967. Emergence, 6
(Rose)
I recalled hearing that artists have periods as they call them. The sets of work or time when there’s a consistency in their style. And then, it shifts. With experience, their orders, and their preferences, their style evolves.
Some snob or very acute preferences could say that some artists aren’t always improving along their journey. They would have an apogee before their style becomes out of fashion or too disconnected from current tastes.
Sanïssia crawled to water, from which she nibbled on some things underwater. She washed her wings again, rolling in the water and flapping them like a whale.
That humongous monster has an innocence that makes it invaluable.
And thinking back about these ugly glutton dragons, I wondered whether my bloody sister hasn’t moved to a period I can’t relate to any longer.
But even if we strayed apart and away...
Sanïssia gets ready, after an hour or so drying under the sun.
And then it’s ready to go. We’ll reach the mountain before twilight most likely.
For me, Kosmos and Sanïssia were and are her masterworks. I can’t even be jealous, she’s in an entire different league I’m unlikely to ever reach. But I preferred her six winged birds to these repulsive maws.
I climb up and hold on. The snake makes it call with its funny little voice. Its throat to eat and its vocal chords aren’t united like for mammals clearly.
The rainbows scatter as the wings start to work. It flies off, brushing a cloud of sand and dusts away behind.
Onward we go.
~
Through my emissary in my back, I keep a faint but immediate connection to the Tamźródlo. And in echo through it, I might be able to reach Selya. I don’t want to abuse this power like an overbearing mother. I’ll only use it if things really go dire.
I just throw an occasional pebble into the pond, not carrying any special meaning, so its ripples can be noticeable to her. Nothing replies in that spectrum of T.I.
In another one closer to the ambient oceanic noise of Europe and Asia, I don’t notice anything either.
In the American spectrum I’m less familiar with however, something is happening.
Not a vacuum or hollow spot as I would generally fear. More a kind of whirlpool as it looks. Nothing too violent. It’s still very atmospheric, not as concentrated as liquid fluids. But there is a stormy motion over the centre of this northern continent. Something is twirling, moving horizontally from where we stand. Some fluxes and currents albeit slow are in motion.
And we’re rapidly flying closer to that part of the continent holding a moving wall of clouds and the answer.
The eastern dusty desert slowly regressed along the distance and clearly ends around the lush lands of a wide river, I guess being the Mississippi. I read books about it and for the first time I see it, and cross it, it’s unfortunately in a rush from the altitude of clouds.
I look to my right, but can’t see any hints left of what had been the monochromatic zone where it used to rain nil for so long. Everything must have returned to normal out there ever since, and it’s more distant I think.
Where Kosmos was born and left the cradle in pain.
We fly above great plains or steppes often stained with the spots of dead cities.
Still the continent is colourful and lively.
After the horizon of desert seen from the shore, the barren lands weren’t that wide. There’s still lots of fertility.
I can only wonder how many settlements of people still thrive to this day on these old lands.
Some animals, some daiûas, most likely. And some humans too possibly, might be gazing at this greatest bird passing silently across the high skies.
It’s heading straight west, toward the mountains. Not so far from a city that must have been turned to ashen cinders a few years back.
And to somewhere where something hundredfold that magnitude might otherwise come to be if I don’t hurry.
The weather is unsteady, but not ominous. Sanïssia leans a little to shift its trajectory, in order to go around the main stormy clouds ahead of us in the distance.
Me I try to keep my hands and resolve steady. I honestly repeat to myself the few things I try to convince myself true to be. I also get used quietly to shift the golden doors to T.I. using my pale emissary beside the light potential buried inside my fluids directly.
I stretch these otherworldly muscles as a daiûa getting ready to face what has no name.
Other beasts, most likely the same.
I notice more animals running around down the prairies and empty roads the further we go. I can’t identify them from this altitude, but it’s good to see that many still live, plenty and free.
I clench my hand into a fist, and reopen it slowly. My fingers creak slightly as I opened some tiny doors through them.
A cobweb invisible stretches as my hand opens, concentrating a tiny singularity in the room there.
A spell. Using my body to transfer energy from elsewhere instead of consuming my own. Something to crystallise my will along with the molecules of the air, as an insurance before I would get trapped and tricked again.
I clench my fingers around the seed or wish stone I materialised between the air and my flesh. A seed, just in case.
I can’t do philosopher stones as pure as you either, but the minimum, I think I can do too.
I push that seed inside of my sternum, thus as a failsafe if I were to lose my head. Not just figuratively.
I connect some nerves to it and leave it dormant.
While Sanïssia gets us closer by flying above the rain, I create a few more artefacts for more offensive purposes.
If I’m to fight more gluttons or worse, this time I’ll be ready.
Sanïssia swims like a lake dragon over the ethereal sea, a cloudy sea.
The sky is too bright and empty above me. I don’t like it any more than the previous Roses di.
B - Feeling blue?
R - Always a little.
My ghosts aren’t exactly my own from the start. I continue to swim or sail across the sea of chaos. Only now I’m blue because I’m no longer blind or young enough to believe I’m a self more solid or distinct from the entirety of this sea itself.
Nothing is truly solid, and everything will eventually shift someday.
I grin as I remember her ever so precious words she once had for me.
Now I do hope she will also remember them fondly.
I tell Sanïssia she can get closer to the stormy clouds, to get in the quiet land in the back of them.
I’m building my resolve as one Rose who wasn’t born yesterday.
I will dance again against fearful odds if must be, and I will reach your mind again. One way or another, I will bridge this gap between us, even if it costs the insanity you’ve been building here.
A dragon passes by at high speed in an opposite vector. I recognised it, even if it was swift and sharp.
I unsheathe.
Sanïssia reaches the sky surrounded by cloudy walls.
~
