"I can kind of see how looking at nature makes people smarter. And I'd like to say that it works vice versa, but that's just too good.. too weird to be true," Clara thought to herself, staring out the rather dirty window of the bus, bumping along the gravel road. She stretched, a bit stiff from sitting still for so long. A slender girl on the short side, she was sixteen years old, with dark blond hair down to her shoulders, blue-grey eyes, and nice hips, ones she took a little bit of pride in herself.
On her way home, which was a ways off from the city, she had to pass through a semi-wilderness, and right now she was enjoying the forest-y part of the view. She'd seen it hundreds of times before, yet it never failed to give at least a little bit of comfort. Watching the swaying of the greenery took her mind off things, one of the little gifts of not living among the streets day in and day out. Clara was starting to daydream, a bit lost in the rhythm of the forest, when the thickly growing fir and pine trees were unexpectedly interrupted by a huge billboard, telling her all about this astoundingly wonderful brand of tooth paste. New, of course. Because all the forest animals needed to know about it, certainly. "Fuck you, humanity.." Clara thought loud enough, she hoped, for the stupid billboard to hear her. Maybe not the most appropriate thing to think, less than the entirety of humanity being at fault, but good enough for the billboard to get the vibe of what her opinion of it was.
She closed her nicely-sized notebook of a pleasant darker blue and then bent down to pick up her bag, fumbling with her pen and successfully leaving a mark on her bare leg, where it would be just visible, peeking out from under the hem of her dress, which was a light green with tiny, detailed black flowers covering every available space. She cursed in her mind again, wondered briefly why she was cursing so much, and put the notebook and pen away.
Leaning back, she looked at her phone and discovered she had another 20 minutes before her stop. Then she closed her eyes, because there was a slanting beam of sunlight rather intent on getting into them. Since the bus kept moving, she was quickly relieved of this inconvenience, but she kept her eyes closed. This was because at times like these, the remnant of the sunbeam would create pretty patterns behind her eyelids, and the patterns would soon turn into delicate shapes and bizarre creatures and generally dream-like happenings, all of which were very intriguing to look at. Other sunbeams occasionally reaching her face only added to the effect.
A sharp turn of the road made the bus lurch, startling Clara back into reality. "Just in time.."
The bus was turning into a little lane, at the end of which she had to get off. Hoisting her bag up on her shoulder, she brushed off her dress, and walked in a wobbly way to the front of this rickety thing on wheels.
