text: There’s a weed growing in the crack in the pavement outside my office building. It shouldn’t be causing me as much anxiety as it is. My coworkers are laughing at me because I’m insisting that we call the maintenance man and have him pull it. Just do it yourself, they laugh like crows at a funeral. Scared of a little dirt? They don’t get it. How could they? They don’t breathe the smog of the city and wield it like a weapon against the call of roaring nature. They don’t feel the heartbeat of the earth thrumming up through the heels of their too-expensive shoes as they walk down the streets. They don’t hear the whistles of the wind through the glass and steel giants singing like siren’s song in their bones. They don’t understand the sweet-dark petrichor scent that accompanies fresh rain on old concrete and know that it’s a promise, a pledge, a threat. They don’t look at the old trees in the park and see ancient warriors come to linger through the ages, trapped by steel jungles and buildings that grasp at the clouds. They don’t know what it means to have magic coursing through your blood, and have that magic be made of rampant root and raging river and star-spangled sky. It’s why I came to the city, the biggest human-carved place I could find. It was easy to get mystified in the magic of the mountains, to get swept up by the song of the sky. So I came here after I nearly got lost in the forest three years ago at a frat party, and I’ve tried to give everything I am to the city ever since. To just be a normal human. Not someone who listens to the tangle of roots underneath and how they're raging, desperate to be free. So instead of kicking up more of a fuss about the weed in the sidewalk crack, I go to find the maintenance man’s number instead. When he shows up, he’s giving me that look that all my coworkers have been giving me for the last three days. Like I’m just some prissy princess who can’t stand to get her hands dirty. “Where’s the plant?” He asks me. He’s gruff, with a rough beard and grimy hands, dirt shoved under his fingernails like he put it there on purpose. He’s got green eyes that are burnished bright against the darkness of his skin. But he doesn’t look at me directly, probably too disgusted in my perceived weakness to bother with politeness. I feel power surge in my chest and belly and I tamp it down with years of practice, telling myself that it’s not worth proving him wrong. I point and he can’t stifle a sigh. He kneels down and tugs the weed gently. It’s just a little try-hard dandelion. It shouldn’t put up a fight. It’s only got just a carrot-like tubular root, and once you’ve pulled it out, it’s gone and done. But it doesn’t budge when he pulls at it. I edge away from the weed. Sometimes they get ideas when I’m close to them, ideas about strengthening and deepening and growing... Oops. The weed trembles just a little bit, and then explodes in his hands. It reaches up, roots growing massive and buckling the concrete, cracking it with huge groans that remind me of the cranes building skyscrapers. That gentles its growth and I cling to my thought of metal and glass and concrete, standing up straight and tall and perfectly balanced, resting my weight on the balls of my feet and letting the plastic and synthetic of them hold me steady against the tides of the ground hungering deep beneath the city. Down, dying, dead, I think hard, focusing everything I am on the dandelion. It fights me but then gentles slowly, giant leaves browning and crumpling and falling off, slinking back down into the ground where it came from. When it’s gone I am terrified to look at the maintenance man. The drama only happened over the course of a few moments, and there’s not too many terrified bystanders, but he’s the one who had his hand around the thing. I distract myself for a moment by issuing a general memory spell. It was one of the first things I learned to do, and it’s easy even when I’m shaking and my heart is racing. Take a little oblivion from the universe - it has plenty to spare - and push it out along the air, using the currents that twist among the skyscrapers to touch everyone. But then I have to look at the maintenance man. I force myself to, cringing. I’m expecting him to be a bloody, plant-devoured mess. Because the green things are hungry. They’re always so hungry to take back their city and make the breakers of their land into nothing more than wretched pulp. But he’s not. He’s got his hand out. He holds two dandelions in it. They’re twin normal-sized spots of butter-yellow perfection against the grey of the steel and glass world. A grin flashes across his face and he takes one of the dandelions, tucking it behind his ear. A little shiver of power passes between us. “You ever get tired of the smog in your lungs?” He asks me. And it’s the wildness in his leaf-green eyes that catch me, hold me, take me with my blessing. “With every breath I take.” A grin breaks over his face as wild as the white-water rivers of the north. He offers me the second dandelion again and I take it with sure fingers, feeling the power surge again. It’s never so bad if there’s someone to share the burden. “Then I want to show you something,” he says, and this time he offers his bare, dirty hand. I take it, and our power sings in my bones and blood.