Aztec Goddess of Micro Terra

by

Deuce Little O
In the year 1501, off the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico...

   The Conquistador was happy with his prize captive: the beautiful daughter of the Aztec emperor. She was truly more beautiful than all the women of the Spanish aristocracy, and had she been a citizen of Spanish society, he would have had little or no chance of winning her favor. He was past 30, with half-rotted teeth and a weather-beaten face, while she was a brown-skinned teenage siren, more beautiful than all the maidens of the Aztec empire.

   The conquistador knew enough of her language to be able to decipher her native tongue, so he understood her warnings when she implored him to wait until the rainy season was over before making the trip, but he refused her request. The emperor of the Aztecs had given his daughter's hand in marriage as part of a peace agreement, and the conquistador assumed she was trying to postpone her destiny. He could only imagine how his friends back in Spain would react when they saw he was married to a princess more beautiful than any they had ever seen; to him it seemed that she was truly an Aztec goddess disguised in mortal flesh.

   When the Spanish galleon was out at sea, a storm struck. It was more vicious than anything he had ever experienced, for although he was commanding officer, this was his first trip to the Western hemisphere, so he had never experienced a hurricane. The crew abandoned the ship for land in all but one of the lifeboats.

   The mast snapped in half under the unrelenting force of the winds, and pierced the hull. Within less than a minute, the galleon was sinking. The conquistador and the Aztec princess climbed into the remaining life boat, but it began to sink. It was only strong enough to handle the weight of one of them, because the boat was filling with water that weighed it down. He did what he thought was right under the circumstances; with a final kiss on her beautiful lips, he jumped into the furious waves, leaving her safely in the boat. She had no time to ponder his sacrifice as she scooped water out of the boat with her hands.

   None of the other boats could be seen, and her fiancee was most probably drowned. She saw a light in the distance, and used her paddle to steer towards the light. Her instincts told her there was safety there, and she assumed that it was a sign of some divinity from her pagan religion leading her to safety, so she sought the light. The pounding waves and the fierce winds did not thwart her efforts, and soon she was upon the source of the glowing white light.

   It surrounded her and her boat, and for a moment there was calm as she tumbled through a weightless void. Just as she began to succumb to vertigo, the boat tumbled out of the strange vortex, and she was on another Ocean in another storm, but unknown to her, this was not the same Ocean or the same storm.

   She spotted land ahead, and steered toward it. The outline of cliffs appeared in the distance, and soon she saw a beach. Her boat was carried by a huge wave to the shoreline, where she abandoned her transportation and headed for higher ground. Once she was safely standing on a hill, she found a cave where she found shelter from the hurricane. After several hours, she finally forgot her fears and cried herself to sleep.

   The next morning, it was sunny and clear. The blue sky was welcome and inviting, so the girl walked out to find berries or edible plants to sate her hunger. As she walked along, she saw a narrow gravel-lined path, about half an inch in diameter. A little further down the road, she came across a structure less than six inches high, and about three feet long and three feet wide. It was composed of the tiniest stone bricks she had ever seen, and it was covered with a tarp. When she removed the tarp, the girl was astonished to see a tiny orchard of fruit trees. The smallest of the trees were less than an inch high, and the tallest was no more than two inches high. She saw the tiny fruits, which were much smaller than berries, so she sampled some of them.

   As she ate, she noticed tiny spades, picks and shovels that would be suitable for people no larger than ants. She picked up a shovel, and it was as tiny as a splinter. The girl wondered what kind of a strange land she had ended up in as she continued with her breakfast.

   A group of local villagers wandered along the trail leading to the orchard, and the difference between the Aztec girl and the natives was immediately apparent. Compared to the princess, they were no larger than the tiniest of ants; twenty of them standing on each other's shoulders would not have stood half as high as her ankles. When they caught sight of the Aztec girl, their first instinctive reaction was fear, so they began to run. To them she towered into the sky like a towering colossus, a mighty goddess dressed in white with the strange symbols of her Aztec heritage sewn onto her garment.

   She stood up to see what the commotion was, and saw the tiny natives. She stomped after them, and overtook their tiny steps in two massive strides. Their was no escape for the tiny people, and they quickly found themselves in the hands of the Aztec princess.

   She raised them eye level, and examined them. They were tiny, no larger than ants. The girl smiled, happy to have found and captured such delicate playthings.

