Kingdom of the Dandelions

It feels as if I am nearly delusional with euphoria. It has been so many years since I have last seen this place. It seems like a different lifetime ago. The flora has grown, the path here has been almost completely claimed by twisting briars and delicate ferns, and ivy now blankets more of the tower’s eroding walls. That a structure as ancient and decrepit as it has been able to brave the elements for as long as it has is inspiring, in a way. Its stone walls may be riddled with cracks, but the tower itself still stands proudly amidst the dense undergrowth and looming trees.
I had stood in this exact spot atop the structure’s third and final intact step a countless number of times as a child. I had turned this forgotten bastion into a fortification of my own hopes and ambitions. I had almost given up on ever finding it again, the path had become so foggy to my age-addled mind. Here, I had been a king and a whole kingdom of ferns and dandelions had bowed before me. Here, my words of naivety had been valued as wisdom and my age had not made me inferior. I was not “too young” to understand the rules of a game I had never asked to play, nor was I “too old” to dream of traveling to improbable lands.
This place had been one of both solace and unimaginable joy. Even now, decades later, the grand tower still offers me a sense of serenity. I wish I had truly learned the lessons it had tried to teach me: that growing up does not have to mean losing your imagination, that one’s physical age is by no means a reflection of their mental age, and that magic does still exist in this world. But I was young and foolish when I left home, filled with the desire to make something of myself, to prove that I knew the game’s rules, that I could be a valued player.
I moved to the city, enrolled in a prestigious college, graduated, became a lawyer, immersed myself in the work, and eventually started my own law firm. I forgot my days of traipsing through the thorns and brush, commanding an army of valiant, invisible knights. I began to heed the words of men with no laughter in their souls and women with no dreams playing behind their eyes. I listened to them, watched them, copied them, and slowly, I became one of them. My father called them the game’s greatest players. I can no longer bring myself to agree.
My age has never granted me the wisdom that I was told it would; it has granted me hindsight. I realised only too late what a bittersweet creature hindsight often is. It is not a gift; it is a curse. It points callously to the ways that I have erred, to the opportunities I have lost, and to the people I have pushed from my heart. It plays my life before me like an old film every time I close my eyes, flickering from scene to scene, the images a bit blurry around the edges, the colours a bit faded from age.
I wonder how different my life would have been if I had stayed with my family in our rustic farmhouse, if I had started a family of my own, if I had pursued a career that brought me happiness instead of money. I always did say I wanted to write a book. Maybe I will. Maybe, when the sun begins to descend below the treeline, leaving only a few radiant beams scrabbling for purchase in their cerulean home, and I am forced to leave this bastion behind yet again, I will go home and pick up a pen. I miss the way an entire world can be constructed by something as simple as the scratch of ink over paper.
I step carefully down the weathered stairs, trying to commit every last detail to memory as I walk. I know I will not be coming back here. The trail is too long, too difficult. I raise my arm to trail the tips of my fingers across the vines and fissures of the tower as I had so often done in my youth. I stop just before the wide, gaping hole where a door had once been and gaze at the small clearing beyond, watching my younger self wave around a broken, vaguely sword-shaped stick, galloping through the grass and weeds with a loyal army on his heels, a vibrant, yellow crown perched precariously on top of his head. A grin tugs at my lips as I watch him weave through the trees, slaying briars and dragons alike.
I know now what tale I am going to write. When I finally convince myself I need to leave, lest I get caught in the forest when it is the moon’s turn to claim the sky, the ferns and dandelions are waving to and fro in the gentle breeze. For a moment, I let myself imagine that they are bowing to me, pleased to see that their king has returned, before I continue towards the path that leads me home.