt in its progress from birth to death, and shrivel.

Then: I'LL TEACH THEM, she roared, and a hurricane blasted from her mouth and swept up the East Coasts of continental masses everywhere and washed the land with cleansing salt water. But it didn't feel cleansed. All it felt was the red edge of her anger.

She sat at her kitchen table and wove a spell.

And there never was such a spell.

The very air vibrated, not just around where she sat but everywhere on the planet. It vibrated with her cursing, with the shuddering depth of her fury, with volcanoes, long dormant, springing into life.

Not a sapling nor any tree on any continent remained rooted to her soils.

Clouds like gigantic frowns formed in the skies. They glowered down, black glowers that shielded all life from the sun.

The life-giving oxygen fled. Such, indeed, was her anger.

Then myriad creatures choked and fell to the ground and expired.

And mankind was there.

What have we done? he asked. What was our crime?

She shook with the enormity of her anger

What have you done? she roared.

Then she looked down from everywhere, focused her eyes until they were a beam of power and whispered that...

And alive of all the creatures on the whole ruined planet a butterfly flapped its battered wings.

You trod on that! she breathed.

Author's Note

We're off on a short holiday for the next week so I've added this in order to fill a gap...