The Bison and the Blossom

The Bison and the Blossom

by

Rachel Cooke

(age 15)

Charlotte loved nature; she loved flowers and seeing the corollas spin and blossom, season after season. It was like her own personal, living sanctuary: gardens and botanical adventures, seasons, growth, and new stems.

 Her aunt lived in Saskatchewan and had invited Charlotte to come and live with her for the summer months. After a bit of research, Charlotte collected all the information she needed to look for and study new plants in the Great Plains that she couldn’t find in the city.

Now that she was actually here, roaming the land, scooping out all kinds of new and interesting things: plants, flowers, animals, and places. It seemed surreal, as if she were just in a dream.

A little fire orange flower tickled lightly against her ankle. Charlotte kneeled down and cupped it softly in her hands. Her eyes grew wide- a western red lily, with two different buds growing out of the same stem! How extraordinary!

Charlotte retrieved her small, leather book and sat down next to the flower to try to sketch its beauty, and hopefully, capture some of its rarity and amazement.

 First, she swept a brushstroke with the charcoal, forming a side of the stem. Then another for the disfigured petal spouting out of its left side.

Suddenly, she heard a rumbling from her right. Charlotte turned her head in both directions but could see nothing. The rumbling continued. It grew louder and louder. The ground seemed to shake, trembling beneath her feet.

 Charlotte quickly gathered up her art materials and crammed them into her bag, probably damaging some of it in her blind haste.

The undisturbed flower remained rooted in the ground behind her, uncaptured by Charlotte’s charcoal.

The thick, brown body of a bison appeared as a dot in her hazy vision. Trampling the ground, demanding it as his own. The bison’s large, oddly- figured body, hurdled towards her, solitary and terribly frightening.

Charlotte’s feet couldn’t move as she watched the bison coming closer and closer. Its pointed horns came into view and her heart skipped a beat. It ran towards her, and to her, it seemed like she was his target, even though he could never have known she was there to begin with.

He was now only fifty feet away, forty, now, thirty.

Still he came even closer- running alone, on a devastating mission.

The wind from his hooves and his breath blew the hair back from Charlotte’s face and caused her to lose her balance. She stumbled to the ground and the bison was gone-an illusion of the plains. She was left to wonder forever after the certainty of his existence. 

(Assignment for Lesson #12 - Climax)

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