The Scenic Route

She wore neither bra nor panties, and her nude body felt the warm caresses of the slight breeze and the fierce heat of the afternoon sun. She collected her castoff clothing and tossed it into the driver's seat she'd just vacated.

From the trunk, she took her tripod-mounted, computerized video camera, set it up so that it would film her according to its preprogrammed instructions, and, rounding her car, she scrambled down the slight slope to the west, and entered the draw below. The terrain was resplendent with wildflowers in a vast variety of dazzling colors, their scent sweet wafting on the warm breezes. The sandy soil felt cool and soft against her toes and the soles of her bare feet, and the leaves of the flowering plants tickled her flesh as they whispered against her calves.

Immediately, Rose felt as if she were one with nature. She didn't feel like an intruder. She didn't perceive herself as being a trespasser. No, she belonged here, among the cacti and the wildflowers, a desert nymph communing with the wilderness. The sky was her father; the earth, her mother; and the arrowleaf balsamroots, tidy tips, big-head clovers, Beckwith's violets, desert peaches, larkspurs, paintbrushes, phloxes, purple sages, and rayless daisies were her brothers and sisters. The desert was her home, and she was glad to be free of the flashing neon lights of the Las Vegas nightclubs and casinos, free of the responsibilities and duties associated with her graphics artist career, free of the brutality of Bruce the Brute and of the flirtatious banter of Kevin the Golden Boy.

Out here, she was free to be herself, her true self. Out here, she need keep no secrets, such as the one that Bruce the Brute had tried to accept but could not, the one that had made her his punching bag until he'd punched her one time too many and she'd gathered the strength of will to leave him. She'd never looked back, and she'd never been as happy as she was now, this moment, with a new career before her, living in an exciting town of glitter and glitz, able to travel at will and dance, if she liked, among the wildflowers of the northern desert, with, perhaps, a boyfriend, in the person of Kevin, in her future, provided that he could accept her for herself and live with the secret she must ask him to keep, the secret that she'd never dared to tell anyone except Bruce.