   "You have nothing to fear from me," the girl said in her native Aztec language, but the tiny captives could not understand her. They spoke the language of the Terran Empire, the government that had sentenced, miniaturized, and abandoned them here by teleportation.

   The planet Terra was highly technologically advanced, and had zero tolerance for crime. After developing miniaturization and interdimensional technology, the Terrans passed a law that forced criminals to be reduced to the size of ants and banished to the planet Micro-Terra. The planet Micro-Terra was in a parallel reality with no intelligent life on it. The Terrans had sent scout ships to annihilate the native animals, so they would not be a threat to the miniaturized criminals banished there. Animals used for food and beasts of burden from Terra were also miniaturized, and placed on Micro-Terra so the captives would have a food supply. Plants native to Terra were also reduced and planted there, as well.

   The scout ships had also swept the atmosphere, removing all microbiological dangers, as well. Thus, the planet was made safe for the condemned criminals, who were sent there with no possibility of parole. They were forced to survive on their own, to carve their own civilization as best they could. Since most of the criminals had a minimal understanding of science, the civilization they developed was equal to the neolithic societies of Earth, with no electricity or industrialization, just adobe brick dwellings, concrete, and plaster.

   The Aztec princess, with her tiny captives in hand, followed the trail into the tiny town of the Micro-Terrans. Her feet were far too massive for the thin trail, and she accidentally crushed a bridge made from tiny bricks hewn from small pebbles.

   When she arrived in the town, she saw a civilization at a technological level equal to her own Aztec society. The small adobe brick dwellings didn't even reach her ankles, and the perimeter of the tiny city was less than twenty feet wide by twenty feet long.

   The citizens of Micro-Terra, when they saw the giant Aztec princess, were terrified. They had no way of knowing whether she was evil or nice, and most of them ran to their small homes and hid in terror. Others, caught out in the open, sought to please the young giantess by bowing low, hoping that their act of veneration would appease her.

   The giantess smiled, happy to have found such a tiny race of people she could rule over. They were like toys to her, and she loved them. Seeing them bow to her didn't impress her, because as the daughter of the Aztec emperor, she was already accustomed to having people under her control.

   As a gesture of her good will, the Aztec princess set her hand on the ground, and urged the two Micro-Terrans to step off. As they did, their fears subsided slightly when they realized the giantess, though colossal and mighty, meant them no harm.

   The princess looked around. About fifty yards from the edge of the tiny city, there was a large slab of granite. She walked towards it. Steps surrounded it, extending from the top, and circling it down to the bottom. It was the transition platform the Micro-Terrans arrived on when they first came to the planet Micro-Terra. The top of the platform was located at the exact height, and at the same point of latitude and longitude as the sentencing chamber of the Imperial courtroom back on the planet Terra.

   When the banishing law was first enacted back on Terra, the platform was used consistently, night and day, to send thousands of miniaturized convicted criminals to Micro-Terra, where they could never do harm to the law-abiding citizens of the planet Terra again. Now, many decades after the law was first passed, the platform rarely ushered new arrivals, because the citizens of Terra were more than a little afraid of being miniaturized and sent to Micro-Terra. Still, once every couple of weeks or every few months, a new miniaturized arrival was teleported onto the platform, to take his place among his own kind, the ant-sized people of this tiny land.

   By a stroke of fate, a miniaturized convict from Terra had been teleported at the exact instant when conditions were right for the interdimensional vortex that brought him to Micro-Terra to simultaneously appear at that same point of latitude and longitude on Earth. The hurricane in the Bermuda Triangle the princess's boat was passing through occurred at the exact time when the magnetic field of Micro-Terra had changed polarity, causing anything from Earth to be pulled through the vortex if it was within those exact coordinates at that precise instant. The chances against this happening were incalculable, so that an arrival of a normal-sized person from Earth being pulled through the vortex might happen once or twice every five or ten centuries.

   The princess continued to explore the island, and noticed that all the flora and fauna were of miniature proportions. There were no plants and animals anywhere to be seen that shared her stature, and this pleased her. A smile crept across the face of the princess as she contemplated the fact that there were none who could ever challenge her authority. And among the tiny Micro-Terrans, there were none who would dare defy her.

   She walked over to a creek to get a drink of water. After drinking her fill, she scooped up some wet clay. She fashioned a pyramid temple similar to the temples of her homeland in Mexico. She returned to the town square, and showed the clay pyramid to the tiny Micro-Terrans. She wanted them to understand that she expected them to construct similar dwellings, so she could be reminded of her home.

