Dandelion Seeds
A piece of fiction about persistence.
My girlfriend is dead, but she came back to the realm of the living through the sheer power of love. Not love for me, but for her ex – this all happened before we met, you see.
They’d been together for five years and were engaged to be married, but she fell overboard on a boat tour of Copenhagen and drowned. Her soul persisted in the ether, and she sensed how bereft he was without her, so after several weeks she found a way to force herself back into existence, forming a rudimentary body out of fallen autumn leaves.
This terrified her ex, to see a mass of leaves shaped vaguely like a woman stumbling towards him when he was walking his dog. He had no way of knowing it was her, and she couldn’t speak. So she honed her skills, harnessing the powers of the spirit realm and bending the dead matter to her will. No-one was there to teach her: she had to work it out for herself. She experimented with different types of matter, but plants always worked best. After months of practice she was able to not only form a body, but mould it to look exactly like she had when she was alive. At first she could only hold it together for a few minutes, but over time she gained greater control. She didn’t want to repeat her earlier mistake, when she’d terrified her ex. She waited until she was ready and could hold herself together for at least an hour.
She went to the flat they used to share and knocked on the door.
Again he was terrified, because he thought she was dead. But she was able to speak to him and make him understand what was going on, that she’d come back because her love for him was stronger than death.
He said that was amazing, and he was so flattered. Then he admitted he was seeing someone else.
That was a bit quick, she told him.
He shrugged, and his face formed into a foolish expression, and she knew him so well from the five years they’d spent together, she saw the truth at once: it was not quick. There had been an overlap. He might even have been glad she’d died and saved him the awkwardness of breaking off their engagement.
She didn’t know what else to say. She stumbled out of his apartment and her body fell to pieces and blew away on the wind.
She spent a few days in the ether cursing him, and the time and effort she’d spent getting back to him, and she rattled the windows of their apartment a bit, and then it occurred to her: she was still here. The power of love had brought her back, and the love hadn’t lasted but she was still here. So she might as well do something.
She made a body for herself each day and walked around the city for as long as it held together. She didn’t want to disturb her friends and family – going back to her ex had gone so badly, and anyway it seemed only fair to let people move on – but she yearned for human contact, so she spoke to strangers, finding herself uninhibited in a way she never was in life. That’s how we met: I was on my way to an art gallery, and she came to see the exhibition with me, and it turned into a date.
It was on our third date she told me she was dead. She hadn’t intended to tell me so soon, or perhaps at all, but she was surprised by the strength of her feeling for me. She couldn’t bear the thought of this secret driving a wedge between us, she had to tell me before things got any deeper. She became so emotional while telling her story that she collapsed into dandelion seeds before finishing it, and I didn’t know if she would ever come back. When she did, she claimed she’d been able to sense my longing for her to return, and that was how she knew to do so. It occurred to me she’d also sensed her ex was bereft without her, and that clearly wasn’t the case. But it would have spoiled the moment had I pointed this out, and anyway it didn’t matter.
It’s disconcerting of course, to be kissing her one moment and the next to have a mouthful of cut grass, or waking up to a bed full of wilted flowers. But knowing she could fall apart at any second makes the time we spend together more precious.
Good grief, that was creepy!