682. Humanity was, 4
Thin lines stretched on my left and right, combing and shaving the grass like thin razor blades, moving like light threads.
Overimprinted patterns repurpose what is cut, partially, slowly. The back of the two lines I handle along my arms is growing very slowly. Something is boiling inside of them.
Grass regrows from these thin frames. I’ll grow wings of grass instead of feathers. Because that’s what I mostly have at hands, and through countless trials, I made this stable machine. It eats what it grazes along, like a good shaving, and rearranges the gathered elements more than it recycles every molecule.
They are sintered into growing makeshift feathers, and skeletal frame. As if grass was meant to grow that peculiar way, differently to stick together into bigger compositions. The cut grass follow the channels left by the bigger rearranged picture I laid for it, to flow into place gently, growing along these paths laid for it.
As I travel myself a little slowly, I softly lash the grass and herbs along my way. The primitive wings leave peculiar trail marks as I whip the steppes a few metres on either side, in a repetitive pattern.
I make an odd trail through the land as I go.
These threads hold. They don’t decompose spontaneously. As the days go, they grow gently into thin and oddly long wings. They look like green soft combs, very long and fluffy ones.
It’s tiresome as I still need to move my arms to shake them around along the steppe. I make them slither along the ground so they can feed and grow.
My heartbeat keeps rising from exhaustion. I grow weary much faster than these possible wings are growing.
I must look stupid, waving my arms around as I walk, to cut the grass along. When I think back of Blume’s trees, roots and fruits, and Night’s floating orbs, I realise how primitive and crude I can be next to them. My inner Blume is laughing at my ridicule.
I push forth though. I want to make it.
It’s raw and uneven, but it seems to work at least. My achy limbs, high heartbeat and twisted digestive system might be worth it.
To fulfil it though, I really need an artefact. One of these crystals of T.I. that can make wishes come true.
I widen my gaze to such things, especially at night where my sight is less busy with normal lights. I focus on these peculiar radiations. I lower the minimum level of detection inside my eyes to fainter glows.
Instead of just flying ribbons, I begin to see far more. As if I could now see infrared lights, now everything begins to glow and fluctuate around, far more than before.
I see more noise and activity across the overall invisible atmospheric ocean. I’m not detecting my daughter’s voice in this tumultuous flow tonight.
I look for sources, like faint stars in every direction. I peek through these doors.
I do notice why T.I. was thought to be muonic as well, in that the flows below the ground extend in similar fashion as they would above. The picture of the ocean of T.I. may be misleading, since it appears to flow through the depth of Earth as well. I wonder how deep. They’re another map of the world entirely.
In our wide land, I look for signals more even or more rhythmed through this overall cacophony of silent signals. Lights if they were liquids, always bouncing and scattering as they went. I have the sensory organs now to read most of them, at least partially.
I can differentiate voices from natural events most of the time. I’m not entirely blind really. I can read and write some. I’m just not ready to expose myself fully to this world again.
Just opening my darker sight is enough for now. And now it focuses on some faint star somewhere north of here.
A low hum of radiating T.I.
Low frequency, low intensity. It translates into dark red inside my brain. It’s steady. It’s a small fountain far up there.
Unless it’s something I don’t have knowledge of yet, it’s likely an artefact.
I’m going for it on the morrow.
I pull my blanket over myself as I sleep there in the freezing cold steppes.
~
On the ensuing dawn, I fight the cold my too thin body. I shiver, shaking, dusting the ice that gathered on my blanket. I wrap myself with more cloth but still feel cold.
I whip and reap the grass on the sides on my way north, but it’s hard. At the end of a painful day, I reach a town. A mostly abandoned town, where an artefact lies apparently.
I roll my grass wings inside my bag as soon as I notice smoke in the distance. They’re still thin enough to fit in my bag luckily.
I head, a stone in my stomach and throat, feeling uneasy.
I never learn...
I try again.
~
Most of the buildings have barred doors and windows I notice. They’ve been condemned shut. I recognised the painted biohazard pictogram here and there.
From the houses and buildings still in use, a few human families are gawking at me in surprise as they see me arrive.
No children. The only women there are far older than me, while men range from their twenties to ancient. All is sadly normal here as well.
They all appear dumbstruck as I show myself and say hi.
They speak Russian, but I don’t.
