(Rose)
As we reached the city of Paris, the mood drastically changes.
In one word, I don't feel safe anymore. I'm on my guards as I walk through the ravaged streets turned upside down...
It's chaotic, but it's more than that.
The air is stagnant. Nothing lives at all here. Not even trees, nor any wild animal, nor mushrooms and mould.
The desolation is surreal but beyond that, I can't shake the feeling that something awful lies ahead, ominous.
The air has a strange smell of dust, even though we are outside. There hasn't been any wind flow in here for years.
In the distance, I see buildings and towers still standing, but they swim in a grey or greenish mist... It's like London.
R - What happened here?
B - It's not another mushroom or bacteria. I think the forces whom fought over this land all annihilated each other. I can feel leftovers of wills from beings-like-me. They... fought against survivors all over the city, and then between themselves. Everything died I think. No... There are a few dormant things here and there I can tell.
R - A war between mankind and your kind happened here?
B - Not exactly. It was more a free for all, survival, panic. Not a distinct war with objectives. Everyone and everything was suddenly plunged into chaos, and they tried to survive or panicked.
R - How could something this awful happen? Why didn't they flee?
We look around. Everything is grey and green. The mist is endless, static. Everything is slightly poisonous.
B - The city collapsed. It must have been hell for a while. And then...
R - And then?
B - In the end, everyone died... The poison still lying in the air is weaker now, it fell slowly onto the ground, but we're far too late. A cloud of poison has fallen onto the city it seems.
R - We arrive years after everything has ended...
B - It would seem so.
R - How come this city's fate is so different from the empty ones?
B - I think this is due to the nature and properties of the energy I exist by. This invisible water I live from.
R - Remind me?
B - It's like the air you breathe and water you drink. It's a constitutive element of living beings like you or me. Well, not you as a species but as who you are now. Your species before didn't. Do you remember when it changed?
R - I remember...
Falling sick. Dying horribly. Coming back to life as savage monsters I had to fight and kill again... This new air was toxic, and most lifeforms who couldn't adapt turned into unsafe beings, anomalies, monsters.
We all adapted, evolved, willingly or not, one way or another, if we're alive on this new day.
In this city, it went very wrong. It went worse than what I went through myself, on a wider scale...
My left hand fingers are itching where I got bitten before.
My first days in this world, this city saw went through the same, and what is left is...
B - I don't sense the presence of any mastermind like me or Ogre in this dead zone. I think all was forsaken by accidents or monstrosities gone too wrong and unable to remain viable for long. Maybe every apple in the city turned into poisonous organisms, transforming their flesh into acid and toxic gas... Or something similar.
The tree trunks all around are nothing but ashes. Nothing remains anywhere. This smell of dust and soot is worrying me. It might be that this smell is all that is left of everything that once lived in this city. My heartbeat increases a little.
R - Are you sure it's safe for us?
B - Yes. The poison itself has decayed over the years. It has only slight remaining stains on the ground and dust. I guess that when the wind will finally return on the area, it'll clean it and spread the leftover away, quite harmless now.
R - Poor city... I guess this is what the end of times really looked like...
B - Should we leave?
R - Hm hm. I want to have a closer look. I'll probably need comforting afterward though.
B - Alright Rose.
~
I enter the ruins once called Paris. They're shameful to their legacy.
It's dark. Truly, awfully silent. I only hear my steps onto the dry and dead ground. My footsteps in the coat of toxic dirt are the first in years, and only ones visible in the area. All around us, a greenish mist lingers all day long.
No corpse remains, but sometimes shadows or personal effects do. Jewellery. Tools. Prosthetic limbs and artificial bones... They just lie there, in the streets.
They all were dissolved alive, and dead. Every living tissue of any species at all seem to have forego this terrible path.
Police armours lie there too, stained. Decaying too.
I pass by palaces I don't know. It was all lost, polluted. I've put a scarf onto my face to breathe through and don't dare touching a thing that looks contaminated. So I don't touch a thing at all.
I find the Louvre. It's not the same. The palace is now empty and dirty. But it hasn't collapsed.
Most of the art is gone, even most of the ceilings paintings. A few paintings remain though here and there, oddly.
There are evidences of fights and perhaps looting here and there. Hard to say what happened, but it's a little messy and the walls are damaged.
One painting especially remains on a ceiling. I had heard of this one. It's eerie and beautiful. Despite the green mist, the cold colours still are bright.
The birds... They trigger something within me as I look at them.
I remember your blue bird...
This painting remains here. Like any other mark of history in ruins. It will age and remain until the building eventually collapse in a few decades or centuries.
Even further, pieces of cement with remaining traces of paint will age there... And like ancient Egyptian tombs or Macedonian palaces, maybe some archaeologist of a distant future will find one still in good shape.
And for years, they will work finding the others, putting the puzzle back together, driven by a passion for our ancient history... Our long gone culture... Out of which this painting is but a small remnant.
The birds eventually all fly away. Everything dies, and even this rose that you love, one day too shall whither.
I'm facing my own mortality again. Even though this painting still is beautiful, it makes me rather melancholic to look at it.
Woe is me...
I can't get my gaze away from those beautiful birds frozen still on this painting. The figure is gone, but I wonder what its story was. An omen?
In another room, a little sheltered from the stagnant air, I find the remnants of people and their camp. Clothing. Cans. A fire camp in a metallic brazier. Various tools. A camera...
A camera!
I pack it. I look at some notes scribbled here and there. I can't read whichever language this is...
Before I leave, I notice something.
A wall is painted and shows ruins. More like ancient Greek or Roman ruins, but covered with greenery. Buildings returned to nature. The paintings over this wall looks like continuations of missing canvases. I see the empty places for the frames.
All I can read about it are two words ending with 'bert'.
It's the kind of art my parents might have liked. I wonder if you might have enjoyed seeing the world as it is today, Sir... Let's call you Herbert Herbert.
I leave the museum and keep going through the city. I don't dare set foot in the undergrounds. I don't want to see what has accumulated down there.
The evening hits us suddenly. I'm hungry for the first time. I have nothing to eat left, and little to drink.
I make camp and lie down in a random apartment. The bed is still good.
I'm about to fall asleep when Blume wakes me up.
B - Rose, there's something alive close by, and it seems hostile.
Without a word, I pack everything in the dark, angstlich and get myself ready for anything.
I hide and carefully look by the window into the grey empty street below. Blume tells me inside my head that it hasn't found us. It should just go its way.
I wait. I see a little what the streets look like with its various rubbish and wrecks covered with dust.
The thing appears. It's a human silhouette that reflects no light, just slowly walking, uncertain. It moans. It walks very slowly.
Blume slightly improves my sight in the dark. Everything slowly looks clearer and clearer in the street. Except her.
She remains an absolute pitch black thing.
R - Ogre... Is it?
B - No... It's something else entirely. It just happens to look similar.
R - Is it in pain?
B - I think so, yes. But it wouldn't listen to us as it is. It's a wounded beast about to die... Probably one of the last survivors.
R - It's sad...
B - We should let it suffer in peace. We could only make it envious and suffer more if we tried to help it.
I see... After so much time spent in this hellish abyss, learning that the world hasn't ended, that they could have escaped; it would only bring more misery. It's been trapped, unable to see or leave this place for too long.
R - Can't we at least give it a hint that it could leave? Just to spend its final days in a less hostile environment?
B - A nudge? Alright. We have to be cautious with beings like that and how to interact with them... I can leave a faint trail behind us as we leave. It may manage to be curious and wish to follow it. This way it'll find the way out from the basin.
We agree.
I rest a little, half asleep in a corner of this room, hidden. Then when the thing is far, we're leaving.
I'm thirsty and tired, but it's time to go.
I cross dead squares, ghostly streets and tribunes.
Slowly, the sun rises in this green and orange mist above the dusty, sooty ruins of an ancient city, filled with memories.
The day rises. Slowly the sky returns to blue as we leave the unending mist behind us.
~