   The Micro-Terrans quickly got the point, in spite of the fact that they spoke a different language than that of the mighty maiden who towered over them. They got to work, and by the end of the day, with all the townspeople pitching in, they had a small pyramid constructed that was an exact duplicate of the one the princess had molded out of clay. Like ants scurrying about at her feet, the tiny citizens of Micro-Terra worked on the temple, simply accepting the princess as their new ruler.

   The wise elders of Micro-Terra knew the young giantess would be hungry soon, and not wanting to end up as her next meal, instructed some of the younger and more able men to begin harvesting enough crops to feed the mighty colossus when it came time for her to eat.

   As the majority of the townspeople were busy constructing the pyramid temple to appease the mighty maiden, others were hard at work loading up carts and hauling them to the town square. By the time the pyramid was finished, the giantess was indeed hungry, and the supply of food carts lining the town square looked more than inviting to her.

   Reaching down, the princess picked up the largest cart, which was only about one quarter of an inch in length. The fruits and vegetables looked unfamiliar to her, but she lifted the cart high above her mouth and tossed it back, sending the entire contents of the cart crashing against her tongue. She chewed and swallowed it in one gulp, and found it delicious, so she picked up another cart.

   She tossed back cart after cart, and carefully set the empty carts back where she found them, knowing that they would serve again as containers when it was again time for her to feast. After vanquishing the contents of fifty of the carts, the mighty giantess was at last satisfied, and walked to the edge of town and slumped down to rest. She fell asleep, happy to have found a race of people who stood no larger than the tiniest of ants to serve as her tiny pets.

   The next day, the Micro-Terrans fell into line, and quickly accepted the princess as their goddess without argument. They toiled at her feet, building the pyramid temples as she commanded them, and harvested food so she had three meals a day, to sate her awesome hunger. The princess accepted the role of goddess enthusiastically, and enjoyed her position of power and dominion she held over her tiny people. She was not cruel to them, she simply expected them to obey her commands.

   The Micro-Terrans, obedient to a fault, offered no resistance, and zealously surrendered to the commands of their new goddess without hesitation. Luckily for the Micro-Terrans, their ruler was an Aztec princess who was disgusted with the bloodthirsty practices of her people, and sought to forge a new society, as she saw fit. A non-violent society made in her own image, where there would be no bloody sacrifices to the sun-god, as was the custom of her people.

   Had a girl from Europe or elsewhere on Earth in 1501 arrived, it would've been completely different. The Micro-Terrans of that generation never knew how lucky they were to be ruled by the benevolent Aztec goddess who had conquered them, because others would not have been as kind to them.

   As the years passed, the Micro-Terrans constructed a statue to appease the beautiful young goddess, and a work-crew was assigned to supply her with a regular supply of new garments, as was expected for a goddess. This was a chore in itself, and required the constant work of hundreds of Micro-Terrans working two twelve hour shifts a day, seven days a week. The Micro-Terrans didn't complain, however; they considered it a privilege to serve their beautiful goddess, and each tried to compete with the others to prove he had served her more adequately than the others.

   Eventually, the decades passed, and the mighty maiden grew to adulthood, and became a beautiful woman. A new generation of Micro-Terrans were born who never knew life without the goddess of Micro-Terra, and there were some who accused the goddess of being a demanding tyrant. These words were said when the goddess wasn't listening, but the elders corrected the youths whenever they complained of dwelling under the iron fist of the mighty Aztec goddess, because they knew better.

   The elders had to constantly remind the youngsters that it could've been far worse, and that they were lucky to have been conquered by a kind and compassionate goddess, rather than by one who was cruel. The elders reminded the younger generation not one single Micro-Terran had ever fallen by her hand, and that there had even been years when the goddess herself had pitched in during storms to save the crops and build dikes and drainage ditches to protect the tiny town from flooding.

   The kindness of the Aztec goddess served her well in her later years, for when she was old and grey, she was far too weak to wield power over the Micro-Terrans any longer. Old and crippled by age and arthritis, the goddess needed the help of her tiny people. The tiny citizens made sure she had warm clothing to wear, and enough food to eat. Many, many years after her arrival there, the Aztec goddess passed away, and the citizens of Micro-Terra mourned for her, and buried her in a massive burial mound that exists to this day.

   Though it has been many centuries since the time of the Aztec goddess, the tiny citizens of Micro-Terra still tell their children the story of the Aztec goddess, the kindest and most gentle giantess who ever ruled their tiny land.