“Hello Aziraphale!”
A weed, Aziraphale realized as the first rains of the flood began to fall. That’s what it is, he keeps popping up like a weed.
After encountering the demon on the wall of Eden, Aziraphale had assumed that Crawly would keep his distance for a while. Surely Crawly had only been so eager to start a conversation with the angel so that he could gloat over his success.
But then the demon had appeared at Noah’s Ark, a cite of godly work.
“Sounds like something you’d expect my lot to do,” he had said, looking towards the gathered crowd with something akin to dismay.
Ah, Aziraphale thought. He was about to gloat again wasn’t he. He was coming over here to try and…and leech away the goodwill or something.
Aziraphale understood that’s what weeds did. They sprouted up in gardens and sponged the nutrients from the soil so that the good flowers, the flowers that you wanted, would shrivel and die.
That must be why the demon kept coming around whenever Aziraphale was up to something important. Crawly wanted to get the upper hand, to slither his way into the throngs of holiness and virtue so that he could sour the sanctity of Aziraphale’s work. Crawly couldn’t let the flowers grow.
“Come to smirk at the poor bugger, have you?”
Anguished as he was, Aziraphale had the presence of mind to wonder why Crawly Crowley had chosen this place to sprout. There was not much goodwill to tarnish, nothing much to gain. Perhaps he was hoping to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of the spectators. It seemed an easy enough time to do it.
But as the crowd had dispersed and the sky grew dark, Aziraphale struggled to come up with a wicked reason for Crowley’s vigil by his side. The stars had risen, the ground lit in the strange orange-blue of the moon, and Crowley placed a cautious hand upon the angel’s shoulder, steering him away from the quieting cries of Christ.
“We should leave him to it,” Crowley muttered darkly, but Aziraphale saw the way the demon’s jaw clenched, something in his gaze asking Aziraphale not to argue, not to question.
Like a weed, the angel thought.
Aziraphale stared into golden eyes. Dandelions.
Crowley was in Rome, and Aziraphale almost let himself admit that this surprise was pleasant.
Then Crowley had to go and ruin it in Wessex, bringing up that ridiculous “arrangement” and reminding Aziraphale just how bitter dandelion greens really were.
Again and again, Crowley would appear by Aziraphale’s side, sometimes leaving in good spirits, other times poor. As the years went by, decades, centuries, Aziraphale came to forget that dandelions were ever weeds in the first place. They were unexpected bursts of color, unexpected joys that you may miss if they didn’t keep sprouting underfoot.
“Lift home?”
That’s the other thing about dandelions: they die. And when they die, they expand. They turn to spheres of cream, looking to be barbed before you touch their downy tufts. But once they’ve bared themselves in this way, a single touch can break them.
Armageddon came. Armageddon went. And as they sat on a bench in Tadfield, passing a bottle of warm wine between them, Aziraphale realized that he no longer noticed when Crowley popped up out of the blue.
Because Crowley didn’t do that anymore. He stayed.
“You can stay at my place, if you like.”
There’s a myth that children know. When a dandelion turns to tuft, you can pluck it from the ground then make a wish. Wish, wish for something impossible, then blow and send the seeds spiraling into the air. Even in death, they become hope.
“To the world.”
“To the world”
What does it matter really what the dandelion is. It is a weed of course, but only because it grows somewhere we don’t think it should. It flourishes in unkempt lots, by roadsides, through sidewalk cracks. It is destined to be desolate, to be ripped from pristine rose gardens and burned to ash.
But the dandelion chooses to be yellow. And it chooses to persevere. And it chooses to hope.
And really, thinks an angel, smiling back at eyes bright with gold and laughter. What better seed to sow?
Oh my god. THIS… this is perfect. As someone who has a lot of feelings about dandelions, you have officially broken me in the sweetest way.
I am so touched that you wrote this! It’s incredible to me to think that a drawing of mine could inspire the creation of such a wonderful ficlet. Thank you so so much!! I will cherish this.
