Temple by the Sea

Moonlight glimmers off the polished white marble, bright enough to create faint shadows across the temple floor. Gold figures gaze across the room from their niches in great marble columns. The air is heavy with the fading fragrance of summer flowers and the slowly dying heat. Beyond the cliff the holy place is set on, the ocean stretches out for unfathomable miles. A statue of the Goddess stands tall and proud. In her eyes is wisdom and love and the weight of the world.

A shadow creeps in through the entrance, a shadow in a white tunic with dark hair. She pauses metres from the statue and crawls forward to touch the Goddess's bare feet, averting her eyes with a devotee's modesty-but then she looks up, straight into her all-seeing eyes, showing a beautiful face painted with pride. She stares defiantly at the Goddess's carved face with what seems to be hate; then her hard shell crumples and she collapses, sobbing.

She gasps, "Why? Why, Great Mother? I swore my life to you! You promised me your protection. I trusted you. I loved you... Love you still!"

She glances to her right, at the oak-inlaid altar set at right angles to the statue, as she wipes her steadily streaming eyes. She is the type that can cry and still look beautiful. She whispers, "Is this a test? Testing my loyalty? Testing my decisions? To see what I-" A new thought makes her freeze. "Not that I presume to know your will, Great Mother," she says, bending to kiss the statue's feet. "But please, Great Mother. I don't know why it happened-" Her rage returns. "-why you let it happen! I prayed the whole time, Mother, prayed that I would wake up, that the nightmare would end. But it didn't. And now-" Her rage flickers out again, and she lets out a sob. "Now I am with child."

She squeezes her eyelids together and breathes carefully. She opens her eyes. "Great Mother, I know this happened for a reason. I know you have a destiny planned for me, as you do for all your children. A path set out for me. But Great Mother, I cannot see the way. Show me the way, Great Mother. Send me a sign!"

She pauses and waits. The heat has left by now, replaced by crackling anticipation. A light is creeping up behind her. As a new moon is born, her hope dies. She lowers her eyes and slinks backwards, then turns and leaves the temple with her head held high.

The Goddess's eyes continue to gaze across the temple-the blank, beautiful eyes of a statue.

Spoiler

any ideas for a better title? I hate, hate, hate titling things!

A very effective way to go about denouncing religion. Your descriptions of the temple are so thick and rich that you could cut them with a knife, which works really well for the finishing line - I could imagine the shrine almost as if it were alive, but then you go and shatter all those perceptions with the finish. Given that this is flash fiction, you also did well in terms of making this story self-contained, as every flash should be.

As for criticism, well... This is a very high-level work, so the only way I see how you could really improve the piece is make your descriptions more efficient. They are pleasant to read and well crafted as they are, but if you want to get even better, you would accomplish the same scene with half the amount of description. Try to make your sentences perfect - make them small but packed with implied information. Like... "The late August moon's fragile beams scatter off the golden figures, dancing on the polished marble floor and settling in faint shadows behind the figures' marble thrones." That's not the best example, of course, since I just came up with it, but you get the idea.

Excellent piece. I am definitely a fan. I expect to see more soon!

EDIT: Just noticed your request for title suggestions! For this piece, I would personally go with something like "The Midnight Prayer", or "The Visit At Night", "The Temple by the Ocean". In other words, something unassuming, something that does not hint at the story's theme: the theme itself is very visible and obvious in your story, so I would not make it the title of the flash. Kind of like how if an artist painted a willow swaying in the wind, he could either call it "Willow Swaying in the Wind" and let the viewer themselves derive themes from it, or he could call it "Winds of Hope" and come off as pretentious and silly. But, again, just my personal opinion.