(Rose)
We reached a village. Empty as usual. The shape shifting creature that looks like shadows lives her too.
We look awful.
I pass out in a flower bed of a garden.
I wake up sore, but alive. Ann is somewhere else. I stretch a bit. It's painful.
I enter the house nearby. Ann is sleeping there on a broken chair. I take a look around. The house looks like it suffered a full immersion under water for a while, some time ago. Seems plausible.
Everything metallic has turned into crystals with shards of rust.
After a while, I wake Ann up. I tell her we must go. She seems unhappy but follows me without a word. We leave and walk. All day. Even at night. The moon provides sufficient light.
We're beyond tired but we can still move oddly enough. I want to hurry.
We're almost there...
~
20th day?
We found food.
Given the map we have from Zeslinry, maybe tomorrow we will reach my hometown. I feel sick.
~
22nd day?
I recognise nothing in the area. We're lost. I saw a crow again today.
~
24th day?
It rained today. We found rails. We might make it following. I'm growing impatient, and Ann too I think.
~
26th day?
I don't even know how we were able to go the wrong way for a day...
But we made it.
We reached my hometown...
~
There is no town anymore...
Like these ancient churches abandoned centuries ago, the whole town has turned to nothing but stones and grass. It's not much more than an uneven field with many piles of rubbles now...
But it's here... I recognise a little the hills and the forest behind.
We go through the ruins of my long abandoned hometown.
Has it been only three years? It's hard to believe.
The road leading through the forest south of town is gone. We make our way through the woods. I don't recognise the forest really much, but my house should be on top of the hill just there, surrounded by the woods.
We reach the front yard.
I wasn't sure of what I would find, but my house is still standing. I did rebuild it so it would last.
It looks very old and heavily damaged though, but still standing.
Rose bushes are everywhere against the walls. Their brambles mostly, but some flowers are still there.
The front door is different, and locked. The windows are barred. The house is abandoned.
We go behind. The garden fountain is lost under a pile of rosebushes. They turned wild. I've never seen rosebushes grow so aggressively against stone and walls.
Ann jokes about my house being surrounded by roses. I don't reply. I want to get in.
The garden shed and the graves of my family have been swallowed by nature as well.
I see that a tree grew closer to the northern wall. The windows are broken. The wall is damaged too. We can climb in.
~
We enter the room through the broken window frame. It's dusty and muddy. It was exposed to the weather... It's in poor state. The bed is rotten.
I open the two doors leading to the second floor corridor. They creak horribly.
It's dark. It's damp. It's dirty.
Cobwebs are everywhere above our heads.
They're gone. They left.
She must have left me a clue about her whereabouts.
If there was a war, or anything else that needed them to run away to safety, she would still no matter what leave me something.
A letter, a clue, anything.
She would never just disappear on me.
There's a hole in the floor I almost stepped in. Ann grabbed my arm in time.
We enter my room. We go to open the barred windows. The wood is decaying. It breaks easily.
My room is not the same... Its layout and furniture are different. Everything is rotten and dark, damp...
We go downstairs. The main corridor is filled with strange plants. They look like small rosebushes, with white flowers and leaves. Bleached roses... They glow a little in the dark. And they emit a sound too. A metallic sound, very low and light.
It's pretty, but not welcoming.
The door to my office I locked but breaks easily.
It's different... It's all different. The shelves are different. The desk. The tools. The looks...
Inside the drawers I find nothing helpful. I'm beginning to panic. Then...
A - Is that... You?
Ann found something in a rusted metallic drawer.
A picture within a frame. The colour is faded, but the woman does look very much like me.
I break the frame and look behind the picture. There's nothing written. I keep the picture and we keep looking...
I feel empty. I feel sad.
She's gone...
~