The Dandelion Cycle Parts I-III
May 28, 2021 18:38:22 GMT -5
Ash Blake, Max f'n Daemon, and 1 more like this
Post by Downfall on May 28, 2021 18:38:22 GMT -5
Part I
Her fingers turned the pages of her book. An entirely new section of yellow-gold images and scrawled information appeared on the page. Danny, laying his head serenely across Michelle's lap, gazed lazily at it, then, cocking his head placidly up with his elbows raised, he'd looked from this pillow up to the clouds drifting overhead.Such a peaceful day... he'd remember this as one of their last good ones forevermore.
They made a pair sitting out on the knoll overlooking the Japanese garden in Jackson Park, the slim blonde in a Delia's dress and the scuffed, Hot Topic-dressed bad boy.
Danny paid them no mind and calmly watched clouds float by overhead as Michelle read from her book of horticulture and absently stroked her fingers through his cornsilk hair.
"Did you know," Michelle's voice was lilting, a studious affectation presenting a thought-provoking query to her audience, "that the word dandelion comes from the French, dent-de-lion, meaning lion's tooth?"
He sighed, giving her a long-suffering squint. "You really wanna spend our last afternoon together talking about dandelions?"
She closed the book, the words last afternoon cutting like a knife, but she deflected, "Dandelions are the most fascinating plants, honestly. They're - well, punk-rock!"
He grinned, looking at her like she was crazy, "There is nothing punk about dandelions, kid." She laughed back, like sho'you right. She opened the book again.
"The dandelion is one of the most versatile plants found, it has adapted to virtually every climate North America has. They've even been found in the desert. Dandelions are tough enough to survive persistent sprays with weed-killer, mowing, and can grow back from - "
"Chelle- "
She overrode him, " - and their medicinal value has been a vital part of homeopathic remedies since - "
"Chelle." He sat up, and gathered her hair in his hand, and pulled her into a passionate kiss. After a minute, they separate.
"The tour with the dojo's just six months... dad's out there, and he's playing Korakuen. Six months, then I fly to New York. And you'll already be in your contract, probably have done five-six shoots by then."
Her nod's a child's miserable head-shake; she bites her lip to keep from crying. He knows none of his reasonable tone means anything... why would it, his flight leaves at 4 in the morning. But he can't explain to her anymore that he has to go. He kisses her forehead again.
Her fingers, trembling, have plucked a small, yellow circle from the grass near them. She sits it behind his ear.
He lays down on her lap again. "Tell me more dandelion facts, flower-girl..."
Voice shaky, the page opens back up, and she begins to tell him how they grow from a floating seed.
Serenity had sat, with her knees together, on a little dune of sand and grass overlooking the slate-gray waves, and contemplating as he came down the wooden step. And for a long time, the two of them just watched the surf rolling in on Long Point Key.
He started to say something, but then thought better of it. It was awkward between them, still... in their first week, they'd had to establish some firm boundaries. The less said about her confused reaction of trying to revert to her submissive captive aspects, the better. The almost-kiss...
Since then, they'd stayed on opposite sides of the beach house. He had gone out every night, driving over the bridge back to the mainland, wanting to spend the least amount of time there as possible.
Serenity had plucked a strand of long, fiber-optic tough grass from the dune, and twirled it in her hand as she felt his boots in the sand behind her. Finally, she spoke first, "Danny... why did you want me to stay here?"
He didn't even consider it for a moment, his tone not unkind, perhaps a little understated. "You had nowhere else to go, kid... you were pulled into a van up north and your closest family's a sick old woman in hospice out'n Long Island New York... And you don't have - anybody? No brothers? No Dutch uncle, nothin'?" Serenity shakes her head.
"I'm a foster kid, been shipped from house to house all my life... never knew my mama," she said, her accent with inflections of Boston but every once in a while slipping in some down-home bayou patois, "My daddy well, he was always a drunk, didn't wanna kid like me..." She threw the blade of grass away, "Sorry, you probably can't relate."
He stood, aloof and stony, where a warmer individual would have moved to comfort the lonely refugee, but he said, "I can, actually."
"But why did you want me to stay here?" Serenity says, face turned to him but her eyes shifting away, touching her hair nervously. She was still waiting for a monster to peek out from behind a mask, for a nightmare lecher to snake it's tongue and caress her cheek with it as he pawed her clothes. But Danny just stood there, unmoving. She couldn't have known he'd never given any girl except one a second thought in his life. "If it's not... the one thing... then why did you even... come to my rescue... why did you put me up here."
He wants to answer, but after opening his mouth, he just throws open his palms and shrugs.
"I do have to tell you, kid. I'm considered an asshole in the circles I travel. I've bounced from place to place for a long time, been blackballed from others 'cause of my temper... and I've had to become really good at starting everything over from ground zero." He turns to the waves, his brow suddenly furrowed. "But I was given this opportunity to wrestle for a new company, they call it Action Wrestling if ya can believe that braggadocious shit... and the pay is more than I've made in a long time. They want me to come in and gave me a choice of facing some idiots named Chad Ford or Dionysus... hrn." The sudden tangent is more than Serenity's heard him speak in days. She sits forward, intrigued. And there's a little note of an old, firmly held belief in his voice, that he's better than this.
"So, you're starting over here, then, too." Serenity says, thinking that's good, it's something they had in common.
"Yeah, but... don't get it twisted, girl, I'm Daniel fucking Fehl, I'm the king of anarchy... give me three weeks and I'll have a stable of simps together and we'll be running the place." He jabs a thumb to his chest. Serenity regards him not half-amused. He's gone from being honest and vulnerable to his macho mindset playing on an idea of who he used to be.
