Nature's Story

• Kiele Manderson, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2016

The days turned to hours, the hours to minutes and the minutes to seconds. She could hear the seconds ticking away. Every second slipping from her grasp, she couldn’t bring them back. The page in front of her was blank, her keyboard untouched. She could feel her heart sinking with every second passing, and her stomach filling with one more butterfly at a time. She put her fingers gingerly on the keyboard, hoping for a miracle. Maybe the keyboard filling her with words creating the perfect story, or maybe the story writing itself. But sadly there was nothing. More and more seconds passed by as the terror grew closer to her. She stood up and pushed away from her computer, walking around the house. She grabbed her coat and shoes and rushed out the door, down the driveway, and across to the beautiful gardens. She walked along the path that was lined with all sorts of colourful flowers from poppies to roses to bright pink tulips. A sweet fragrance filled the air. She came to a seat and sat there, no clocks around, her heart feeling light and her stomach free of butterflies. She just sat and watched. A little girl in a lemon yellow coat smelling all the sweet flowers. A couple having a picnic under the big oak tree. Boys messing around, daring each other to climb higher up the rubbery limbs of the trees. She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds around her. The chirping of the birds and the dull hum of the bees. The grounds keeper whistling as he trimmed the bushes and the slow rhythmic footsteps of an elderly couple out on an afternoon stroll. As the setting sunlight danced on her face, her head filled with words, thick, juicy, descriptive words. Not all at once, but coming one by one. She stood up and started walking home. She savoured the smell of the fragrant flowers and the crispness of the evening air. She didn’t feel rushed or on edge, she just felt calm and relaxed and happy. She reached her door and went inside, going up to her room and opening her laptop. After days of nothing, her finger clicked the keys on the keyboard over and over again as the page filled with words. She wrote and she wrote, passing the minimum word limit and exceeding the maximum. But she didn’t care. She kept writing, about sorrows and joys, loss and gain. Finally, she looked at the clock and saw the terror had approached. But for the first time she wasn’t nervous, or scared. She read through her story again and again until she had to face this terror. She moved her hand across the mouse and pressed enter. She had sent the story to the competition, for the first time ever, testing her luck as a writer, her passion of writing. She looked at her entry number on the screen, crossed her fingers and hoped for the best.