617. Joy, 8
The lord of nightmares sure knows how to make an entrance.
Her existence has returned to that of a shape with limited material existence.
But she does create the picture of her previous human body for our eyes and senses. Because I’m able to pounce on her and hug her, tight.
Ni - Stop that!
R - No.
I hug her even tighter, for I missed her. Until she dissolves her appearance and flows like mist around me; only to reappear standing a few steps behind.
Nokarlık knows who she is, but is under shock.
Nightmare is examining her with seemingly cold eyes. But I know she loves her child too.
Ni - You look good.
No - ... Mother?
Ni - I’m your creator. This Rose is your mother.
They both seem a little shy of their human feelings, each in their own ways.
But they do hug. It pinches my heart too seeing them do.
This family reunion feels so weird.
It’s bittersweet because we know Night didn’t come just to meet Nok today randomly of all days.
She knows what happened in the East.
~
R - Will you come with us?
Ni - No. I don’t want to die. I can travel now, so I will head somewhere else.
No - Why not?
Ni - See child, everything that is caught in the twirling of the lord of chaos tends to die in under a few years. Violently.
R - Stop calling me that!
Ni - I wish to avoid getting caught in her spiral of doom. So I will gravitate away from the Rose Blume. To live longer and safer.
B - But... You still want to help.
She won’t join us in the fearful days, but she still wants to help us. That’s why she came.
Ni - I did... But Genesis is alive, so you should be fine actually.
R - Genesis?
Ni - Nokaranlık, as you named her.
R - Of course... You gave her your talents, and a genesis domain worthy of a god. Am I guessing right?
Ni - It is. Creating life is the most interesting of sciences. I gave her everything.
That thought had crossed our minds. Now it’s confirmed.
Nokaranlık holds all of the philosopher’s stones and dreams in her. She only never realised nor used any of them yet.
R - You came here to help in case she wasn’t there to...
Ni - ....
Nightmare had not bet on my daughter still being alive by my side. That’s how much she trusts me, as a chaotic whirlpool... I feel insulted and saddened, but well...
R - Then... Before you leave, could you teach her? What I cannot. How to create and design life.
Ni - Hm...
No - I can play like Nue?
B - And even more than that. Auntie Nightmare will teach you.
Nokarlık’s eyes begin to gleam. Of course she wants to learn.
~
Nightmare played along, and began teaching Nokarlık things we can’t quite name with our words.
At a point, they came closer to me, as if to ask something important.
R - I know, I know...
I give them my arm. Nightmare extracts vaporously a floating ball of about a litre of my blood, without even cutting my skin open.
I then sit, dizzy and tired.
It’s Blume’s turn right after to donate teaching materials.
At the end of this, they will craft a beast able to pull our boat across the ocean. That was the aim, along being a teaching project for Nokaranlık.
My child is learning how to handle powers she only dreamt she had. She’s learning with lost abandon.
I can’t do anything to help. The roles have changed. I’m not the best teacher for my daughter any longer.
All I can do now, is practising releasing my toxic light again.
Which comes back surprisingly easily, if not better than before.
I can turn my hands into pure white body, that would consume and dislocate anything they touch.
Blume a little further, recreates her red poisons, to infuse my light with.
My sister and daughter play at creating life, while Rose & Blume are reviewing any weapons we have to destroy it.
Blume can see it’s not making me happy.
It’s my usual conflict, back on a loop again.
R - Blume...
B - Hm?
She’s massaging my hands as my renewed skin was burnt from the exercises.
I want to say something, but I can’t.
If I don’t make it, please go with Nok to the next city of lights.
Or, what would you really like to do?
Or even, you don’t have to come yourself...
Or, please, just go, and live, for me.
I think a lot of things to say or ask, but can’t get myself to say any of them...
B - ... Rose...
R - Yes?
B - Do you know, what will happen next?
She smiles at me earnestly, making my heart flutter in more ways than one.
R - I don’t... But I fear I...
B - Then let’s find out.
She shuts me up. She doesn’t want me to see my doom as unavoidable.
Like every previous battle or war, I don’t know entirely how it will go.
Even though I fear the worst outcomes, maybe we can avoid that.
Magenta is rising again. And so will Rose Blume.
~
Nokaranlık learns how to manipulate fields of T.I. to do biological magic, as easily as she learnt to swim.
It’s uncanny. It’s innate... She was built for that purpose... It spooks me a little honestly.
The baby crocodile is duplicated. Cloned, as they say. Many times over.
Nokarlık learns how to turn pools of food into broken down nutrients, and then to craft anything she wishes out of it. They make it look terrifyingly easy.
I remember having to fight an abomination of a monstrous tree when I was trying but a fragment of what they do.
But they can dissolve entire trees in pools that are like makeshifts stomachs over the following days.
And out of them rise rose petals salamanders, and other animals we’ve met before, alive and free.
They will create a dragon, to sail or even fly across the Atlantic ocean.
They can do it. So long as there are organic compounds and T.I. around them, the sky is the limit to what they can do.
It’s creepy to watch them, and also endearing in a way. They share a passion, a science, knowledge and experience, from one generation to the next.
Night didn’t call herself mother as they met, but right now they look like it...
They look human, in the best of ways.
~
Nokarlık comes another morning to ask me something with a radiating smile all over her face, almost spilling droplets of cheerful pride.
No - Mom, can I show her that?
R - Hm? Oh. Yes, of course.
Nokaranlık throws all her clothes to me, to then show her aunt her most impressive power once naked.
Her body grows gradually, until she towers above even the trees, and loses her balance. She played unsteadily with her weight too.
She sits by the beach, still so tall she looks like a high building just appeared there.
R - That power of conversion between T.I. and baryonic structure is uncanny.
Ni - It’s even stronger than I expected. It was meant as a faster regenerating potential, barely anything more... I’m impressed.
Oh... If even the lord of nightmares is impressed by a biological power, it says a lot.
In her frenzied joy, Nok wants to do more, and show more. I stop her before it goes too far.
She pouts. I’m sorry...
~
Their fantastic work will be done in a matter of days.
Nightmare stays with us for the nights, though she doesn’t exactly sleep.
But she connects to us, and especially me.
I have very disturbed dreams and struggle in my sleep. She’s tormenting me, even with the help of Nokarlık.
Don’t make her a sadist like you! Noo!
They laugh, whilst I roll in my sleep and cold sweat. They’re having a blast at my expense.
Nok learns that too, and then shows Night in dreams what I refused in reality.
She grows and catches me as I try to run away in that illusory field.
She drools, and swallows me. It’s absolutely a nightmare.
I feel that I’m swallowed alive, crushed and killed, and then spat out in another dream.
These two are killing me...
Nights are all mean!
~
