(Rose)
We walk silently all day. We stop only a few minutes to eat.
Ann want to know more about you and me. I don't tell her much. I don't want to talk about the blue rose with her. It might give her some wrong ideas. Plus, I'd rather keep our past to myself. I tell her more about daiûas though.
These seducing and machiavellian beings. Poor Machiavelli. Hopefully, daiûas don't do politics.
They simply tempt humans and play them, with them, a way or another. They know how to approach people by reading their hearts, before showing that themselves don't have any.
I know little more than legends about them. And my old book, the one I keep carrying is thought to be the most plausible tale regarding a daiûa. This document is the most likely to hold records with some truth about such things.
Ann understood that there might have been a daiûa in my home back in the old world, from everything I've said over time.
She also recalls me saying that I may not believe in their existence though.
Ah... Do I believe they exist, I wonder?
Will I be different from my past self? I wonder if we believed the same things. I can't really say.
What I do know is how far I was willing to go for you. And that I was... I am, cautious not to underestimate what I've never really met. Well, I try my best to act as intelligently as I can...
Am I able to outsmart a daiûa?
Perhaps... Knowledge is power after all.
~
We camp for the night in an abandoned vehicle. It's raining outside. It reminds me of autumn at home. I fall asleep to that music I like.
On the next day, we pass by a city we might have seen on our first journey. We find some food, but no working vehicle to accelerate our travel.
Well... Whatever? We'll walk. We have all the time in the world. For real.
Ann and I read a little the translated document from my book when we rest. They contain tales of witchcraft, sorcery and spirits. It's a very common Christian record of pagan faiths and tales from northern Europe.
But there is more to it for whom manages to read beyond the obvious plays... This so called document of transmigration truly speaks of beings trying to survive, or trying to become alive...
The strongest of nature's callings is the will to live. To survive. And what is different from life as we usually know it has to make the most impressive and different efforts to succeed to.
It sounds simple, but the truth is actually overflowing with sadness and suffering... This document is not reassuring at all. Contrary to what would any other holy book would be.
It doesn't give hope to the reader. It tells you that you're alone, in a world you will never fully comprehend... That going out of your way to escape your fate is torture, and a competition with others things that are monsters.
And that some monsters that can only behave differently than you will think the same about you...
What a peculiar document. The transmigration this translation vaguely refers to is about daiûas and other lifeforms such as them trying their best to escape their fate. To become alive.
What differentiates them is whether they can talk and have intentions. Daiûas are the things that can speak, plan, and play tricks... Their will remain of the same impulse to transmigrate, to live, to exist, to survive.
Have I transmigrated? If I really understand properly what this means?
We'll see one day if that daiûa we're looking for can answer all that...
Meanwhile, we're walking restlessly.
Autumn is setting itself over the quiet countryside. The colours of nature barely change, but the weather does. And after an endless walk, it took us a few days, we reach the outskirts of the land of nightmare.
~
We're back.
The territory.
Where the nightmare took over the world we knew. Where dead people could become monsters...
Where I became one too...
It feels strange being back in that area. We fled a battlefield, and we're a bit anxious about what we will now find and encounter.
We walk across an empty field. We can only hear the wind and our steps. But it seems colder... We feel nervous.
I put my bag down and take a few minutes reassembling my rifle. I also mount the scope and try to set it as accurately as possible.
Ann wears a small handgun at her belt.
This time, we won't need to run I think. But let's not get overconfident because we have firearms. Every weapon can backfire, one way or another.
It looks like we're going hunting though...
Thunder suddenly strikes in the distance. It surprised us, as there are no big clouds above in the sky. Did something weird happen?
We walk more slowly now that we recognise the landscape. We're still about one day away from the train. Cursed trains...
We pass the woods, following the shed where I almost died. We see the small stream soon. I feel really uneasy. I'm not sure if I would prefer to see the body still there by the stream, or it being gone...
I tell Ann to wait a little.
She doesn't get why. It's a trauma I'm really glad to awaken. I cannot describe that suffering and that fear. Pain seeping through every blood cell until you're no longer human anymore.
I don't want to go that way. Should I look? I take a worried look through my scope. I can't see anything unusual but I don't really recognise the surrounding. Either It happened farther or it's gone.
I tell plainly that the worst of my nightmares occurred somewhere along that stream. The last fight I barely won or survived. The one opening the darkest things in me.
We move on. I feel nervous. It's the afternoon. We reach the field below the hill where we all camped briefly. We reach the first scarecrows...
They are decaying corpses, or what's left of them, attached to random pieces of wood or metal. They've been attached with so many tails and sharp pieces of metal that they're still standing despite the state they're in...
Looking at a human skull with decaying flesh protruding out from its eye sockets and mouth is a bit traumatic...
Once again we face pain and torture we cannot understand... Why did this happen?
Why had they to suffer and die like that... We see others not far from there. The corpses are left to decay since the first nights and are mostly partial skeletons now. Some still have some rotting flesh and an indescribable lingering smell... While others are bleached, with bones missing or eroded as if they were centuries old... Why?
We enter the territory bordered by gruesome deaths. It's still quiet inside. We leave the poor staked skeletons where they are, a little afraid to even touch them.
From this border, we will begin to see the remnants of an unthinkable past. Savagery, heartless, even cruel, for reasons unclear...
And still we proceed in going further. Maybe we are not wise enough. Are we careless?
Maybe we're not very smart, but I wouldn't say that we're reckless or unprepared.
So far, as evening comes, we saw no one wandering around. We find a house a little aside the road. We go in and plan to secure it for the about to come. The real threat will appear then.
If there is anything left alive at least.
Perhaps everything is gone now. We'll see. Night comes in quickly. We secured the house as best we could. I'll sleep first and Ann will stay alert. We'll swap and take turns later.
It's quiet. There's only a cold wind hitting the house.
It feels as if everything and everyone is dead outside... It feels a little sad tonight. But I slowly fall asleep.
I wonder what we will find or meet.
I wonder what will happen tomorrow. And tonight...
~