1028. The valleys, 5
(Rose)
The light dimmed.
I sat down, in unexpectedly heavy tears.
R - I failed...
My voice was hoarse. This egg will never hatch. I killed an innocent again.
Tilke brushes my face and helps me wipe it, all too kindly.
T - I didn’t expect that result, nor that reaction.
I have power. I have knowledge. I have empathy. And I still lacked better judgement ahead. Even now.
I am desolate...
T - In a way it’s reassuring to see you feeling down like that.
R - What do you mean?
T - Maybe you don’t realise it, but you can be really intimidating otherwise. Now it reminds me you are indeed mostly human.
R - Mostly, yes... With my thorns and my obsolete ideals, even now. My flaws hurt people... And sometimes I don’t seem to become any better with time. Only older.
Tilke tries to comfort me. More than I expected from her. It’s a little weird to have a small child or big doll wiping your tears.
I thank her and try to get over it.
I help Tilke break apart some of the glowing amethysts. She might learn something from these at least.
I apologise a last time to that thing and we leave.
~
I don’t know what to say so the mood is a little sour.
We leave the dead zone and continue our way westward, through the maze of jungle ruins and rivers.
The waters are generally clear. The river banks have grown so many odd new flora. I seem to recognise some Tillandsia and other Bromeliad. The former grow above the later like parasites in random spots.
I’m a little disheartened for now but I will get over it with time.
Tilke is growing more confident every passing day.
We cross another river on low tide. She ran ahead this time and I followed.
The mud doesn’t slow her down as much as it does for me. She’s lighter and using her differences steadily.
We progress, although there is still a very long way to go.
At night, I reflect, watching the other river of stars.
It’s ever so more steady since Selya came to be. The flows are more kind now that there is a steady organic watch or heart, to watch over the source on this side. This hemisphere now has a gentle heart, and things pool less.
Steady rivers and little silt, no longer growing as heavy and mouldy as the dark rain used to cause.
I really am another daiûa...
R - I wonder if I will grow horns over time.
T - Why would you think that?
R - There was this terrifying with you see. She ripped my grip over time and history. Her name was Daiûa. I don’t know her full biography, but she was mean and terrifying me. Over the centuries, she eventually grew thick animal horns on a side of her head. As if she had sold her soul to a devil or a faun maybe. And over the last twenty years, I’ve come to resemble her sometimes. More than I’d like. But some demons I faced occasionally, they mistook me for her. They knew her name, and thought I was her.
T - I can guess she was a figure of abusive matriarchy. Powerful but unfair?
R - I don’t know. I think it was more a figure of enmity. As a person I think she incarnated a threat of doom. But as an imaginary figure or philosophy, her name has always been meaningful to me and my family. The document of transmigration she came out of was my prophecy and gospel, since infancy. I idealised her tale and stories. I idolised her indirectly... And then I met the real thing. Now...
T - Now you’re in her shoes and realize the complexity. You meant well and even with all your qualities, you fell short and strained yourself... You fear how you will be remembered as Rose Blume.
R - It’s okay Tilke. I’ll feel better tomorrow. I just need a little more time to lick my wounds.
T - Pervert.
R - Hey. I didn’t ask you to lick me.
Tilke is teased, and it works. We laugh it off.
It was a tragedy, but there’s no higher order to judge me. We must move on. I must keep a sensation of guilt dear, to preserve my morality when nothing else will.
A whale sized animal swims or walks upstream. It causes wide splashing around. We look at it go in a surprised daze. I have no clue what that dünyanın çiçek was.
Time passes as we gradually make our way across the continent that turned in a generation time to this otherworldly jungle and continuous field of ruins.
The valleys early eruptions are long past. But we sure still can find the marks and testimonies of that violent and bubbly past. The landscape is always more or less the same but the fauna and flora are never the same. Every square kilometre is another bubble of natural selection and domain.
An empire was fragmented in countless principalities, and now they all have differentiated in perfumed and coloured identities. Just like anything alive.
Over the days and nights, we progress, Tilke becomes complete, and I get better.
Although I notice one day while washing myself a weird hard lump has appeared in my flesh. That’s odd. There’s no bone nor wound there.
A harder cartilage has anarchically formed in a small lump in a part of my chest. And I doubt it’s a new root of my Blume self.
The body ages as well. Even if it doesn’t hold all of the history, it still keeps some data and consequences of time.
One night, I notice some unusual shivers through the rivers of lights. A whisper.
I wake up a little more hearing that.
It’s Selya I think, inviting me to go somewhere, if I would like to help her.
T - What’s wrong?
R - I’ve been invite to... hunt blue dragons? That’s a little cryptic.
I can enjoy the prospect of a good hunt, but I’m not clear on the game or foe she meant by that.
Tilke doesn’t hear these signals. I explain. How like a shockwave propagates and echoes, structured T.I. also can travel.
Selya is sending a mail back, and it’s a request to meet and help. Against a dragon, but apparently not in the sense that it would be a remaining glutton. Something different.
T - So your friend requests help?
R - In a nutshell, yes. I don’t know that place she seems to mentions however. Would you happen to know where Socotra is?
T - Hm, yes. It’s far, on the open waters from the gulf on the red sea. It’s said to be a unique environment.
Looking around ourselves, we wonder how much weirder things could get.
R - Are you still up to meet my younger friends? They’re human sized though.
T - Don’t mind me and yes. That’s a good purpose for me currently.
We shake our hands on it.
R - So we will need a boat.
T - Are you a good mariner?
R - Reasonably so I believe. Better perhaps than I am a medicinal doctor.
Tilke grins at that poor taste joke. Her skin might still itch from the other day wounds.
The early shades of terror are long gone.
She’s strong. She’ll go far and be fine. I wonder why I see everyone else like a growing child now?
R - You’re not afraid of dragons?
T - Was the meaning literal?
R - Mayhap. We tend to call as such all monsters that are strong and hard to describe. Generally, the ones I’ve faced had been purposefully designed to look like dragons. So I except another form of living and flying weaponry. It still is frightening.
T - But... You enjoy that thrill, or rather the prospect of overcoming that challenge. Right?
What can I say... I guess my mean side speaks and I admit, I do.
~
