Dandelions

The red gloom darkened as evening approached, much earlier than it ever had before the explosion. 

Athena grimaced, hoisting her backpack on her shoulders. 

“We should get back to camp,” she told the crew of gangly teenagers behind her.

They didn’t need to be told twice.

While none of them had seen the source of the screeches and yowls that started every night at sundown, they had heard enough stories to know that they didn’t want to know. They had seen enough mangled corpses to reinforce that knowledge. 

Athena adjusted the grimy cloth covering her nose, protecting her from the dust and ash in the air. She hated the smothering feel of it on her skin, but again, the evidence of not following this basic protective factor had been plenty. 

How many people had she known whose lungs gave out one day, blood trickling out of their lips as they hacked and coughed?

“Do you see that?” one of the kids, Dennis, asked, pointing to the right of the group.

Athena peered into the gloom, her eyes trying to see through the particles that hung in the air. 

“See what?” she asked, only mildly irritated by the interruption. 

It was important to always be prepared. One of the things Athena had learned over the past year was that the young kids had the best eyes. They could spot things amid the ash that even she had missed. 

“It’s a…”

“It’s a flower,” another kid, Demi, chimed in, “Like a dandelion!” 

Athena paused, before stalking in the direction they were pointing. 

Sure enough, the furry yellow dandelion heads poked out of the ground.

Athena could remember hours spent in the hot sun, digging dandelions out of her step-mom’s flower beds. She remembered how she used to hate the line of dirt that would collect beneath her nails, or the dry, roughness of her palms after a hard day of gardening. She had also hated her step-mother, as many teenagers do.

But that had been before Tina had pushed Athena out of the way of a reckless Jeep. Before she had bled out on the pavement.

There had also been a time where Athena had hated the dandelions themselves with a passion. They were dogged little plants. Weeds. No matter how many she pulled, more would pop up in the grass, among the flowers, through the sidewalk. 

Their perseverance, even now…

Athena cleared her clogged throat, choosing to believe it was a result of the dust. 

“Damn right, it is a dandelion. Could catch Demi, Dennis.”

The two young teens nodded to each other, as their leader crouched to inspect the plants more closely. 

There hadn’t been many living things over the past year. Athena and the crew had eaten a good amount of scavenged non-perishables. Canned beans, twinkies, and the odd pack of sardines. She was shocked that scurvy hadn’t been more of an issue for them, but then again, they did make a point of collecting multivitamins when they could. It was one of the things that kept them the healthiest of all the crews they had crossed over the past year. 

Which was good, because then they could move fast. 

And moving fast meant avoiding raiders and other unsavory opponents. 

But fresh food? Vegetables? 

Athena couldn’t even remember the last piece of fresh fruit she had eaten. 

When the explosion sent thousands of pounds of ash, dust, and debris into the air, the sun had all but disappeared. Day and night became one grey monotone. The howls of unknown beasts were more a marker of the night than the moon or the stars could ever be again. 

Plants? Fruit? Vegetables? Weeds? 

All dead. 

Green was a color all but forgotten by those that remained. 

And yet, this dandelion, small and scraggly, had persevered. It had pushed its way through the dusty, cracked earth. It had reached towards a sun that could barely pierce the atmosphere anymore. 

And it bloomed. 

The powerful swelling in Athena’s chest was unfamiliar, and her silence was more to prevent the crew from hearing the emotion in her breath. 

“What do you think it means, Attie?” Hestia, the youngest of the crew, who they had found in an abandoned shopping mall only a month before, chimed in from beneath her sequined scarf. 

What did it mean? 

That something would persevere when there seemed to be no reason to do so? 

Then again, wasn’t that what they were doing? What Athena had been doing for the past year as she found kids and teenagers in need of protection and support? 

Why did she care so much? Why did she treat them as though they were her family? As though there was some sort of future they were preparing for?

Athena touched the ground, the skin on her hands cracked from a year of living with the bare essentials, her fingernails dirty and chipped. Her hand shook, the dandelion leaf skimming the back of her hand. 

Behind her, the crew exchanged glances. Many of them had never seen Athena be vulnerable. Though she was only a year or two older than some of them, she had always seemed so strong. Stoic. 

But crouched beside what they still considered a weed and infestation… 

“Did you know,” Athena said, her voice quiet, “That dandelions were considered a food source for many years? People would put them in salads, make wine, make jellies. They were brought to North America by immigrants who just wanted to have an easy food source.”

Some of the crew nodded. Some still stared at her, confusion wrinkling their dust encrusted brows. 

“And then, somewhere along the line, especially with the growth of lawn culture and whatnot, we decided that they were useless. Pests.”

Athena stood, brushing her hands on her pants, and glancing around them. Ensuring that nothing had crept up behind them while she had lost her composure. 

“Do you want to know what a dandelion means?” she asked the motley crew before her.

They all nodded. Some short. Some tall. Some with skin as dark as fertile soil, and others pale and freckled. 

“It means,” Athena breathed deeply, steadying her voice, “That we can hope. Spring is here.”