A Different Destiny

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she must accept her destiny. Sometimes she is destined to be confined to hearth and home; sometimes she is destined to never know the love of her own child. Sometimes she is destined to live until she’s eighty. Sometimes—

“You are dressing up as a goddess?” Lindsay asked, “Aren’t you being a bit pretentious?”

Christina smiled, “I’m not a goddess, I’m every goddess.”

She turned to the mirror in the living room and continued to play with her face paint.

“So you are planning to offend Christian and pagan alike, tonight, huh?” Lindsay asked, returning the smile.

“No—I’m just going for most original costume, that’s all.”

“You wore the same thing last year,” Lindsay said.

“Yeah, but I was Jezebel, then.”

Lindsay rolled her eyes. Of all the people in the world, her roommate was certainly one of the strangest. She could function in the world with no problem, she wasn’t that kind of strange, but there was something about her that was…different.

Christina smiled as she looked over her handy work for tonight’s festivities. She had dyed her blonde hair dark purple, had painted her face white with a pale blue crescent moon drawn across the right side of her face. Under her left eye was the tear of Isis, and under that was the ancient symbol of Aphrodite. Her forehead was adorned with a Nordic fertility symbol. She wore a simple blue and white toga. All in all, she was a pretty good walking conversation starter. She wore an elaborate circlet encrusted with cubic zirconia as well as a large choker and earrings also made with cubic zirconia. Her favorite part of the outfit was her eyes, however. Thanks to all of the blue she was wearing, her eyes looked positively green.

I’ve always wanted green eyes, she thought, giggling.

“Besides,” Christina said, “I’m not the one going to a Halloween party with a cross.”

“I’m Buffy—I slay vampires. They don’t like crosses.”

“Actually, that’s not true.”

“Oh, really? Have you every met one?”

There was silence for a moment.

“Fair enough,” Christina said with a pout. She looked at Lindsay with a sullen look for a moment longer, and then broke into a smile.

“I could always be Glory,” Christina said as she grabbed her purse.

“You ruined that when you dyed your hair,” Lindsay said, opening the door.

“Just a thought…”
T
hey left their apartment to go to a party that their college was hosting. Yes, it is lame to go to a party that has no alcohol, but going to the party at the local club would have been worse. Besides, there would be door prizes—had they made it to the party.

They made their way down the bustling, colorful streets of downtown Milledgeville, commenting on the costumes the whole way. One costume in particular caught Christina’s attention, although Lindsay didn’t seem to care at all. It was a man in a simple blue robe. This wasn’t interesting in and of itself—“You two could coordinate!” Lindsay would remark with a sneer—it was his eyes. He had managed to find contacts that made both his iris and his pupil appear to be a light silver color.

“I want those contacts!” Christina said, “I’m going to go ask him where he got them.

“You really need to quit talking to strangers,” Lindsay said with amused exasperation. She made no effort to stop her, however. What would be the point?

Christina walked up to the man and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Excuse me,” she said, “But where did you…get…”

The man turned around, and this time his eyes were a solid black. Without answering her question, he bent down and began to examine her face.

“I-I’m sorry, I mistook you for…someone else,” Christina said uneasily, and turned to leave. As she did, she felt a rough hand grab her bare shoulder.

“On the contrary, you have found exactly what you are looking for.”

As fast as Christina could think to run away, her world dissipated into darkness.
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What could have been minutes, hours, or days later, Christina began to paddle toward the surface of consciousness. She began to stretch her bare white limbs as her eyes crawled open. Her vision, though blurry, revealed a scene that was unfamiliar to her. She could make out varied shades of blue, candle light, and some sort of blue flower all around her. As her mind cleared, she remembered what had happened, and shot straight up. She was wide awake, but she still couldn’t see clearly. Her hands ran across the hard stone that she had been laying on, and discovered a contact case and solution.

“Did someone touch my eyes?” she wondered aloud.

She opened the case and quickly put in her contacts. As soon as they were in her eyes, she suddenly wished they weren’t. The shades of blue that she had observed were tapestries with strange silver script written upon them. The only things that she could make out were the images of moons and stars. The flowers that she had seen were…blue roses!

But they don’t exist, do they? Christina wondered.

Finally, she looked at what she was resting upon, and her heart leapt into her throat. It was a marble slab, ornately scalloped, and as she lifted her thigh off of the table, she found that this table had been etched with an elaborate collage of symbols that she new to be representative of various goddesses.

Oh…no…

She was on top of an altar!

With no more thought needed, her body leapt from this cold, stone altar and began to run. She didn’t know where the was going, but she knew that on any sort of religious furniture was probably not where she wanted to be.

I’ve been abducted by a cult! She thought madly They’re going to…

She stopped dead in her tracks. Before her were three men in the same blue robes that her presumed abductor wore.

“Most Holy One, you mustn’t run off,” said the one in the middle, “You might get hurt, and we can’t have that…”

The three men rushed at her, arms comically outstretched, as though running after a large, wayward baby.

“Leave me alone, you psychos!” she screamed, and she began to run.

Before she could make it to the door, however, she was completely surrounded by thick, midnight blue fabric.

