Sit back my children, as I tell you a story full of romance, hardship, and violence. Lots and lots of violence. 

It starts with a girl, skipping through a clearing without a care in the world, an image so wholesome that it looks like it got ripped straight out of Little House on the Prairie. She’s wandering through the flowers, feeling the warm sun caress her face. A cool, refreshing breeze blows her hair back, and birds are chirping from the distant trees.

Suddenly, her eyes are drawn to a group of dandelions dotting the grass. An idea crosses her mind that she can’t resist, and in a swift motion, she kneels down and plucks the dandelion from its roots. With a smile on her face, she takes a deep breath in and blows hard, freeing the seeds from their earthly bonds. They fly off into the sky, and the girl continues on her path, now singing to herself merrily.

Now, you might be thinking: “Where’s all the violence? And the hardship? Unless the girl has sore knees from kneeling, there isn’t much suffering going on yet. Where do you get off with all this false advertising?”

To answer your hypothetical questions, we’ll have to look at all of this from a different perspective.

On one of the dandelions, inside of a speck of dust, there lived a race known as the Whats. Their civilization was much like ours, with their level of technology resembling that of the US in the 1950s. Inside an unassuming house lived a husband and wife, who were looking to have kids one day. They were just sitting down to have their morning breakfast when suddenly, everything began to shake.

It only happened once, so everyone quickly went back to their activities, but then it happened again, and again, and again, each quake getting louder and more violent. By the time they stopped, they became deafening and incredibly destructive, forcing all of the Whats to plug their ears and all of their unfortunately placed china to fall off the shelves.

For a moment, everyone thought they would be okay. That was until they felt another quake, only this one was persistent, and it was accompanied by the strange feeling that gravity had intensified. Once that too had stopped, everything was still, save the unmistakable sound of someone breathing, which permeated the very air they breathed and rattled the windows that hadn’t already broken.

Then, after the sound of an inhale, they felt an apocalyptic gale, and everything went to hell.

See, because the author--I mean the universe is a cruel mistress, their very world rested on the conjoined fibers of two dandelion seeds. So when they all blew away, the world was torn in twain, a massive crack appearing right below the house that unassuming husband and wife lived in. They had conveniently been sitting across from each other at the table, so when the crack formed, they were separated from each other. In the last moments before both of them disappeared out of sight, they tried reaching for each other, but to no avail.

By the time the seed pods fell back to Earth, their civilization lay in ruins. No buildings remained, survivors were holding onto the ground so as not to get sucked into the sky, and in general, it was not a very good Tuesday for anybody.

Once the seed pods came to rest (conveniently right next to each other), everyone solemnly looked at the destruction around them, and thanked whatever gods allowed them to survive. They patted each other on the back, and looked to the future, ready to rebuild their society from the ground up.

Then the girl came by and unknowingly stepped on them.

Everyone died.

THE END