(Rose)
As I walk into the desert, my mind is growing fuzzy.
The sun should toast me. The wind should irritate my skin, eyes and throat with all the dust it carries. The world is painted gold and holds glittering particles of sun, sky and stars everywhere. A sea of sand and shining stars.
I'm probably getting lost in that side of the world no one in her right mind would dare to venture into. I dare because she's with me and I want to go beyond. And I'm merry because my cheeks feel warm...
This insidious flower is making me drink. It did not end very well the last time we drank together. We got depressed. I don't remember very clearly what was said back then.
My face feels warm from the sun and the sand. I feel fuzzy.
Blume's roots are deep inside the bottles she keeps drinking indifferently. She might have been thirsty too.
My leg that still isn't bully protected is burning, but the rest of my skin is nicely sheltered. My coat is shining a lot, almost gleaming, through the dust I can be seen from far.
I bit my dry lips as I walk with difficulties through that quite difficult road. Walking all day long on sand is tiring.
The world seems to have turned into dust in this land. I guess the lush jungles of the continent are far further south as I don't see anything grow around here anymore for a long time.
This harsh land gives me pleasant chills nonetheless. I have a nostalgic tear at a corner of my good eye even.
R - I have a sister or two whom would have loved to see this place. I could have seen them as adventurers... More than myself. Yellow and Red.
They resented me, but I admired them dearly...
I step onto the hull of an armoured vehicle by the side of the empty road. I keep going toward the mountain beyond the storm.
I feel slightly dizzy but not sick. Warm but not sweating hot.
Each step is a thrill where a small part of me and my memories goes wild. I have small outbursts of daydreams. I'm slowly losing some grasp to that nice and random lull.
I don't mind it as much as I used to.
B - You've changed rose. Over time, along this journey, you've evolved.
R - Do you think I've come closer to my ideal as a woman?
B - Ah. That's hard to say, you've been rough and through rough times. But I see you've been more opened to your true self and feelings.
R - You sound like Ogre...
B - Oh I didn't mean it in a bad way. You've been rough and harsh in judgement toward yourself too, but I believe you've become a clearer or more refined and polished version of yourself after what you've overcome.
R - Hm... That doesn't mean much to me.... My sins... They still haunt me. I feel further away from my ideal.;. But maybe I accept a little more what I am and feel in the end. That is what you meant?
B - yes...
Time is sin I've heard once said. The flows made me drift away from my goal, forcing me to work with what I really had, not what I wished for.
With Blume, we keep cheating on some rules, but we still are bound to a wider context.
Still... I feel free. Free from everything. Even the power I have from Blume isn't binding but granting more freedom to me. It's a little overwhelming right now. I wonder if I'll fall in a different state of mind if I'm not more careful.
I'm feeling pleasantly happy and free. The present, is nice.
R - I don't feel too... drunk. But I can tell I am.
B - We tolerate it better the way I make us drink it. You will have a headache tomorrow though.
R - Weren't you supposed to sing how much you loved me while being drunk?
B - Uh uh. I think it was you who could sing. I would be all cuddly and then sleep, and dream.
R - Oh, right. But... You're already all over me.
B - I'm sure I could do better.
The clothes she has made begin to move slightly over me. It brushes my skin in a ticklish manner. I claim to surrender and nib on one of the flowers she still harbours on my chest. She squeaks and stops, for a little while.
R - I'm sorry, I don't know any song...
B - That's alright love. You don't have to sing.
We chuckle. Oh boy, we're getting really drunk.
The sand storm gets quite suddenly more calm around us. It fell and there is no remaining wind at all. The sand falls like snow, quietly. Behind me it remains tumultuous.
Ahead are the same heavy clouds of dust twirling. Is that what some call the eye of the storm?
A small moment of peace hidden with a sumptuous storm of ochre and gold. Coarse, dry, endless, magnificent.
My yellow and red sisters would have loved this place... I'm sure of it.
I miss them...
I'm laughing a little at my nostalgia, feeling fuzzy all over now.
I cross slowly the empty land, and return into the joyful storm of sand and complex dust.
I yell a little my amusement against the wind. I laugh.
