Haze

• Victoria Stock, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2013

Dirty grey smoke floats through the air, the marvelous golden rays of sunshine smudging as the smog mingles with the horizon. The dappled light lay in messy patches on the grass around the roots of the gnarled apple tree. Small lilac buds lay, shriveling in the cracked dirt. The smog drifts across the small corner-park, slowly choking the remainder of the violet flowers. A young girl, golden plaits flying, runs through the park, brushing the moldy wooden swing with her pearly-white hand. She drops down into the yellowing grass, gasping for breath, her eyes soaking in the rare sight of fluffy white clouds drifting lazily through the azure sky. The rusty old factories block her view of the postage-stamp sized heavens above. In the bustling center of Melbourne, there’s so much smog you can’t even see the peaks of the sky-scrapers. Legends say that years ago Melbourne was only a small part of Victoria, green with life, plants on every street and houses just one story. But they were just legends, fantasy...stories. The small girl, hardly even believed them. Melbourne wasn’t like that, could never have been. Melbourne...smog, factories, apartments, traffic...never a happy, peaceful place.

The young girl, with her pale skin and searching emerald green eyes lay on her small haven of life. She wished she could’ve seen the world, before her ancestors destroyed it with factories and smog. How she despised the killers of the world she knew. How she wished they were just happy with what they had. How she hoped that one day...just once...she could glimpse a healthy plant, in a natural environment. She wanted to know what it was like to look around and see life, see what the earth was supposed to be like. Not a world where you take one look around and you see buildings, grey, bleak, bland. Take a peak outside and all you are hit with is smog, threatening to choke you with every breath. Not where you feel like a tiny ant, scurrying through the feet of giants all the time, running scared between huge, industrial factories.

She stands up, pushing her dreams out of her head and flicks her plaits behind her shoulders. As she turns to leave, she catches a flash of red through the haze of smog that surrounds her. Shocked, she reaches forward to ensnare it. An apple. A real apple. She instantly takes a luscious bite of the tiny fruit, tasting it’s freshness. Not like the artificial produce you buy online. The small girl ravenously bites away all the fruit until only the seeds remain. She bends down and places one in the ground. She pats some dry dirt back over the top of it and wishes it well. Perhaps it could grow and humans can realise their faults. With the birth of a plant, the birth of a new world could take shape. With the sprout of one, tiny seed, hope is reborn.