Nature’s Flight

 

                                                            By Matthew Spence

Jessica Beckingham first heard about the flying plants from one of her neighbors. She'd been tending her flower garden when she noticed that some of her plants were missing. At first she thought an animal might have dug them up, or that they might have even been stolen, but the holes where the roots had been were too neatly scooped out for that. Then she heard about the flying plants on the news, and told Jessica what had happened.

 

"I don't know why mine left," she sobbed. "I took good care of them."

Jessica tried to be sympathetic. "Maybe it was just instinct, or something-they just wanted to follow the others? The rest of your flowers are still there, after all."

"Yes, but why is it happening?" Jessica's neighbor suddenly sounded afraid. "What if something else is next?"

 

Jessica began to wonder about that too, as the news about the flying plants spread. But as she had pointed out, it was only some plants, not entire groups, or colonies, as they were called. Videos were shown of trees, flowers, bushes, even weeds, pulling themselves up out of the ground as if by invisible hands and floating up until they were caught by the jet stream or other air currents and deposited hundreds, sometimes, thousands, of miles away, where they took root again.

 

"It seems to be a migration pattern," one of her other neighbors, a man named Scott, said one afternoon. He was a biology teacher at the local high school, and had been following the flying plants online. "They're staying in their own hemispheres, however. And different plant species seem to be deliberately avoiding each other. It's like they treat each other as invasive species infringing on their territory."

"But what does that mean?" Jessica asked. "Are they intelligent?"

"Plants do communicate with each other in nature," Scott pointed out. "And...yeah, that worried me. What if...what if they start to organize-against us?"

 

Jessica had wondered about that herself, and thought about it as she somewhat nervously looked at the sky. There were a few flying plants up there now-trees, elm and birch, probably from the nearby national forest area. She wondered where they were going, if they were going to take root there permanently, or if they might leave and go somewhere else. And what would they do then?

 

Jessica hoped she wouldn't have to find out, as the herbs on her kitchen windowsill began to stir restlessly.

About the author: 

Matthew Spence was born in leveland, Ohio. His work has most recently appeared in Tall Tale TV. More details of the author can be found here: