(Rose)
I woke up drooling on that couch. I don't remember much but I don't think much happened yesterday.
R - I guess alcohol makes me sleepy and that's about it... How do you feel Blume?
She doesn't reply. She did not greet me. I'm worried now. As I move a little, I feel a harsh pain in her vines, all along them. It hurts.
R - Blume? Are you there?
Worry grows. What happened? I move her body around and it hurts a lot. The ribbons slither silently but painfully. They feel sore, painfully sore. My head doesn't hurt that much.
I think, maybe she's dreaming, asleep... She might be sleeping. The curious one.
Outside, the light of day sips in through the ice covering everything. The car is like a shipwreck lost in the arctic, encased in ices now.
It feels oddly quiet without her, as I slip out of the car.
Spots of light cover the ceiling falling apart.
This journey I'm in.
I wouldn't have made it this far without her, nor this long.
I feel very odd on this morning. Because I know she's sleeping somewhere within me?
We didn't get as merry as I thought we would, but that's how life goes.
I walk around the ice, frozen flood from yesterday's rain. I look at myself in the mirrors of the car. My hair still is mostly white on the tips, but it grows in normal colour everywhere again. My face looks old. I've never looked young anyway. I sigh.
I guess I feel a little sad when I'm lonely. This life is unbalanced without her awake with me.
An odd monster I host in my own flesh and mind. I look at that odd place between my breasts where all its body grows and spread. Most of it anyway. We share everything. My identity sure has become something confusing in more ways than one.
~
When Blume wakes up, I'm already outside the buried building. I'm walking slowly on a frozen lake across the countryside.
She sounds half awake, it's funny to hear.
B - Hm... Good morning Rose... Ouch, my body hurts...
R - Rise and shine sleepyhead. Maybe you feel sore because of how much you sang yesterday.
B - Did I? This was the first time I ever slept in my whole life... This feels so strange... It felt like dying for a moment, I was scared. It was, well, so comfortable with you however. So I followed you. My body didn't like it though, ouch. You don't look so much in pain when your body rises.
R - Maybe you're just not used to it... So alcohol can make you sleep. Good to know...
But more than teasing her about it, I want to know...
R - Do you remember dreaming?
B - I... I'm not sure if that's what I experienced. I...
I feel tears swelling up in my eyes suddenly. I stop walking, surprised, to wipe them. Uh? I realise they're not mine.
She's crying...
She's crying!
My eyes open wider as I understand it. I almost fall to my knees, agape in front of nowhere.
Not only because I get a view at what she feels.
Because of my past.
Tears of... Tears of her.
HER.
This brings me back to the memories and tale of this other flower buried in my past.
The one that ran through us four sisters like a vow or a promise.
I shiver about a feeling I cannot name.
I'm a little scared...
The tears dry up after a little while, where I sat like a lifeless doll on the middle of that field of snow and ice.
That she can cry brought back difficult memories to me.
But back to the present day, also makes me worry.
R - What did you experience?
She moves vividly around my skin and fully comes out from my clothes, despite the sharp pain in her nerves. She protrudes and stretches out like a giant snake made of scarves, or a monstrous parasite.
She scares me. It's as if a large sculpture of as snake made of twigs was looking at me.
R - Why did you cry?
She cries again, through my own eyes. Why?
B - I experienced... The difference between us. The size of the gap between our beings and existences.
R - We're... Closer than most people can ever be. I know I haven't reciprocated your feelings as much as I should but...
B - I know that. I slept in your brain. I saw everything. I was floating inside your memories and feelings.
My heart aches. I cannot hide anything. I have no intimacy.
R - I do love you. No matter what you are.
She doesn't move nor reply. That thing stands there in a curve stretching out from me and above me, as I'm sitting there, unable to move.
R - Is the bliss from being with me gone, now that you've taken a deeper look inside of me?
At that, she laughs.
B - I'm the one who should have said that... No, over time, some of that initial bliss somehow faded you might say, but what saddens me is further.
R - Further?
B - No matter how close I am to you, our loves for each other are only shared as lowest common denominator. Your kindness of heart for something like me still has conscious and unconscious limitations, as for my shapeless and parasitic form. Whereas what I experience of love is very far from most of the feelings you would describe as such... This is what I saw.
R - The simple fact that we don't love each other in the same manner?
B - It goes a little further than that... Our bodies... Our body, it's similarly inadequate for both of our desires. Our mind...
R - Blume, the alcohol was no good to you. Pull yourself together and come back to me.
B - I... I'm not...
R - If you say you are not worthy of me, I will slap you so hard that you will regret it.
She's in shambles. Being drunk broke her mind harder than I thought it could. She's tearing up again. She wants to leave and cry like a child. For the first time, she's the one needing comfort. I open my arms widely. I speak sincerely.
R - I love you Blume. Now come back to me. I want you with me!
She shivers. She jumps at me in tears, to embrace me in a shapeless way. She calls my name in tears as she crawls over me and in my arms.
We sort of hug there, lying down on the snow, while she keeps repeating that she loves me so much.
I love you too. No matter how imperfect we are.
~
All she experienced was a bad dream. A depression and a lack of confidence followed.
I've come to love her, and I want her to be a little more true to herself. I tell her that. The balance between us in our relationship always needs some adjusting. It's naturally shifting a wrong way or another.
For now, as she needs some comforts while the effects of her alcohol poisoning dissipates, I tell her she can act a little more selfishly. I can grant her a wish if she wants to.
B - Can I?
R - Sure. I know you will be reasonable.
She softly pushes me down. Her soft ribbons come to shape something above my face. I think I know what she wishes for.
She presses herself onto my lips. She brushes them gently. She kissed me the only way she can.
She then returns around my waist and cries a little more, thanking me softly.
I'm brushing away the tears with a smile. Some of them may be mine also.
My heart did flutter.
I stand up and brush the snow away from my clothes. I resume the walk.
South East, toward the Channel.
Together, gently.
~