Then There Were Flowers

I



Winds gusted, twirled and slid across flat gray lands stretching past the horizon in every direction. The local star appeared to change position, sweeping across the sky. Taller clumps of snow cast shadows across shorter clumps.

There was no pain or loneliness because there were no creatures to feel pain or loneliness or happiness or anything else. No one marveled at pale skies marked with smooth shiftings of feathery cirrus clouds 15 miles above. Hurtling ice chunks smashed no one's frost-bitten face and afternoon sun rays warmed no one's back.

And then there was water.

And then there were flowers.




II



blue, red, yellow, red, blue, blue...

a fuzzy arctic bumblebee moves between blooms

red, red, red, white, yellow...

More hairy little bees zip in between blooms and an initially overwhelming buzzing fades to quiet; a busy quiet; a frantic, chaotic quiet.

shadows zip, zip, zipping across tundra grasses

a zillion bumblebees vibrating over a bramble of violet flowers

bees wanting pollen, flowers giving pollen, bees spreading pollen

flowers using the bees
bees using the flowers

One taking as much as the other can give, the only wrong a bee could do is ignore the vibrant flowers.

yellow, orange, pink...

duller flowers are visited less often and wilting flowers not at all

red, blue, yellow, red...

Darkness encroaches, flowers fade to grayish and the satisfied little arctic bumblebees go home.




III



Flittering, twittering, then a snap and the fluffy parachute seed zooms into a murky sky ocean filled with tiny, swift particles.

It zips low across barren prairie, bouncing over blackened ground where a red-orange-yellow-white ember had popped, flared and ignited a quilt. Timbers had turned to heaps of charcoal sticks, heavy drapes to flapping ash webs, children to bones. Nails patterned with bluish-black rainbows dimly glint the day.

Onward goes the seed, between grass blades, over dwindling snowdrifts, into the sweat of a charging bull-moose. Mushy thud of collision and the bull falls down forever with a broken skull. Sweat evaporates and the parachute pod is freed, tumbling smoothly away from the twilight sun.

---

Though surrounded by tiny swift particles of dust, moisture and much more, an observer's eye is usually unable to focus on the billions of nearby vagabonds (some mere millimeters away) giving an illusion of emptiness in the vast ocean. An illusion ruined when the observer is struck by a seed whooshing along at 45 miles per hour.

And so the seed zoomed up a cliff through a narrow rocky canyon and into a black dot in the middle of a gold-flecked brown eye on the right side of a ram's dirty-white face, the tiny wooden seed pod embedding deeply into soft pupil. Right eye blinded, the panicked ram is unable to defend his flank effectively and the wolf-pack sates their lingering winter starvation. Full-throated scream-shrieks echo through the canyon.

Steaming arterial blood squirts rhythmically in weakening spurts from the ram's neck, washing through the eye, down pinkening face, sucked into and spattered out of flaring nostrils, gathering at the mouth and nose's edge then splashing down in full, quivering drops. The seed is washed into a muddy pool of blood, bile and mucus, and licked up. The seed takes a quick journey through the stomach and intestines of a wolf and the wolf takes a quick journey through canyons and down mountain trails. While the satisfied pack sleeps too soundly, another attacks. The seed is expelled from the bowels of a fitfully dying host.

Growing readily in blood softened soil and fresh fertilizer, the seed's roots slip into the land, absorbing melted frost. A green sprout erupts into flowery bloom and becomes a delicate white crown of fluffy parachute pods.

The ocean continues its cyclic south-eastern rush.




IV



Flowers and tundra grass fill stomachs as the elk herd walks and grazes. A few stomachs are fuller, less graceful, moving slower, more heavily with babies knit from last year's flowers and tundra grasses.

A hole is found in melting lake ice, splashing and guzzling of elk ruptures the silence while an almost mother plods away from the group and leans against a giant stone.

She breathes heavily, flexing and straining, flexing and straining, in rhythm with her breathing, flexing and straining, stretching and pushing, more and more, more and more, flexing and straining, the head is sliding out, stretching and pushing and it's out. Shivers spasm in waves through her body for a long moment and then she's biting the amniotic sac off of her baby, making sure her baby can breath, licking the after-birth off her gooshy-crusty detritus covered baby, cleaning her soaked baby, prodding her drying baby.

A new mother walks back to an excited herd with her wobbling, springing, dancing baby.



V



Torn deep from the ground millions of years ago by a glacier, the stone was carried hundreds of miles south. The glacier melted and set the stone heavily into place beside a deep lake it had carved then filled. And thus the giant stone had sat there since before the world's oldest tree sprouted, before any building made by any creature, longer than most species had existed.

In spring and summer the stone warmed slowly. Plants sprouted from the crevices on top, seeded and fertilized by northbound birds. Animals rested against it, treasuring the warmth. Autumn storms blew high waves from the lake and onto the stone. The waves would freeze in spectacular feathered icicle bridges and during dark months, the stone was part of the glacier again. Then the water melted and the cycle repeated. Each year, the cracks in the stone were a little deeper from water that dripped into crevices then froze and expanded, melted and contracted, water droplets breaking down the mighty stone from the inside.

The stone was that morning as it had been the days before. An elk gave birth, birds sat, grasses grew and a northern cold front moved south. Winds picked up, clouds turned day to midnight, and chilly rain soaked everything. The early summer ice storm howled, the temperatures dropped far, far below freezing, the fallen rain crystallizing quickly.

Elk shivered and died in place, unable to break away from the ground. A new calf froze while nursing, rocking forward and back a few times then closing its eyes. Birds fell over and tumbled, bouncing off of the herd and across the tundra. Frozen petals vibrated, broke and shot into the sky. Naked corpses of shattered flowers snapped and chased after the birds. Bumblebees and other ice encrusted insects fell dead, down with the sleet-rain they fell.

Rain drops flooded the stone's crevices and froze from the outside inward. Deep shattering, breaking, releasing, popping, crackings exploded out over the storm's massive noise and the great stone collapsed into a hundred-thousand craggy, multi-colored pieces.

---

Animals would scavenge the birds and elk. Water would continue breaking down the stone's remnants into gravel and then dirt.

There would be flowers.