Aliya the Warrior Dancer Goddess

Today is the first installment of:

Aliya the Warrior Dancer Goddess

The village people had been subdued and joyless of late.  You see, the sun had not appeared in the sky for many months and moods had become bleak.  Children misbehaved, men scowled and women ate too much chocolate.   After yet another week of darkened, stormy skies a meeting of elders was called.  All had to attend, even scowling men and women with tummy aches.  Something had to be done.  

Many options were discussed this night.  Wolen had suggested building a huge fire that might reach to the heavens and disperse the moisture laden air.  Shale thought praying to the sun god might help if everyone also sacrificed their first borns for him.   Everyone grumbled. Sacrificing and praying to the sun god was so last millenia...   What if everyone turned on their Blackberries simultaneously and called Aliya the Warrior Goddess of Light?  Siles had heard of Aliya when he was very young and had never forgotten stories of the mighty goddess.

He knew only that she responded when she was truly needed and hundreds of calls made to her at one moment might just do the trick.  

It was decided that the next day all the villagers would call Aliya at half past 10 in the morning, begging for her assistance.   At ten in the morning the town plaza became thick with the village people pouring in from everywhere, mingling in the misty, dark morning air.  Siles began organizing everyone in groups of fifty or so.   The calls would be made from each group one second apart.  The hope was thåt  Aliya would be beckoned by desperate calls coming from the dark village.   At 10:30 the first group hit their speed dials (Aliya's number had already been programmed into everyone's phone).  At 10:30 and one second, the next group called and so on till seven hundred forty-nine villagers had placed their pleading calls and left messages for the goddess.

Little did they know that at that very moment, Aliya was in her laboratory experimenting with a ceramic compound to determine it's tensile strength.  She was wearing her goggles and her lab jacket with 'Janet' emblazoned on the lapel.  You see, Janet and Aliya were one.  Janet, also known as Dr. Quinn, made the world a better place as a fractal engineer.   No one knew quite what that meant but they knew she was helping the world become a better place.   Though passionate about her work as a scientist, Janet Quinn was equally passionate about her other calling.  She was Aliya, the Warrior Dancer Goddess of Light.  Wherever darkness lingered, Aliya could be called upon to bring light.  Off would come the lab coat, off went the goggles and the sensible shoes.  Aliya would emerge with a razzle dazzle of beads and coins, a colorful skirt and hip scarf, a gravity defying bra top and unleash her long blond hair ready to fight the good fight.    

As she bent over her laboratory counter, the calls began coming in.  Janet had never liked cell phones but at the urging of her family had begun carrying one.  Call after call came through hundreds in just a minute.  She was needed.  Desperately.   With only a little sigh, she threw off her lab coat and goggles, ditched her shoes and shot up into the air in her golden costume, her coins catching the light and shimmering as she flew and then landed in the dark village.  

The villagers were astounded.  They had never seen anything like Aliya, not even on cable TV.  

She began her dance, slow at first, beckoning the villagers to dance with her slowly, then faster and faster, with hips and arms and bellies all moving together.  The kinetic energy of hundreds of hips and arms and bellies moving as one with Aliya leading them created a single spark that ignited high in the air and suddenly,  sunlight poured into the village.   Aliya Warrior Dancer Goddess kept dancing with the villagers until the entire valley was bathed in golden light.  Then, just as quickly as she had arrived, off she sped, back to her laboratory to finish her experiment.  She was happy to be back at work with her fractals but found herself thinking about that hip scarf she had seen in Egypt.  The one with the perfect gold coins.  And then there was that chartreuse bra top.   It seemed a shopping trip just might be in order.