Title: Juxtaposition: Dandelions

Canon: G1, "Juxtaposition" AU

Description: Evelyn spends some quality time with Hound and some flowers. Probably set between Juxtaposition and Schism. Sheer fluff ... literally.

Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers. HasTak does. I didn't write "Juxtaposition". Vaeru did.

Author's notes: It's official: I'm a Jux groupie. Time to get the T-shirt.

Dandelions

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower
- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

"What about the yellow-coloured ones? What are they called?"

Evelyn couldn't help but smile, even as she tried to summon a little more 'professor' patience. "Those are also ash trees. They turn yellow in the fall, just like the beech."

She spread her palms on the cool grass. Her parka, yellow like the dandelions and spread on the ground beneath her, protected her backside from the early morning frost that was fast fading with the sunrise. Living with her parents on the farm until she could get a new apartment, she was forced to keep their hours and that meant being awake at the crack of dawn. She had taken the opportunity to tackle the agoraphobia that living aboard Metellus for so many months had left her with. Sometimes that meant taking an early drive with Jazz or Bluestreak out into the countryside, but lately it had begun to include short morning walks with Hound in the nearby tree-sheltered meadows around the farm. The green Autobot-turned-military-Jeep had been more than happy to oblige. He stood beside her in the field, quiet clicking noises indicating he was taking yet more holoforms.

"Why do they do that?" he asked. "Turn yellow, I mean."

"Because they're deciduous. The leaves fall in the winter and grow back in the spring."

"But those others are still green."

"Those are conifers. They keep their needles all year round."

"What's the difference?"

"Er ..."

The barrage of questions of all things green and naturey stretched her knowledge of the subject to the brink, but it was nothing new. Hound, apparently, had always had a fascination for organic planets, but nothing seemed to have prepared him for what he would find on her humble home world. The sheer inundation of organic life Earth had to offer quickly turned a fascination into an obsession. He had taken particular delight in capturing holoforms of tree after tree and expounding on the uniqueness of each and every one until Mirage, composed, soft-spoken, mild-mannered Mirage, had actually snapped at the tracker ("No, I don't want to see another tree, Hound. There are thousands of trees here and they are all the same!") before vanishing and staying vanished for some time, either from embarrassment or to preserve his own sanity.

Hound had since found a more receptive ear in Evelyn, who was happy enough to be back home that she didn't mind early morning reflections on the hows and whys of its natural beauty. It was also forcing her to do preparatory research for their conversations, which gave her something to focus on besides reclaiming the tatters of her former life.

"Conifer needles are strong enough to withstand cold temperatures," she answered the Jeep. "Deciduous leaves are too fragile. The cold kills them."

"It kills the whole tree?" Hound looked alarmed.

"No, just the leaf. The tree just ... takes a break until the leaves can grow back." Kind of like me.

Hound's systems whirred, processing this new information. Evelyn wondered that he didn't just remotely access the information from the internet. All of the Autobots seemed to have built in sensors that could easily have picked up a wireless connection even from as far away as her parents' house. She suspected Hound preferred the dynamic of face-to-face learning. As a teacher, she deeply appreciated him for it.

While the green mech sat in silent reflection of nature and its wonders, Evelyn absently toyed with the dandelion stalks near her hand. Even so late in the year, yellow flowers were still blooming amidst the field of fluffy white cottonballs. Nothing can keep a dandelion down, she thought ruefully. They'll just pop up and grow anywhere, anytime. Plucking one of the stalks, she did something she hadn't in years and blew on the white tufts, sending them off into the air.

Hound's engine gave a short rev which faded into a soft, mournful puttering. She looked up to see a look of pitiful wounded surprise on his metal face.

"What did you do that for?" His voice made her feel she had just kicked a puppy.

"Do what?" she asked, confused and alarmed.

"You killed it. Why did you do that?"

She looked down at the dandelion stem in her hand and understood. "Oh, it's alright. It was already dying."

His faceplates scrunched in a such a way to make her wonder if he'd been taking lessons from Bluestreak. "How does that make it alright?"

Tossing the stem aside, she plucked another white fluffball and held it out. "This part of the plant has to die," she explained with a patient smile. "It starts out yellow," she gestured to the dandelions blooming nearby, "but eventually, it turns white like this and when it dies, all of these ..." she broke the head open and let the seeds spill onto her palm. "All these float away and land on the ground, and they become new dandelions. I'm just helping them along." She blew on her palm.

Hound bent down on his knees with a creak of cables and gears, peering intently at the small brown seeds as they floated by on their little white parachutes. "These ... become new flowers?"

"Yep."

"And those flowers turn white and fall apart too?"

"You bet."

"And that's why there are so many of them here?"

"Yes, that's right."

The Jeep's systems began to whir thoughtfully again as he scanned the field around them, where far more white dandelions than yellow swayed in the breeze. Evelyn barely had time to yelp when the Autobot opened all his vents at once and expelled a massive gust of air, engulfing them both in a cloud of swirling white fluff.

Evan Hughes paused, newspaper in hand and cup of black coffee half raised to his mouth, as his youngest daughter entered the house through the back kitchen door.

"Have a nice walk, Evy?" he asked, setting the cup down.

"Hmm?" she responded, a little dreamily. "Oh. Oh yes, it was good. Very relaxing."

The folded newspaper followed the cup. "Little windy out today?"

"Yes, a little bit." The dreaminess was matched by her face, an expression of the kind of happy exhaustion that comes from a good, long, hearty laugh. "I'm going to go change."

"Breakfast's on the stove, if you want it."

"Thanks, Dad." She kissed her father on the cheek and headed for her bedroom, humming tunelessly under her breath.

Evan Hughes only shook his head, sipped his coffee and opened the paper again. Since her miraculous reappearance into their world, his youngest had assumed a secretive, mysterious quality that she seemed mostly unaware of. Perhaps later she might enlighten him as to how she had come to be positively baptized in dandelion fluff, but somehow, he didn't think to get his hopes up.

End "Dandelions"

A/N: I love dandelions. They are one of those beautiful things in life that are absolutely free.