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Somewhere beyond Zashiversk, where the Indigirka freezes hard enough to remember, the plants grew as if they had learned history by drinking blood. Dane’s Blood—Dwarf Elder—rose wherever Vikings had fallen, its yellow flowers botched and luminous, as if the sun had tried to apologize and failed. Mannablóð they called it: man’s blood made botanical. Pulsatilla, taraxacum, oxytropis—names piled like bones, taxonomy pretending to be innocent. The land was small, criminally small, a plot no bigger than regret. Yet it would not stay empty. Dandelions, carried by accident and love, crossed oceans on the Mayflower, crossed time itself, and refused permission. Outlandish plants broke the wax mold of intention. They grew because growing was irresistible. Songs were sung there for no reason other than love. Not for gods, not for profit. Just because nightingales choose chaos when they sing. Odin passed through once, wearing a cowboy hat stolen from a future that hadn’t happened yet, muttering about weeds and wisdom. Thor followed, thunder misfiring like a bad memory, Valhalla’s halls echoing with rain that felt like brains rattling inside skulls. Shoggoths of ectoplasm clung to roots; art itself was vaxandi—still growing. During the winter fair, a chained chest appeared. The Yakut shaman demanded it be thrown into the river through a cut in the ice. The priest refused. When the chest was opened, jewels flashed, fabrics shimmered—and then black smallpox rose like a spell mispronounced. Zashiversk died, all but one girl, who lay under dandelions as if the weeds were guarding her. They said she was a giant baby, last of the round rocky clan, raised on rain and stubborn seeds. She grew listening to insects slain in bottles, to thunder breaking its own rules, to magic poetry scratched into bark—galdrbok verses about choosing newness without permission. In the end, nothing was saved but the plants. The bones of the Danes went down the drain of history, hated by gardeners who feared weeds more than death. Yet the weeds played music all night long. Metatron of weeds. Samael in the venom. Genius hiding in genus. And the land kept growing—not to conquer, not to remember—but simply because it loved to.
In a field that pretends to be ordinary, the dandelions practice a quiet heresy.
They rise on hollow stems, each flower a small sun that refuses hierarchy. Some are fully open, confident in yellow; others are already preparing their second life, heads bowed in rehearsal for flight. If you look closely, you’ll notice that no two are at the same moment in time. This is how they keep order—by never agreeing all at once.
There is an old belief, written in the margins of a gardener’s almanac, that dandelions are better listeners than people. A wish spoken to them is not granted; it is distributed. One seed carries it north, another toward rain, a third lets it dissolve entirely. Fulfillment, in this system, is a matter of distance.
A woman once tried to count them. She gave up when she realized the field was rearranging itself as she looked—yellow becoming white, white dissolving into air. The dandelions were not disappearing. They were changing states.
Each stem held two lives at once: one rooted, one already traveling. When the wind arrived, it did not destroy the flowers; it revised them. What remained after was lighter, less attached to standing in place.
Children know this instinctively. They blow and laugh, believing they are scattering time. Adults hesitate, afraid of releasing something they cannot follow. The plants do not mind either way. They have already accepted impermanence as a method of movement.
At dusk, the field dims, but the yellow lingers behind the eyes. Somewhere beyond the visible meadow, a seed lands and begins without ceremony. This, too, is part of the design.
The dandelions do not ask to be called weeds or miracles. They prefer a simpler title: evidence. Evidence that endings can be generous, that beginnings rarely announce themselves, and that the most faithful maps are the ones willing to be carried away by wind.
