(Rose)
B - I'll bet on a different strategy I think.
R - Which is?
B - Bombs.
R - What?
B - Vacuuming too much energy for a long period is wrong for me as I am. So on that I back down. However I'll keep a few safe accumulations of energy like trump cards. In dire situations, I'll remain the same but will have a few bombs ready to be used like spike bursts of energy.
R - So... You're saying you backed down on huge power over long periods of time, but will keep a few options to use it for a short moment.
B - Yes. That way I don't have to grow direly or to make myself sick. If anything dangerous happens, I'll have a spare artefact to consume and save us.
R - No more lifting fifty tons then?
B - Exactly. Except if we suddenly need to for a second, but through the consumption of a spare condensation of energy I have. Not hurting myself to do what I shouldn't.
R - I agree. I could tell you weren't feeling really good back then.
B - I guess even flowers such as me can get sick, and have bad ideas.
I smile, simply. We nursed each other back to health. (My eye still is dead though).
And now we're heading toward a tunnel that should bring us to Italy beyond the alps.
~
But the tunnel is gone. I can't find its entrance. The road to it disappears under rocks a mile before the mountain. Collapses must have caved the tunnel entrance.
What is left is the long road. Climbing the mountain paths.
This looks dire. The mountain is beyond anything I've seen before. It's a world wall reaching the sly, and covered with snow.
I have to climb that? It will take a month...
I start walking. I slowly head into the mountain and its roads, and paths, following old trails.
Vehicles wrecks remain here and there, halfway eaten by the ground or snow. It's getting slightly colder as I climb. I stop to rest a few times. Behind me the scenery slowly gets further and wider, very slowly.
All I have left to eat it wood. It's awful truly, but at least I can survive even in here, up here.
The landscapes are marvellous (and majestic), but the weather is painfully harsh. The higher I get, the windier it gets. It gets cloudy, colder. Snow hides the sight of the valleys, and hides the road ahead.
I end up making camp against a tree beside the road. The weather and cold are getting to me.
Hidden in the tent, I look at my map with Blume. I have no clue of where we are. The map shows the tunnel but not every road and path that spread and cross the mountains.
I sleep there with a bad feeling because I'm cold and tired.
Blume doesn't talk much lately either.
She's working hard on herself to evolve in the rightful way.
With less power and less fear, but more wisdom.
And so should I... Very slowly.
~
I'm climbing the mountain straight ahead now. The roads are gone since yesterday. I walk through the snow, holding myself between rocks and pine trees. I'm not high enough that nothing grows anymore yet.
I don't rest much. All day long I walk with difficulties and try to find my way on a difficult landscape. I don't suffer much from the cold because Blume still manages to regulate my sweating and temperature differently than normal. So no freezing burns for me luckily.
But in the end, I guess it was worth it.
I reach a mountain pass. Italy suddenly appears.
I discover the most magnificent landscape of my life.
The mountains, the valley with an infinite number of dark shades. The clouds over the valley I can look at from above, seeing their shadow as they float over the land. The clear and darker sky above. The sun covering a wider land in the distance.
It's beautiful. It's endless.
I turn around and the Alps are there, still unreachable and impassable. The land is reaching the sky around this corner of the planet.
Such sceneries are so complex they're hard to describe. A blue sky above my summer fields are another world entirely, next to the sight from a mountain pass in this land. This country has infinity to offer, and majestic geological structures, and nature, and weather...
R - This land is so beautiful.
B - I'm cold...
Eh... I turn my back to the sight, and go further along my pass into the mountains.
Blume enjoyed it too I know.
And as we slowly go further, I know we'll have the chance to see and visit much more of what the world has to offer.
And much more of what the humankind has left behind...
~
What humanity left behind as it collapsed, or Irgendwam before that, can be anything...
Cities, tools, vehicles, weapons. Food, though nowadays it's getting rare to find tasty processed food. And by chance or luck, or very bad luck, some things that lie are important shards of an history that could be better not knowing and fascinating altogether.
Good and bad; these words lost their meaning long ago.
Like anything and everything, it just happened.
Something protruding from the snow on the wide snow field behind the summit of this random mountain.
I walked down this slope, knee deep in the snow, to what looked like the corpse of a whale from a distance.
Something that a history now long gone and forgotten had brought here.
Something that now simply was there, and nothing more.
Shards of plastics and metals were scattered and slightly protruding from the snow as shipwrecks would from the sand after years.
