576. A strange world, 1
Blume gently slid away from my body. It takes time.
Her main roots entangled around my veins, organs, heart and bones, pulling away from me entirely.
Most of our hybridation remains with me nonetheless. But what holds her brain and her main energy storage cells are essentially leaving me. Our links remain strong still.
She’s used to live between two bodies.
Now she’s going to focus on herself.
Nokarlık looked at the odd show agape. It’s probably nothing intuitive that unfolds before her.
The flowers left my body, and a hole like a non-bleeding wound in my chest is opened to my deeper flesh. The middle bone of the ribcage, between the ribs and sealing the thoracic chest, it’s hollow for me.
Looking down, I can see my own lungs through this cut. It’s a little unsettling. The gloss of the flesh is the same from any doe or other game I’ve butchered before.
Anyway, the skin will heal. The heart will remain trembling for a little while.
Nokarlık watches the roses that were a part of me now slithering away, and me looking wounded. She comes to me, worried. She has teary eyes. I hold her and reassure her. I have to prevent her from touching my wound out of curiosity as well though.
Blume meanwhile takes roots in the soil of that courtyard of accumulated muds, between building and the artificial swamp. This part of me she is has separated from me again.
R - It’s alright Nok. It’s not the first time it happens.
It might be the last however. Might.
My child helps me sewing gently my wound shut. It didn’t bleed, but it sweated some fluids with peculiar smells. I doubt it’s much more than residual plasma from Blume. I stay seated for a moment. I need to rest.
I smile at you my sweet. I’ll rest for a short while, so play carefully, alright?
You’re smart, and I know you will...
~
I went into a deep sleep during that nap. With very old memories and anxieties...
From a time when Rose was helpless and frail. A time of endless cold sweats, every day from dawn till night.
A young woman unable to gain weight, hunched and always on the edge of being sickly.
Every living moment was a struggle to breathe...
For she... wasn’t there... Or not for long anymore...
I woke up to a gasp of that oldest of my primordial anxieties.
Losing you.
Night had fallen.
R - Nokarlık?
Silence.
Blume too was asleep, more tired than myself.
I couldn’t see, I could barely stand. But an anxiety took the better of me, and I moved away looking for you. I called your name, louder each time.
Where did you go?
My panicking mind grew restless rapidly. My head felt fuzzy. I was already stupid and unable to think.
I heard something and limped my way toward it.
I heard your voice thankfully. We called each other. You began to cry. I injured myself trying to open rusty gates and climbing over walls and fences in the dark.
I found finally myself close enough to you so I could touch your fingers.
Some metallic rods were barring you from me like a cage. Where have you fallen?
Your sobs fill the kind of pipe you’re in. You indicate something is further there.
I crawl, looking for an exit or entry.
I slip, most likely like you did, inside the trap. The walls are slippery. Once in, you can’t climb out.
You jump onto me, pushing me into the foul smelling mud, just to hug me tight, still crying abundantly.
Solace slowly comes, for both of us.
I missed you too... I was scared too.
I kiss you many times, for many reasons. I can hear in your sobs that you feel somehow guilty and sorry. I’m not mad. Not at all.
I might have been even more scared than you for a moment.
Loneliness terrified me for a short while...
~
We didn’t really fell asleep, but we stopped moving in a semi-comfortable position for a while. We waited there for hours to see the morning lights reaching us.
Hours of wait, only listening to our breathing and heartbeats, quietly, slowing down. Not letting go of one another.
Sometimes we could hear rats rummaging around us. We paid them no mind. If they’re smart enough, they would do the same.
~
Some light from the morning sky finally reached us. As we opened our eyes to our trap, we saw what it was. A water draining pipe, locked on both ends. Its only entrance, the slippery hole on top, or the barred hole further down.
Worst case, if one of us climbed on the shoulders of the other, she should be able to climb out. So it’s not that dire.
But before we went for it, the mice reappeared. The ones with pink and white stripes.
Nokarlık wanted to catch them, but I held her back this time.
Because I could recognise the actions of a daiûa behind these critters, not unlike Nok’s mother.
The mice were investigating around us, and us. The closer they got, the more I realised how weird they were.
What I thought were stripes over the skin was actually the absence of skin, and a minimal amount of exposed flesh, between the bones.
The skeletons had become exposed and turned into exo-skeletons for these creatures with very little flesh. They’re not mice... They’re another animal, using their bones as exterior frame and mechanism.
They were soon all around us. A few were on top above the trap as well, all inspecting our situation together.
I was waiting for the shape to appear next, but it never did.
What came to look down at us was much smaller than a humanoid shape. It looked like a colourful slug, and barely bigger than a normal one. I don’t know what that thing was.
On its silent order, the mice all vacated the area and disappeared soon from the pipe we were stuck in.
A few minutes of rattling noises later, an improvised rope was lowered to us, under the watch of the skeletal mice.
My cautious patience was startled by that turn of events, but I didn’t look into the mouth of that gift horse.
I climbed first, for I expected the thing to then speak, and request something.
Daiûas would.
I found myself facing maybe half a hundred of these weird little animals.
And the colourful slug, with cute looking asymmetrical horns, standing in the middle of them.
It was curious about me. About us. But it didn’t speak.
It turned back and slithered away while the mice scattered. I was surprised again.
Nokarlık managed to come out a little after with some help. She’s heavy.
She realised as surprised as I was that these things understood our situation and decided to help us.
She asked me in her own wordless way.
What was it?
Intelligence. Empathy. And not a daiûa, but what we call a dünyanın çiçek. Hard to define as well, but very different thing. It was another animal, living its own way around here.
~
