531. New lands and skies, 1
I couldn’t figure out who won up there. They kept twirling around the structures swapping position in their race endlessly.
I don’t think they took it very seriously. Who am I to judge?
After a nap on my side, not watching much anymore, they both landed and returned next to me.
I’m gifted by the visit of two odd looking angels. Both would accept a bargain for my soul if I were to sell.
I chuckle as they stand up closer. Nightmare’s in sweat. Blume has no such thing but I can tell from little details she is burnt out as well. It probably takes a trained eye to notice it though. The way her leaves and stems move and react, I can tell she’s unusually tired and suffered from very cold air. She looks really exhausted.
So I give Blume a warm hug and Nightmare a good towel wipe.
They seem silently happy with the situation.
~
Shortly hereafter, we were ready to begin the climb. Nightmare’s wings actually stay behind, nesting with the heavier luggage. Blume followed that idea and left her coat at the camp under the watch of the hollow bird.
That way, we can just focus on climbing together and enjoying it. When we decide to make another camp, the wings will automatically carry everything to us. This makes the climb much easier and enjoyable.
After all, this one journey is focused on enjoying the travel more than reaching a specific destination.
There’s no destination at which a life ends. Stories yes. Lives, not. That’s why I haunted my father’s mind with the three dreadful words to break the line.
What happened next?
Father... Well, not exactly mine, but you were the father to a Rose, once upon a very distant time.
To this father figure in my mind, born from those memories I borrowed and built myself upon, I can tell you what happened next.
This journey without solid goal took this beautiful detour to the heights of Eldorado.
We didn’t need to, but we wanted to. And thus, with the easiness and convenience brought by their wings, we begun the ascension of the Eldorado structures.
~
The first hours were simply walking in a field and its rising slopes. Slowly the slopes rose so much they became odd cliffs. There were still wide grassy fields lying there open to us, only they stretched more and more freely in every direction of space, ripping their land open in wider and wider cliffs and canyons, opened to an increasingly tilted landscape.
I simply walked.
Lightly equipped, not even carrying a backpack. I simply walked.
The air was still a little heavy to breathe, unusually so, but I could feel it becoming more light and fresh as we gained altitude.
It was a light piece of journey. I felt like I was floating away a little at times.
Next to me walked my recently born though very adult sister, and my beloved flower demon. Although the later one was more mimicking the movements of a body hiking, rather than actually doing it.
The moment was eerie and very soft to me. I feel blessed with them by my sides.
We headed to the first twists and arches of the land foaming geologically ahead of us, up to the clouds and as far as the horizon.
Above us lied a rather clear blue sky. From cerulean over the mountainous horizons behind, to ultramarine above us.
With the lands stretching against the normal limits and bounds of Earth’s gravity, and the sky lights slight twirls and deviations, the world was losing some solidity.
I began to see the fluidity of geology, unintuitive fluidity, as we were climbing this new structure. Rocks and lands are more fluids than they appear to be for the fast paced animals we are on them.
Sweaty but not out of breath, my body and legs gradually pushed me higher along the slopes with increasing angle.
Soon we would need to climb more than we hike, and never to fall. For a short while. Then we would reach another part of the gigantic and anarchic structure, and be on essentially flat ground for another while but higher.
I was breathing loudly, but always moving firmly. Nightmare following me, Blume lightly walking ahead as a guiding shade. The grass was brushed a little under her translucent feet but not by much.
Before I knew it, ropes tied me to Nightmare in case of a fall.
We were holding onto the ground with our hands more than our feet now.
My hands held to the rocks that I could grip in the earth. I sprayed a lot of dirt aside, watching it fall in the forest and hills already so far below.
Vertigo grasped me for a moment. I looked upward to Blume, but I couldn’t see her.
All I could see was the depth of the sky. Everything but its deep blue vanished from my sight for a moment, as if I had already fallen upward.
An upward vertigo, like in my childhood. That sudden fear to fall into the void of the blue sky. It’s been a long while since my last moment of fear like that.
That anguish against the hollowness of the endless hole that is the sky above.
I couldn’t move for a moment, petrified, unsure of where I’ll fall.
Until Nightmare touched my ankle, pulling me back to Earth. Although this was on a ladder of rocks that I found myself back, giving me still good reasons to suffer from vertigo.
I was scared and looked at her. She probably read everything there was to read in my mind. She simply was wondering why I stopped climbing just then.
Blume wrapped me a little over the shoulders, like a reassuring ghost.
I managed to swallow and move my trembling hands again.
Around us, a four winged creature quietly flew in circles, ready to help.
~
An hour later, I was able to sit on a piece of land that seem to be floating in the sky. The sun was already less stretched in the sky at this altitude. Nightmare drank a lot of water and passed me the bottle. I finished it. She didn’t need to ask.
R - Blume, have I mentioned my fear to fall into the empty sky before?
B - Not that I recall.
N - Where does that come from? Magenta?
R - No... It’s much older.
I can remember another experience of this from another life as well. But it was even older in origin. I remember that fear from when I was half my height. It’s a childhood memory.
A fear that reaches the depth of my flesh the longer I try to think about it. It stings my nerves.
I close my eyes and breathe. I hold their hands. I breathe slowly.
I will be fine.
~
