281.366 - 2016 project and Quetzalcoatl

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Quetzalcoatl

when I was sevenish and we had returned to Brasil but now lived in a wide, wide city, so wide you could fly over it for minutes, maybe an hour, and still be over the city, I ran into Quetzalcoatl.  not physically!  wouldn't that have been something!  but in some simple, apparently harmless book that I read.  it was just one story among many, probably the only story I ever read in which the protagonist was an Aztec boy.  I don't remember it well enough to tell you any details except these.  the boy gets himself into an ever so, oh so scary situation, and prays to Quetzalcoatl for strength and courage.  holy Toledo!  he doesn't get any extra strength, and he doesn't notice getting any extra courage, but instead of hiding in the shadows, shivering and sweating, he sneaks out and does what needs to be done.  whoa!  here was another god just as reliable and useful as the one I knew!  I don't think I physically turned a cartwheel in place, but it was that kind of eye-opening idea.  so I looked up Quetzalcoatl in the Book of Knowledge, and there he or it was, an Aztec god, a feathered serpent.  I don't remember that anything else stuck.  I sat there about to burst with excitement, desperately wanting to tell someone else, someone who'd appreciate it just like I had.  other people had other gods!  their gods were just as helpful to them as ours was to me!  one such god was a feathered serpent instead of some fierce old grandfather in a dress!  and I couldn't tell a soul!  telling anyone in my family would have started a hurricane of a fooferaw!  telling one of my teachers (I went to a Baptist school) would have unleashed at least a tornado.  the kids at school barely knew Mexico existed, thought New Mexico was part of Mexico, and had heard of the Aztecs, but kinda like they'd heard of whales and condors, things just more real, maybe, than elves and pixies.  nope, Quetzalcoatl and the ideas he'd brought me were mine and had to be kept secret, but what delicious secrets!