All I can ask is, What if?

Struggle and Conflict

Gaia understood that struggle and conflict is at the core of the nature of life both within and among creatures. In fact she created it to test her creatures and aid their development. Central to this struggle would be the matter of power which was not easily shaped or yielded—especially by predators. But Gaia had a plan.

She knew struggle might involve failure, but she found the clever creatures called humankind intriguing and did not want to give up on her experiment easily. So she reserved a population which might be needed if she had to start the experiment all over again.

Creating a Refuge

While humankind lived on the land, she chose to make the sea available as a refuge. She reserved cities in the sea for a population made up mostly of women who were called Progenitors.

Since they lived in the sea, Progenitors had fish tails and webbing between their fingers while in the sea. But they could also morph into usual human form if they chose to come to the land. If need be, from them could spring a new race.

The cities in which they lived were called Tethys and among the women were a few men to insure diversity and because they might be needed if the population was to be restored to the land. The people who lived in the Tethys and those who came to land to live were collectively known as Tethyans.

The Reality of a Legend

While the existence of the Tethys was not widely known, some of the residents of these cities were sighted from time to time. The legends about mermaids were born of those sightings. And, of course, as with all legends, they took many forms going well beyond the matter of what actually existed. But the legends touched on one element of the reality of what Gaia had created. The image we have of the mermaid is correct in many regards.

The story of these people is deep and rich. Through it we experience the enhancement of the power of women and the benefits of partnership between those women and the men with whom they join. And then there is the matter of where the development of these people may lead.

The first book in the Gaia’s Majesty Trilogy is Gaia’s Majesty – Mission Called: Women in Power

The Andromeda Defense Force
Brigid Lynch

A Core Person (See her picture above.)

Of course safeguarding the future is not as simple as placing women in the sea. Their roles had to be diverse and there had to be a defense force called the Andromeda. In the first book, a woman by the name of Brigid Lynch is introduced. She is a talented and core person in the force. One of my readers referred to her as the “flaming haired assassin-for-good”.

An Interesting Origin

In fact, innocently, I created her as a redhead of Irish origins. Later I read the book The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor and learned not only that the Amazons were not mythological characters but originated in the area to the east and north of the ancient cultures surrounding the Mediterranean. And incredibly many of these women who fought in the nomadic and seminomadic tribes had red hair. Evidently it seems over time they migrated West to settle in places like Scotland and Ireland.
Dedication to Our Future

Brigid began life innocently enough. But life held a cruel fate for her after her mother’s suicide. The evil Overlord of the Irish estate where she had lived with her mother had her dumped on the street with no future at all. Or could it have been that Gaia had an ordained future for her. In time she was taken to a Tethys off the coast of Ireland in the care of Andromeda women. Her pain was transformed into dedication as she came to be an important figure in the crucial Andromeda defense force.

Roger B. Burt’s Amazon home page

Creating Characters and Plots by Roger B. Burt

Whatever Happened to Community Mental Health by Roger B. Burt