"I think you're more than that, Danny... you may have this idea of yourself in your head as this asshole bad boy... but there's more to you than that."
She reaches down, to the patch of grass, and she pulls a stem. The plant is a closed, green shell folded around a yellow inside. A dandelion.
"You're just like this flower, tbh."
He cocks an eyebrow at her, taking the flower in his palm.
"See, dandelions get a bad rap, but they've evolved all this time to tough it out even in the most unlikely conditions. When they're protecting themselves from the elements or under cover of night, the outer membrane closes around it's leaves, protecting it's stamen... but when the sun shines on it the flower opens."
Danny looks from her to the closed bud in his hand, then tosses it into the ocean. And yet, Serenity's earnest attempt to connect has touched a part of him that recalls back to a day sitting in Jackson Park with someone special long ago... she'd read off facts about flowers that she thought were so punk... they'd kissed and lay next to each other, listening each to one earphone of a Walkman as it had played her mixtape, and they'd watched the clouds pass by over them as they lay on the knoll among a blooming field of dandelions. Memory synapses firing off like firecrackers, he breathed in.
"Yeah, yeah, don't get cute about it."
"I think it'd be good for me to stay here," Serenity says, "I think it'll be good for us to embrace some new beginnings and allow ourselves to open up here. Be who we really could be."
He fixes her with a sour look, non-plussed with the idea. She cracks a smile, though, and it's infectious.
"Just don't give me any more metaphors about flowers, kid. Come on, let's go inside, this godforsaken island can get hit by some fucked storms..."
She claps her hands together merrily, "I'll show you how to read my tarot cards and tell you your future next...!" as she bounds up the wooden step in front of him.
New spring dawns on AW... as the seasons shift us towards Evolution - a sun rising over the meadow-fields of wildflowers, petals turning in the sun, facing the prospect of facing Ash Blake for the World Championship.
But all of these fragile daisies and marigolds are faced the wrong way... I've been rising in their midst this entire time.
I'm hardier than any of them have ever given me credit for.
I've pushed my way through the clay; Under conditions that let some flourish very briefly before dying out, I'm still growing.
Not one person in this match can kill me in a way that matters.
You talk about the passion and determination, the pure fucking will to succeed, I have it.
Talking about the hunger of grinding through anything set in your path, I've got it.
I made my intentions plain when I lifted a 400-pound man up on my shoulders for Godkiller, there is NOTHING stopping me now.
There's flashes in the pan on our roster right now, damn a Havoc, they're probably gonna be out the door of AW and never amount to more than two points in a trivia contest.
I don't even feel the need to reference them, because they just... don't matter to me here.
Suffice to say if you're competing against Claire Hawkins for the TV title on a run-of-the-mill edition of Clash or out there trading cute little tweets with Johnny Bacchus in the Pure division, you're by definition bottom-feeding and aren't worth wasting breath on in this match.
I don't need to namedrop Odin Balfore (which is just everyone's token show of acknowledging one fat-ass elephant in the room)... when I challenged him one-on-one he gave me unfocused ranting talking about David Sanchez for twenty minutes.
I don't need to extinguish Teo Blaze. I don't need to wash the gutter out of Addy A's mouth.
I don't even care if you bring Stuart Slane, James Raven, Hajeet and Wade Moor combined out of retirement.
They've had little-to-no-bearing on the path I've walked since I came here last July.
But there're some... who've been privy to watching me grow... who even helped it along. Even when they thought they were ripping me down to the root.
You can tear the ugliest dandelion down to stem, but their taproots are strong and dig deep... they regenerate from any injury, no matter how dire.
And men like Carter Shaw have been groomed into their spot, they're hothouse roses carefully maintained and bred into their success.
But me... I'm a fighter.
I'm a weed that pushed through concrete to get where I am, meeting resistance along the way... but still unfolding.
It's to them I dedicate this ascension; talk about competing for Evolution, those who have been part of helping me evolve my mindset, sharpen my approach, hone my focus until I'm the most dangerous competitor to enter Havoc, fuck what number I'm given.
I want your smoke. I want your venom.
If I'm nearly half as good I say I am, if I can commit to the win.
When I'm one of the only people in this match that's still sitting at a 90% success rate in singles competition and the only man who Ash Blake has never been able to pin to the mat.
When I have the experience of coming in second in Warrior's Pride, in running through the gauntlet of EHWF's Mass-Roster Rumble from number two and winning it all.
I want to hear every word coming out of your mouths... until the last precious few seconds where I kick you so hard that your detached jawbones will get eliminated over the top-rope.
Yet I can hear those of you who aren't going to believe it, who are going to say "Eh, whatever, Downfall talks about beating Ash like the backup QB who came in and threw the winning TD for the high school homecoming game and won't shut up about it 10 years later..."
Except that I categorically have... and even if it was just me bragging about my old tape and that I hadn't done anything lately, that would still make me the owner of a record that nobody else has managed to equal since, not even Corey Black.
More than that, nobody else BUT me has given Philidor the sustained level of difficulty... not one member of Philidor has ever pinned me.
Not Lissie Hope.
Not Carter Shaw.
Not Ash Blake.
So how can I be so confident?
I'm the only one here that facing Ash is not only the built-in redemption arc... it's the only ending that makes sense; because we've been built as complete opposites, natural foils.
It all speaks to the past year, and the road I've walked. Self-discovery, self-actualization.
I took a deep look into my own abyss and came through forever changed.