In Which I Experience Nature: Narrative Flash Fiction Exercise

From a 15 minute writing exercise

This piece isn’t particularly polished or profound. I wrote it sometime early last year as an exercise in about 15 minutes. But I hope you enjoy it regardless.

I try to be a nature girly. But sometimes, the nature, well, natures a little too nature-y for me. Especially around this time of year.

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In Which I Experience Nature

by Rachael Raine Rivers

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Shimmers streak through my overgrown lawn as the grasses flutter beneath my hammock. I am lying absolutely still. Less out of a sense of awe than because there is a bee. A bee, fully the size of those old-fashioned candy Circus Peanuts, has claimed the run of lawn space flush against my apartment building. Blackened bee-fur bristling, she seems to float one moment, and then dart, and then draw herself up short to hover. As though the breezes’ drift and the physics of gravity do not exist for her. As though she is cavorting on solid ground, which, for her, continues in all directions all at once.

She keeps returning to my hammock, pausing to face me just out of arm’s reach. Studying me? Sizing me up? I can’t decide if she is looking for a place to land or if she recognizes me as another (questionably) intelligent being. But she is unafraid. This outdoor world is her domain. I am, to her, simply a curiously-displaced object within it. And staring is apparently not at all rude in her culture. This is not a New York subway car.

It makes me wonder, the way I do when my cat seems to understand, to respond to human language outside of his usual repertoire of words: do bees know? With or without words, do they know that humans -- my species, other beings like me -- are the reason the air and the water are so polluted? Are the reason it is too hot for them outside? The reason the flowers they pollinate are so scarce? Do they hold it against me?

A moment later, I hear her buzz as she reappears over the apartment roof. This time, however, she is attached to a mate, and it seems to have impacted her balance, her control. The pair wobble heavily as they descend. Her buzzing blares, a tiny semi-truck skidding down a mountain, warning me out of her way. And then, they careen into my face.

I scream, and I drop my phone, and all pretentious musings along with it.

It is high time I went back inside.

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Don’t forget that I’m hosting a free book giveaway for the month of May! Details for entry below:

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