“Please do not fear us,” one of the robed men said, “We have taken you here to assure that your destiny will be fulfilled. We do not wish to harm you.”

“Oh, really?” Christina asked, “And what is my destiny, exactly?”

“You are to be our sword and our shield when we, the Ooashley Ny Heayst, the moon-worshippers fight the Ooashley Ny Grian—the worshippers of the sun.”

“How am I to do this?” she asked, curiosity overcoming fear.

“When the moon eclipses the sun—“

With no warning, there was a loud crash, and the robed men fell to their knees, screaming in agony.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” Christina asked, unaffected by what had just assailed these men.

She looked around frantically, trying to decide what to do next. She didn’t want to be these people’s ‘sword and shield,’ but she didn’t want to leave them to their agony, either. As she searched for an answer to her dilemma, all thoughts of helping the robed strangers disappeared. Before her was a man, robed in black and red, whose eyes seemed to burn like embers. She could see nothing else about him but these features, and her stomach dropped as she realized that the men who now whimpered at her feet may very well have been trying to protect her—perhaps from him. Having decided that this notion was truth, Christina grabbed one of the candlesticks, candle still burning, and pointed at the intruder.

“You WILL go away, now!” she said in a voice that wasn’t her own, “Leave these men and myself alone, or you will suffer dire consequences!”
Dire consequences…where did that come from?

The man with burning eyes laughed.

“And what do you think you will be able to do to me?” he asked, “You are good for only one thing, and that is causing destruction. I don’t know what they told you, but…”

“But what?”

“But you are going to end the world.”

Christina froze for a moment—mind, body, soul just stopped as his accusation ran through her very existence.

“What did you say?” she asked in a low, sinister voice that seemed to come from someone a million miles below her.

“I said, you are going to end the world.”

She glared at the man before her. He no longer frightened her. Oh, on the contrary, he angered her quite a bit more than he could ever frighten her.

“Who says that I am going to end the world? I certainly don’t want to end the world…” she asked in a more familiar tone.

“Of course you want to end the world…why else would you be with these nuts?” he asked, “We knew it would happen eventually…a rouge Goddess.”

“Wait…these guys want to end the world?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Of course not...I was abducted by one of them.”

The tension in the man’s body began to slacken—he seemed almost disappointed that he couldn’t rip her head off.

“Then why did you seem upset when I hurt them?” he said with a sigh.

“Because you attacked people who, besides kidnapping me, hadn’t done anything to harm me…and had done nothing wrong to you. I just…felt it was wrong.”

The man stepped forward, and Christina could see the glow in his eyes had almost become…friendly.

“Now that was spoken like a true Goddess: Let not ye harm unless harm is brought upon you first.”

“Actually, I’d prefer no harm be done to anyone…shouldn’t we just stop violence before it starts? Can’t we all be friends?” Christina asked, and began to hum “Why can’t we be friends.”

The man could respond with little better than a bemused stare.

“Nevermind,” Christina said, “So, are you still going to kill me?”

“Well—“

One of the robed men at Christina’s feet began to stir. She quickly picked his head up by his hair and bashed his head into the marble floor.

The man’s look went from bemusement to amusement.

“Not violent, huh?” he asked with a raised brow.

“Well, if they were going to use me to end the world…”

The man laughed, “Fair enough.”

There was an awkward silence. Normally, Christina would just let the silence linger, or she would walk away from the man. However…

“My name is Christina,” she said, “And you are?”

“My name is Osmond,” he said, “But your name is most certainly not Cris-dina. It is Jocasta.”

“I am so NOT named after an incestuous woman who hung herself!”

“What?”

“Oedipus…never mind,” Christina said, “What does Jocasta mean?”

“Shining moon.”

“That’s so lame…if I’m going to have to change my name, it will be Panthea.”

“What does that mean?”

“All Goddess.”

“Don’t you think you ought to tone it down a bit?”

“How about Shyla—it just means Goddess?”

“Isn’t that a bit vauge…and plain?”

“Tone it down…pep it up…you think of something, then!”

“…Varadea…?” he offered after a moment of contemplation.

“Shorten it to ‘Dea, and we have a deal.”

“I wasn’t aware we were bargaining.”

Dea grinned, “Of course we were Osmond—can I call you Ossie?”

“Absolutely…not.”

“Aww…”
Osmond simply rolled his eyes and turned to leave.

“Wait!” Dea cried, “Where are you going? Are you just going to leave me here?”

Osmond looked at her as though she was positively dense.

“No, I’m not leaving you…you are to follow me.”

“Where are you taking me? What are your intentions? Why do your eyes glow all the time? Can I just go home? How do you know I’m even a real goddess?” Dea asked in a rush as she followed in behind Osmond.

Osmond turned at glared as his newly-acquired, annoying companion.

“Perhaps the journey would go faster for both of us if you were to sleep.”

“What? I don’t want to sleep! I don’t even know where you are taking me…give me some answers or I’ll—“

Osmond gently tapped Dea on the head, and before she could utter any more complaints, she had fallen into his arms. Osmond looked at the sleeping goddess for a moment, a slight smile tracing the corners of his dark mouth, and then slung her over his left shoulder.