1018. The valleys, 1
(Rose)
We continue our journey upstream, slowly. The terrain is tricky more often that none. The flow of water from the river here is the only thing that looks remotely normal, from our historical perspectives.
The plants and trees that weren’t affected much around most of the world, here too have changed.
Some species have mutated in odd ways. And more importantly, like the buildings themselves, they’ve turned into porous structures for the new environmental swarm.
Things grew over what had grown before, like others did over what we had erected.
Everything is a colourful and flourishing mess. The jungle of the new times grows all over the older ones it devoured and merged with.
The tendrils and other immense corals that grow here and there like huge mineral trees have spread like a new tree species. But really they are the rusticles of colonies of bacteria that gather into fruit looking bulbs, and then grow these as they mineralise what flows in the air around from some metallic substrates.
The air is heavy, nearly as if it was water. The pressure is high and it can cause dizziness easily. It also makes the dusts fly and flow weirdly and beautifully around us.
The valley blocks the winds, but still absorbs what they carry. And inversely, we see sometimes how the wavy surface of its domain above us sometimes warps and erupts.
T - It’s another layer of meteorology.
R - Exactly! Amazing, isn’t it?
The valley is a bubbling sea, with a density of gaz that is heavy but still closer to air than sea water.
Meaning the windy interactions with the surrounding lands are more often and easily scattered than oceanic waters through their cycle or occasional tsunami. It’s lighter fluids.
The further west we go, the deeper we’ll head into the forsaken valley.
We walk through muddy and uneven streets under scattered and floating prismatic fragments of the sun.
R - It’s beautiful and slightly nauseating at times, don’t you think?
T - Usually not both at once?
R - It varies.
We cross a mud bridge over fissures where roots are twitching around. Don’t get caught.
We reach a different landscape in this corner of the lush megalopolis.
I stop Tilke. She shows she understands why. It’s a more open looking square ahead of us. The sky surface flows gently above us and it. The wavy lines of light continue to dance dimly along the ground.
But I noticed how different colours reacted on that sterile looking ground. It’s not mud exactly, nor a bog. But this ground would eat us if we tried walking on it.
I probe it. It’s like mud but lighter. We would sink. And ominous stains crawl rapidly over the tip of the makeshift Sword I’ve offered.
I make a flame appear to remove these things. The swamp before us suddenly shivers. All of it.
For dozens of metres wide and long, the ground shivered.
Tilke stepped back.
I don’t feel extravert hostility in the ambient T.I; but not everything would show it.
She knows I won’t pointlessly destroy anything in our path either, so we turn around and cross the bridge again.
The bridge cracks as I pass and I suddenly fall in the crevice below.
~
T - You alright?
R - I think so...
I didn’t fall more than two metres or so. I’m a little hurt but nothing bad.
I avoid the twitching roots that wouldn’t mind having a lick at me, with acidic aim no doubt.
I crawl and climb my way, cutting the more ominous ones along my way. I smack down a weird protrusion that was also getting too curious about me.
It’s okay...
T - Rose, something is rising in the ground or water ahead... I think you should hurry.
R - Alright... Describe it to me?
T - It’s just slow but high waves or bobbing up and down of the surface... I have no idea what is happening.
R - Well, does it look more like a natural event like a geyser maybe, or a living reaction to our presence?
T - I think it’s alive... The shapes complexifying. Hurry!
Things are giving themselves more appropriate bodies?
There might be one of them...
I climb faster. Tilke is stepping back in rightful fear.
Something wide crashes where she just stood and splashes around.
Not just a ball of mud, but the arm of a golem crashing and holding itself rather solidly.
The things protruding from the sides in the fissure grow excited and aggressive. I fight my way up and out.
I rip some of the roots that sticks to me like squid feelers. It rips my skin a little.
I jump out before another arm crashes over the little chasm. I run out of breath to reach Tilke a little further away.
Behind me as I glanced, the empty square of dirt has turned into an angry and aggressive array of tentacular shapes. A giant squid with roughly designed arms maybe.
I slide over a boulder and reach the cover where Tilke is. She’s terrified. I’m catching my breath back.
It doesn’t seem like that monster can come out from its birth place nor reach us so far. Good.
R - Well, that’s a nasty one.
I feel prickled. I turn my head and see Tilke pointing her knife at me with clear fear in her eyes.
What? Did she?
T - Turn around! There’s something biting you!
I feel a little nervous exposing my neck like that but I trust her enough already.
She cuts through the flesh of something that isn’t me, and throws it away.
A leech? A piece of these wriggling roots-looking things...
And another.
She cuts off all these parasitic slugs out of me. Leeches alright.
I breathe as I sit there, in a cold sweat.
Tilke steps mercilessly on the squishy animals she removed from me.
T - I hope they weren’t venomous.
R - Me too...
I close my eyes and focus for a second or so inside. I don’t feel any spoke of any chemical anywhere. I think I’m fine.
While I rearrange myself, the ground monster gradually calms down. It raises its moving arms less and less.
Until it returns to a bubbly surface, and then as if it was a still ground.
R - Good grief... Let’s make a detour alright?
T - Hm. Yes.
Hopefully the next pass is milder.
Above us the sky is just as usual.
~
