Hope Seeds

The morning's semblance of normalcy was soon to reach its conclusion. Locals traversed downtown's sidewalks, dwarfed by capitalism's monuments, the buildings that cast manipulative shadows far longer than most cared to consider. They walked briskly with their minds fixed on their destinations, the hours until day's end, and the financial burdens awaiting them at home. As they moved into the crosswalks, on both sides of Cental Avenue, car horns trumpeted the city's theme song—a ballad of patience deficits and affront.

Then, the unexpected.

Cherry blossoms began to rain, drawing out curiosity and confusion as gazes turned upward. There were no cherry blossum trees in the city. Still, their pedals fell as if all the world sat beneath some unseen canopy.

People stopped in the crosswalks. Drivers emerged from their gridlocked vehicles.

There was music. It was coming from somewhere, but people couldn't yet see it as they looked about. What started as a solo flute, was soon accompanied by a symphony of strings and horns interlaced with a kick drum, which all built like the impending arrival of some other worldly army.

Bum, bum, bum!

"Up there," a girl shouted, pointing at a rooftop while sitting atop her dad's shoulders, the two of them halted in the crosswalk.

Atop a ten-story bank, two figures perched on its ledge. One seemed to play something like a flute, the other waving his hands about as if conducting some unseen orchestra.

That was when whistling steel cylinders plummeted through the rain, spinning the pedals into a flurry as the people's uncertain expressions blossumed into recognition, then into fear--bombs. It was some sort of aerial assault.

Panic ensued. The little girl whimpered as people shoved, her mount fighting to traverse a stream that had morphed into a churning mass of primal urge. One by one, the bombs landed along the street, their eruptions blooming into plumes of flower pedals as people seemed to disperse into those same pedals. The panic receded back into confusion as the crowding dissipated, all people wisked into their own flowering landscapes of billowing, cascading pedals.

The girl was alone with her mount, watching as the eruptions blasted across the building faces, the pedals contacting and behaving like an artist's brush stroke. Pastel-painted rabbits bound across the brickface, animatedly running a short distance before freezing into still-lifes. Flowering vines grew from their wake, giving chase and twisting as if depicting the wind that swelled some invisible sails, which ferried the rabbits away.

Subsequent explosions brushed away that painted world, as well as its brick canvas, the city's structures hollowing as if a lapping tide had encroached on a sand castle. Grass grew to supplant the streets while towering cherry trees shed their concealment to show canopies as tall and broad as their building-predecessors.

The two figures still stood atop the same building-turned-tree, still orchestrating the city's excursion into Wonderland.

Bum, bum, bum!

A giant wolf of fire sprouted above the trees that were, to it, like weeds among its paws. It growled and crouched, preparing to lunge as the trees jolted by the approaching stampeed of some other unknown and towering monstrosity.

The wolf vaulted, nearby trees mashing flat as a giant's flaming foot stamped down alongside the girl, who was then blasted by a gust of heat and swirling smoke.

The giant's head was wrapped by a burning crown as he swiveled and brought a collosal sword around, its ember blade arcing into an after image, it's strike looking capable of bisecting the moon. Most other trees toppled under the swing's gale.

The girl was buffeted once more, then left to look about, finding felled trees aflame and the wolf mid-air. The beast landed inside the giant's following windup, its paws against his chest, it's maw around his throat as he was driven to the ground. They both collapsed into a rolling length of black smoke.

Bum, bum, bum!

Just the single tree remained among a landscape that crusted over like hardened magma. The ground cracked, grass, wild flowers, and trees growing anew. Live rabbits bounded by, as big as houses, they were. Foxes too. Then, other sniffing, stalking predators soon after.

A man clad in animal hides and armed with a spear ran alongside a pack of wolves. He leaped as if to crosss a stream, slid to a stop, then about faced. He doubled back, his spear replaced by a sword as he charged a second man, who leveled a musket.

Pow!

The men collapsed into one another where a giant ship surfaced in their place, the ship's bow lunging skyward as if emerging from an ocean's depths like a porpoising whale, where it then leveled and sent a spray of ocean water across the girl from some unseen body of water.

Pa-pa-pow!

Cannons erupted along its side, plumes of smoke punching black orbs across the sky to strike at another ship, which returned fire. They encircled the girl and drew together as if they were both caught in the same whirlpool. The ship hulls loomed like the encroaching of an alley's walls. Planks fell to span the overhead gap and footsteps thundered across to clash swords. Still, others spanned the space by way of rope pendulums and battle cries.

Bum, bum, bum!

Both ships fell away from one another like toppled stage props. On and on it went, men and machines clashing, nature supplanting that which was abandoned only to be brushed aside for the next new thing. Weapons fired, skewered, spewed, scorched, and sundered, each man falling to the next.

Then came a man atop a carriage, drawn by three horses whose manes fluttered as overlapping currencies and national flags. The carriage was open like a truck bed, the back laden with stacks of gold bars. The driver pointed about, where footmen rushed in his indicated direction.

What first looked to be held reigns, didn't actually lead back to the horses. The animals were proceeding of their own accord, the driver, a task master, who's reigns descended into a multitude of leashes attached to the collars of tasked men, those who ventured out and returned with more men, who in turn donned the same collars. Then, the cycle repeated as those newly leashed ventured into indicated directions.

They were all collosal figures, larger than life icons of the world and its many faces. Should those figures draw nearer, logic would see them grow larger, more alien and incomprehensible. Yet, that's not what happened. Eventually, a pair of collared men approached, their shrinking distance likewise shrinking their apparent size until they stood before the girl and her mount, one seeing to her mount's leash, the other hesitating, her collar in hand, his head cocked in consideration.

The men faded as the carriage passed. Buildings grew up from its wake like newborn trees. Each reached the height of the one tree, which had remained constant, its image shifting once again to display the original bank, its rooftop figures twisting into a burst of flower pedals, then dispersing on the wind.

A clucking alarm sounded, its cadence like that of vehicle's turn signal. It drew confused expressions from a crowded Central Avenue as everyone realized two things—that everyone else had returned and that the crossing signal was warning of their passage's impending conclusion.

Still, no one rushed, the little girl noticing dandelion seeds drifting down amidst the raining flower pedals. She held out her upturned palm where a seed alighted. Before closing her grasp, she hesitated. If she sought to seize it, surely, it would twist away and escape. So instead, she opened her hand wider, the seed hopping as if in joyous approval. It then danced skyward, carried on the wind, sailing, where it might one day settle down, take root, and have children of its own, who might then fly to alight within the awaiting palms of other little girls at unknowable distances, where their unknowable names have unknowable faces, whose cheeks could still be caressed by the intent and flapping of a delicate butterfly.

No one seemed certain that their experience had actually happened, all of them wondering if it had been some crazed dream. That was when the day's most unexpected thing came to pass. The city's theme song changed, becoming a ballad of polite nods and deference. The 'strange' in strangers became 'estranged' in neighbors, where the entire city's currency shifted to that of hope.

At least, for the day.

As for tomorrow, those dandelion seeds will need to see to themselves.

[WP] As an illusion mage, you grew tired of trickery and war. So you took a different path. Teaming up with a bard, you now use your illusions to project legendary battles and heroic tales---turning magic into living theater, and history into wonder.