They arrived overnight. Maia and Adelyn woke one morning to find that every room had been invaded. In Maia’s office, shoots of white clover appeared among the misaligned alphabet of her keyboard. Mushrooms umbrellaed open on each step of the staircase. Rich veins of ivy snaked up the walls and twined through the blades of the ceiling fan. A plush fur of moss emerged between the kitchen tiles, and oxeye daisies bloomed in the coffee pot.
Adelyn fought back, armed with shears and gardening gloves. But victory was always short-lived. Whatever she cleared away one evening would return by the next sun-pinkened morning, stubborn and resilient and alive.
At first, Maia tried to help her wife reclaim their house. But when a tuft of yarrow unfurled from the headphone jack of Maia’s phone, she had to admit it was a lost cause.
They saw videos on the news. In the plains, switchgrass five feet high fountained up from potholes. In the desert, saguaros overtook the freeways. In the mountains, aspens and firs erased whole towns. Then the blackberry brambles, which had been inching along the wires for weeks, finally erupted through the television screen. They stopped watching the news.
Soon enough, people forgot what it was like when the interstates were flat planes of concrete, unbroken by tree roots; when the slick glass faces of the skyscrapers were unmarred by vines with their covetous tendrils. People forgot, and they got used to this new life.
Maia wouldn’t say she was prepared, exactly. But she wasn’t surprised, either, when she discovered the first fine threads of young roots creeping out from her nail beds. She began to wake with the taste of earth on her tongue. She watched as her wife’s smooth skin turned gradually to the roughened oblong scales of hickory bark. Together in the forestland of their backyard, they reclined on white wicker chairs as the violets, at last, climbed over their eyes.
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Eleri Denham (she/they) writes fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays. Her short stories have appeared in Little Patuxent Review; Ghost Parachute; Cease, Cows; and other journals. Originally from Chicago, Eleri now lives in Oregon with her partner. Find her on Twitter @eleri_denham.