|
I'm in!
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2021 02:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 06:18 |
|
|
The Bloom 1498 words  It is late winter in the Scottish highlands and the weather is miserable. Despite this, a small bus emblazoned with a university crest has made its way deep into the wilds, and is now bumpily easing into the muddy grass to park off the road. The same group had been trudging up here every afternoon for the last two weeks, returning each evening to the university empty handed and inexplicably optimistic that the next day, surely, would have just the correct conditions to produce the bloom. The Blooming Heather is a rare event and usually only of interest to particularly dedicated botanists, with the weather and inconvenience of the location scaring off the majority of more leisurely sight-seers. The flowers, about three times the size of their ordinary cousins, are spread so thickly they resemble a small forest. The splash of color is striking enough, but the flowers themselves are generally found every few years in this location. But today, the rain has paused long enough for shafts of sun, the temperature and humidity have cooperated, and at last, the conditions are right. As the flowers dry they release soft clouds of purple-grey, dandelion-like seeds to hang, suspended over the thicket, mingling with the low mist, and drifting slightly in the wind. The flowers and their heavy cloud of seeds are, all in all, almost five feet deep, and spread as far as the eye can see before the mist drops again. The bus has unloaded a handful of graduate students, their professor (an ambitious young botanist, Dr Deborah Levin), an aspiring local journalist, and, lastly, one very cold undergraduate American exchange student: Sarah stands in the mud beside the bus and stares. The mist blew raggedly through the cloud of seeds, but they seemed to move to a different wind, as though the air were thicker where the soft purple tufts gathered. Around her, awkward graduate students suddenly became scientists -- alive with activity and equipment, flurries of excited conversation, papers, and tangled cords as they scrambled to unpack. Sarah, in an attempt to make friends with anyone outside of her awkward exchange group, had asked to join the group only about three days ago. She had no business here, academically speaking: she was supposed to be studying art history, not botany -- but the group apparently didn’t mind having her along, and she found their united, endless patience to be comforting. “Sarah!” The shout startled her.she tore her gaze away from the cloud to where Annie, the young journalist from town, stood waving at her from across the road. When she saw she had Sarah’s attention she smiled encouragingly, gestured once more to come here, then turned back to snapping photos. Annie had been kind to Sarah over the past few days, and was the only other Asian person she had met so far in Scotland. She was also, more importantly, irresistibly pretty. Sarah hurried quickly across the road to join her, cheeks flushing, just as she turned to start filming a cluster of figures standing close to the edge of the cloud. Dr Levin and two of the graduate students were gathered closest to the edge of what Sarah had begun to think of as The Cloud, helping each other into white plastic jumpsuits, masks, and gloves. “Apparently the seeds will stick in clumps to anything and everything,” Annie said, not looking up as she filmed, “and they’re so small and light they could easily be inhaled -- ugh!” Sarah grimaced at the thought of the fine, cottony hairs clogging her nose, her throat, her eyes -- and took a small step back. With an enthusiastic two thumbs up to Annie and the remaining students, Dr. Levin, now wrapped in protective gear, turned and led her small team into the heather. They held their arms out at their sides, as though wading into a deep, cold, river, and the heather waved on its long stems as they gently parted it with their bodies, the cloud of seeds moving in lazy, cotton-candy swirls around them as they slowly made their way deeper into the mist. They stood and watched, frozen, until a muttered cursing to their left made them both turn. Two graduate students, rustling in protective gear, were hefting a long, cylindrical object to the edge of the cloud. There was a complicated bit of coordination between them, then a snap and whirring as the object unfolded around a cluster of flowers and seeds into a cross-shaped series of tubes, sealing them in before there was a loud thunk and a sharp ring thrust down into the dirt, snapping shut around a full spread of roots, dirt, flower, and seed all in one. Sarah blinked in surprise at it. “What is that?” she asked Annie, unable to look away “A kraenklok,” breathed Annie, reverently “...and what’s a krae...clock? What?” “A kraenklok? It’s sort of like a German crossbowie,” she said, absently, then turned abruptly back to her ipad as a thought struck her, “I wonder where they got the funding for that?” and she began flicking impatiently through pages of notes. Sarah shoved her frozen hands deep into her pockets as she looked back to the cloud, the odd machine whirring softly away in the background. She found her mind wandering in the patterns and colors, shifting, moving inexplicably against the wind, and she shivered, suddenly wanting nothing to do with any of it. She felt all at once out of place, a stranger in a deeply foreign land. She turned and made her way back to the bus, to wait for the rest of the team out of the cold. On the bus ride home, Annie sat next to her and tried to show her a new app that let people share their own images laid over famous works of art. “It’s all going to be selfies in Starry Night in a week flat,” she said dryly, turning and grinning at Sarah, inviting her in on the joke -- this is for you, her smile said, we can share this together. But Sarah could only manage a quick smile, before looking back out the window and the gathering dark. By the next afternoon Sarah had started to feel uneasy. She had seen only a few people at lunch, and the hallways and dorms were deserted. She wasn't sure if they would be going again to the mountains and the heather, since they had the samples now, but layered herself in rain gear anyway and made it over to the bus. The entire walk there was deserted. When she saw the bus in the distance she almost shouted in relief -- two figures stood talking intently just outside it. She started to jog over to them, the panic in her chest loosening as she recognized one of the figures as Annie. It would be fine. There was probably a local holiday she didn't know about. Everyone must be in town. Annie would tease her about it, everything would be fine. They would go back and find the cloud gone, the heather unremarkable for anything but their size and proliferation. She drew close and saw that Annie was talking with Dr. Levin, who looked unfamiliarly tense and worn. “Sarah!” she exclaimed as she saw her approaching, “Well that’s a bit of a relief, at least” “Whats going on?” Annie gestured to the empty bus, “we cant find the rest of the team, they’re not responding to calls or anything.” “I was just about to head over to the lab,” Dr. Levin said, attempting a lighthearted tone, “I’m sure they just got caught up in all the excitement of the new data. Do you want to join me?” They walked briskly across campus in tense silence, footsteps echoing across empty quads, until they reached a large gray building. Dr. Levin hurried up the stairs, flashing her keycard and pushing the door to open. It didn't budge. She frowned, waving her card at the reader again, but it was unresponsive. She pushed hard at the door but it was locked solid. “The basement lab windows!” she said, half to herself, and turned back down the stairs, rushing past the two girls and around to the left of the building, down a side path. Sarah and Annie ran to follow. The sidepath was washed with yellow light from the street-level windows which looked into the basement lab, and Dr. Levin knelt before them, gesturing for the girls to come closer. They pressed together in the small space between the buildings, out of the wind, and gazed down into the lab. It was gone. Or, anything resembling a laboratory had been almost entirely consumed, with only the fluorescent lights flickering over a thick, hazy cloud of purple-gray blooming heather. From where they crouched they could see the door to the lab hung open and the field stretched out into the hallway, the cloud of seeds moving in the lazy eddies of some other breeze.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2021 06:22
|
|
|
Might as well keep building my DM collection -- In!
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2021 01:54
|
|