Nature's Return - A Myth From The Future

• Charlie Mcgrath, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2022

She understood why so many cultures worshipped nature. It was almighty and brought life to the whole world. It was the whole world and it lived in symbiotic harmony. At least, this is what she had been told.
Except it had fallen, humans, while one was weak, together they had hunted, heated, and disturbed nature to such a level that it was now subdued. Its greenery had perished in the solar heat. Flora and fauna were few and far between in the concrete world.

It made Lana mad. She couldn’t bear to think of the past when they kept filling the sky with smog and the seas with plastic. And she lived in the most natural place of them all. She lived near the risen shores, in the northern territory of Australia. Her home was an old rubbish dump and her life was this. Each day she wandered around the grey and desolate landscape, scavenging for the waste of civilizations past. Reveling in every tin can she lifted from the silt. With only the arid shrubbery for company. As she foraged, she questioned her ancestors. How could they throw all these things away? How could they turn a blind eye as the green died?
It was inconceivable to her that they could throw anything away, when, she herself had scarcely enough to survive. Once she had found the so-called rubbish, she would repair it and sell it at the markets.

Then, 100s of years after you are reading this, Lana found a seed. At first, she didn’t know what it was. She had been at the lapping waves, avoiding the chemical-ridden waters when a sparkle of metal caught her eyes. A small sealed suitcase. Desperate to see what she had found, she tore through the box with a knife, and seeds spilled through the cracks. They looked awfully like minute rocks to her…
Suddenly, she saw it.
‘Bird seeds’ said a tag on the case. Lana puzzled over it for a while, unable to recall the word seed’s meaning. A movement caught her eyes near the case. Her breath caught. She shook her head. Had her eyes betrayed her? The seeds sank into the earth, then she witnessed a miracle. Green shoots sprung from the earth. Greener than anything she had seen before. They grew to trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, shrubbery, and every plant known to man in the blink of an eye. Nature was sparkling before her. Dumbfounded, Lana found herself smiling, dancing through the new rainforest that once was arid. Then she took the case and ran. Skipping and twirling through the land, seeds dropped onto the earth and Lana smelt the fresh air the trees were making. The seeds never seemed to run out. Soon, out came the creatures sent into hiding for too long. In every colour and shape, merrily taking their places in nature. It was a diverse array of species and life. Nature had returned to power. It always did and always would.