They’re not rising weapons to my face right away so it’s a good start. I sigh and I smile.
Some of them begin to smile. Good!
Not long after, I’m invited to sit in the living room of the main building they inhabit.
I’m given a mug of a warm liquid that tastes awful and I almost spit. I can’t say if that was supposed to be the worst tea, the worst alcoholic drink, or the worst soup in my life. I coughed and laughed at myself. They seemed not to mind my rudeness.
One of the old men speaks European, a little. One of the women speaks old English, a little.
It’s quite a nice day to come to an end.
I share my knowledge of the outside world they ask about. They haven’t travelled as much and as far as I have since the world changed. And unfortunately, the first thing to say is killing the hope of the younger boys.
The lingering doom over fertile women is the same here as anywhere else I’ve been.
By now, humanity is facing unavoidable twilight as a species.
I hope they live their life happy, until the end.
They’re very unlikely to ever have children, and if by miracle they did, these children would live all alone for the remainder of their lives mostly.
Only God can help one of them say.
I have a sad smile, and I don’t reply.
To give them arguably some solace, I also dispel the fear that monsters are waging a war of extermination against humanity. One or two did, but they’re now long gone. They’re as mortal as everything else and learn it the hard way sometimes. I tell them foremost that monsters are very territorial beasts, and very seldom go out of their way to hunt humans specifically.
I do confirm the hearsay some of the monsters do talk. Some demons can speak our tongue, wear our face, and use these tricks to do sometimes good, and sometimes evil.
But they remain individuals. They’re not unified, neither as a species nor as a society.
Their population is still low enough that they live as independent cells in wide spaces between them. And they don’t multiply at any rate worth worrying over. So for the many years to come it appears that so long you avoid their territories altogether, anyone is likely to be fine. So long they don’t anger their closer demonic neighbours, I don’t expect anything bad to come their way.
Some relief softly settles itself. You’re safe where you are good people.
We spend most of the night chatting. About how they gathered here, a little randomly after the fall. They all share horrendous stories from the transition between worlds. With monsters, plagues, pain and death. So many plagues have scoured the lands.
Omitting the dates when I got in and out of the train that got me here, I can share truthfully my own testimony and it doesn’t sound off to anyone. They all felt suddenly lost in their own world. We all have.
But when I reach the topics harder to share with worried and desperate humans, I grow naturally more embarrassed and evasive.
Using the excuse of the night and exhaustion to avoid some topics, I managed to avoid spilling the beans of dangerous truths tonight.
They offered me a room to sleep. Four walls. A bed. A heavy wool blanket with knitted layers.
I press onto the mattress with my hand. It’s soft. It feels almost off to me right now to enjoy such luxury.
If I weren’t so eager to reunite with my estranged sister, I would love to stay a while in this village.
Sleeping alone without tent in the wild is not that fun, even if I’m used to it.
R - I want to help them.
O - Kill them.
R - I’m nowhere near that mood.
B - Find the crops they cultivate and twist them.
R - That’s better.
L - Kill the neighbouring gods to help them.
R - I’m not in that mood either.
I realise now that Licht and Ogre have their similarities I didn’t notice before. One is for selfish impulse, the other one for selfless impulse.
R - You two should make up again.
They grin.
I have an itch of a different kind and I fall asleep.
In my lucid dream, I still wonder about the right or best thing to do. With just Blume though. The other two are not pertinent voices right now. There’s also another observer I can get accustomed to. She has never said a word to me.
R - Should I ask them for the artefact openly, and risk things going sour; or take it and disappear without saying goodbye?
B - Given your experience, I’d say the longer you stay, the more dangerous it will become for both you and them. However, don’t rush it either. Check it tomorrow and decide then. Maybe they might spare it willingly.
R - And either way, we or I can tweak some of their crops to better sustain them onward, as a parting gift. Just some sprout and not all, so they can decide what to do with them as seasons go.
B - Sounds nice.
R - I miss you...
I miss us being two. Not just speaking to myself. All that’s left of her is within me and we became one, but it’s still a little lonely. Being hugged by someone isn’t the same feeling as hearing another voice in your head.
B - I might still take over your body someday.
R - Silly you.
If only that were true.
I’m mocking myself to overcome loneliness.
Well... Tomorrow the sun will rise again, regardless of how I feel. Then I will find my way to fly, and head beyond these skies.
~