Years of oblivion. The wreck of a very large chopper helicopter was frozen there in time. Not much rust, only ice.
An odd wreckage I did not expect to find, nor did I ever expected what it would bring to us.
Poor us. Poor Blume still trying her best to manage her power, and how to process it.
Inside the hollow of the beast, we found what we shouldn't have.
I walked inside, and broke a delicate balance.
Ice cracked, pieces moved. Something very heavy fell from its compartment and broke in pieces. It spilled an odd liquid.
Something damaged next to it began to warm up. Things began to react with each other. Blume ordered me to run immediately. I did. I fled.
I don't know precisely what happened.
Was it just bad luck?
Blume panicked to the point of making me lose my mind too.
B - It's too late... I can't cool them down. I don't have the time to throw them away far enough.
R - What is it? You're scaring me.
B - They're bombs. They're heating and about to explode... We need to jump away or we'll die! Even I would die if they do!
R - What? What are they?
B -There's no time. We have to fly off now! You might get knocked out, sorry!
She broke of her invisible wishing stones I guess. The strength able to lift a tank suddenly threw us out in the sky, and nearly making me pass out and suffocate.
~
I'm flying at great speed through the sky. I'm not sure why and where.
My head hurts. Don't look back Blume screams at me.
Light appears behind me.
As a very bright sun rise.
Bolts of burning wind reach me from behind and vaporise the clouds and snow I'm flying through.
The sky clears itself before us as a strong sunlight burns my back.
A sound deafens me. I can't hear anything anymore and I feel dizzy.
Blume pushes us suddenly forward again, with increasing speed. She's giving it all...
As I burst away through the sky, I end up glancing at where we came from. All I see is a dusty sun.
A sun that landed on the mountain in the distance, and is turning in colossal eye of fire and dust. A lid of dust covers the fire and soon it disappears in the distance.
I can hardly breathe and my back hurts from the burn. I keep flying ahead from inertia now mostly. I think we're heading south roughly.
Blume still seems under shock and so am I. I feel numb body and mind.
Where will we land? And how?
Blume seems to have an additional problem too. She's not responding anymore as I call for her.
Has the explosion wounded her? It can't be. She's immortal. Nothing physical or chemical can hurt her.
Nothing can hurt you, right?
You'll come back... No matter what happens...
She told me about such powerful explosives in the past I think. But I can hardly think right now, only witness things as they happen.
How long will I fly? I can only see the clouds passing by.
Night is falling. It's still difficult to breathe. Cold, warm, I'm not sure anymore. My back sure hurts. I think I've lost my backpack too in the process...
Its laces fall off in ashes, it had burnt so.
I see the shore and the sea I think.
The Mediterranean sea already? It can't be...
I hardly believe Licht will be here to save me from crashing this time.
She has her own fight to care for in Great Britain.
Only Blume can save me.
I keep calling her name as we gradually fall down. I urge her to wake up, to save us.
Her ribbons become shreds in the wind, which makes me panic. So she was wounded by the explosion though I wasn't as much.
She must have tried to keep those things from exploding, trying to slow their process as much as we could until it was too late.
I think she might have exposed herself widely, in order to prevent me from being burnt to death...
And now I'm falling to no end and at incredible speed, toward the northern shores of what I guess is the Mediterranean sea...
I'm completely lost and panicking. I keep calling Blume and for her to save us, but I think she's unconscious...
The flesh in my chest hurts and I scratch it open like a wound without thinking about it. Should I wake her up there?
One bad idea can so easily lead to an even worse outcome that I don't realise my mistake before it's too late.
My chest is wounded. Her ribbons are dying like dried leaves of a plant that went through drought for too long.
I'm losing her. That bulb of flesh protruding again from me is what's left of her.
And in panic, I had the worst of instinctive ideas.
I tried to hold on to her between my hands as I would embrace someone tightly, while fearing for my life.
She's too weak now. Because of my choices, about power, about the chopper wreck. She's lost most of her links to reality, and I, stupid so stupid me, tried to hold what was left of her in me between my hands in my situation.
She slipped. I lost grasp. That fruit of flesh like a soft and thin mango, my second heart really, I lose grasp of it in horror as we continue to fall.
I scream and yell like never in my life, as it disappears into the night sky.
I curse myself and cry.
I will surely die as I land, whether it's in land or sea.
My heart and the void in my chest hurt me more than ever.
I'm crying. It just happens.
All things just do. Chance or not.
And abruptly, I suddenly lost consciousness.
~