I see a creature going her own way in the sky. A dragon of some sort. Hard to see, it was a long mixture of trees and body parts flying together in a whole. And right after it, some giant birds with more wings than I could count, I think.
Who knows?
One slow step in the sand after another, I'm getting to my goal.
And one invisible step after another, Blume is crafting our future. For me, for her. And for you...
I smile, more heartily. There's a future I'm looking forward to with a different warmth inside of me now.
Even though it rides on sin and insanity.
Shall we live together until another death pulls us apart?
I wish so.
My grand dream of a drunkard. My wildest dream. My most insane fantasy...
What if the flower she is in this world could grant it to me?
I heartily want to believe in her... In you. In us.
Eh eh eh. I'm cheerful and I enjoy this dangerous wind while being sheltered in Blume coat. She's so nice. I'm sure you'll like her.
I wish I had met your daiûa. Well, maybe the original Rose has.
I wonder if she drank herself merry too.
~
The storm settled by nightfall. I'm exhausted. Walking all day long against a sandstorm with constant input of alcohol in my veins was exhausting. Though it made me laugh and daydream most noticeably.
I collapse between some rocks, asking Blume to close non existing curtains.
My dreams weren't especially sweet that night, but they weren't nightmares either, which is good. All I recall is being warm. Perhaps with a little surge of lingering anxiety about my freedom and the range of possible outcomes for my dreams. Not much really for what I'm used to.
Being in a world where your dreams may come true, whether you like it or not; along with the minute details that society is gone and other things share that world with you; it's not quite the paradise one may think.
What makes my dream feasible makes other things, good or very bad, also feasible. And not just for me. It's anarchy and the rule of the jungle out there...
Thank goodness I have a food ally and lover from the other side, here with me.
Though she's true to her nature of trickster sometimes.
I wake up and my head hurts. Ow... My brain is numb. Blume seems to be sleeping soundly, tightly wrapped all over me. Leech flower...
Okay, I asked her to save water from my sweat, but I get the feeling she's enjoying doing so a little too much.
I chuckle though, and that hurts my head badly.
I rise from a bed of sand. I was almost entirely recovered with sand during the night. Blume wakes up and shivers all over me. It tickles.
The sky is orange. All orange. It's a thin cloud tinting it all.
I grin. Yellow and red.
~
B - You muttered something about colours as you slept.
R - Did I? Oh, our colours. Well, it's an old child play we used to have, me and my sisters. We each had a totem colour given and we clung to it quite dearly. We gave a colour to everyone, according to the name mostly.
B - What were they? What would I be?
R - Father was brown. Mother white or grey. Scarlett was obviously red. Blue was even more obvious. Plus it also fitted their personalities. Elise was gold or yellow. And I was pink obviously too. We were children... But we kept these nicknames dear until the end... As for you, you would be a purple maybe? Or another white, given your flowers.
B - You were funny.
R - Colours meant a lot to us for a while. Too bad none of us became an artist.
B - What did you became?
R - Well... None of our jobs... Well. My father sold books he gathered mostly. My mother was sewer in town, with a passion for teddy bears and dolls, though most of her income came from repairing clothes really. I helped them both at our shop. Red worked cleaning other people's homes, I think. She rarely spoke about it but I know she wasn't happy about her job. Yellow worked in a slaughterhouse and butchery. It changed her, but she seemed to cope with it. Blue did try a few things but last I saw her, she worked sewing clothes for workers.
B - Those occupations seem odd for some of the standards I have in mind. Where they common?
R - No. We were a weird family. I... Red and Yellow, they were ready to endure a lot and I couldn't understand why for the longest time. I now know I was partially to blame for that.
B - Hm... I remember.
I begin to walk on the road I can just guess below the sand covering it.
Today, alcohol made me remember a lot of nostalgic names and events from my original self's childhood...
I'm sorry sisters. I loved you...
~
I climb the stairs of a wrecked tower. I breathe heavily. The sand is gold. The sky is vivid scarlet... Bloody almost.
The climate is weird, but in the distance I see my goal of Gizeh.
Near the foot of a quite ominous mountain, the pyramids still stand proud.
~