August 25, 2024

Prompt: Something being set on fire

She lay on her back in a dwindling snatch of shade and listened to the cicadas wail. A cabbage moth flitted past, its flight path erratic and unsteady. It might topple right out of the air if she reached out and flicked it, but it didn’t come close enough to try. Unmoving, she watched it bumble past her to alight on the petal of one of the lilies, its white wings glaring against the deep, bruised purple of the flower. The petals lolled like thirsty tongues stretched out long in the hopes of catching a drop of rain.

Listlessly, she reached for a nearby dandelion and tried to pluck it from the dirt. The weed held fast. Near the corners of her lips, muscles in the centers of her cheeks twitched in fleeting reference to a frown. Slowly she lifted upper back off the cool earth, propping herself up on her elbow. She considered the unassuming contender from higher ground. Its petals pricked outwards like shards of shattered sun into a circle nearly two inches across. The stem stood tall and straight under the weight of its spiked halo, unwavering under all that it carried. In spite of the heat of the day, of the month, a heat so unrelenting that it brought the entire city to its knees; a heat that wilted the pansies and the dahlias in the garden, that singed the leaves of the cucumber plants; a heat that slowed even the likes of her, so that by now she spent the afternoons lying placid and still on her back in the grass, waiting languorously for the marginal reprieve of evening — in spite of the heat, the dandelion held its ground, vibrant and erect.

With one crooked finger she caressed the stem, tracing slowly down its smooth length to the place where it plunged into the earth. She pictured the vast network of roots that exploded downwards from that spot, fighting their way valiantly through soil and clay in service of the flower above the surface, every day advancing further and deeper into the dark.

She clamped her fist around the base of the stem and jerked, severing the earthly bloom from its forces below. Languidly, she lowered herself onto her back once again. The torn base of the dandelion’s stem was frayed and fibrous strands of its innards shot out at varying lengths. She felt a pulsing against the delicate skin where her fingerprints whorled, the throb of the cells in the stem as they marched tirelessly on, pushing the last of the water they’d sucked from their roots up, up, up to the blossom above. The stem was still firm with their efforts, resisting the process of decay even as it began its dark and silent creep.

Eyes fixed on her kill as she twirled it slowly between her fingertips, she reached her other hand into her pocket and pulled out a lighter. She snapped the flame to attention, kissed it to the bottom of the stem. It didn’t burn. Again, that flicker of movement in her cheeks, a hint of distaste. She moved the flame, touching it this time to the sharp yellow petals. An instant reaction: they recoiled from the heat, retracted, started to smoke.