(Rose)
I'm sleeping. My awareness is in-between awake and asleep. I keep that worrying picture of myself lying against a chair of sand, my belly open and bleeding a lot, with every heartbeat visible in the spills.
I'm wounded. My soft belly has been butchered. I can't move my limbs. Blume needs a little while to heal all that. I'm rather confident in her ability to save me as long as I don't die first.
Through the roses over my breasts, seeing my belly like that... And the pain...
I had a good scare, and enough time to regret my foolishness. And along that, my share of surprises I still have to understand properly.
Today though, I've almost grown accustomed to the fact that death doesn't fully imply dying like it used to. Now it's a roll of dice, a great moment of crisis for the organism, which imply great chances of real demise, but also a great opportunity of revolution, changing abruptly instead of collapsing as a structured whole.
And beings-like-her appear to use the processes at their advantages, like viruses force cells to produce things for them I heard, in a different way. Since they don't have good bodies to rely on and call their own, they use animals and their death to produce some for them. They fuse with them. Two become one, when the time is right.
It's not always, not to say almost never, done in awareness. It just happens.
And too many times, I've simply seen humans and animals return as mere shadows of their past selves. Fear and suffering make them take the worst of choices, by twisted instincts born in times of suffering.
Pain, in all its forms, is always harder to handle than it would seem, when you're not suffering from it. I'm no exception. Over time, discovering the new world isn't enough for me. I know I'm being greedy and making an unholy pact with a demon to grant me my wish; in more ways than one...
Father, mother, sisters, oh, I have changed over time. Would you be sad? I've become or revealed my inner monster. I've fallen for another. I've made the worst of mistakes again and again.
And now I want...
Looking at the sky, I wish it again, heartily. I want...
I want my world to change again...
But what will my demon Blume demand in exchange for my unreasonable request? My soul in hell?
~
My mind wanders around in my dreams, still mostly aware of my current condition but detached from any perception of reality, as if I slept.
I see after a while my childhood field again. Just a huge field along a slope of a hill, surrounded by small woods. My house is somewhere atop the hill behind me, in the shade of the tallest trees.
Someone is playing piano in my dream. We never had any at home, so I know that part is just fantasy.
The sky is empty, and that void above is endless. Blume is already with me. I remember that recent odd dream where I briefly met my desire personified. A slowly growing dream in my heart...
Blume appears in there as I ask her to. Not on me as flowers, but as a woman I once met, with my face and height, only with a more sickly and sleep depraved face than I. Someone who isn't used to be fully human and live as much, or what sleep should be, but with an honest and naïve candour.
Blume stands there before me. First a little lost, then looking at me, and smiling through (young) wrinkles and crows' feet.
R - You look older.
B - That's how you remember me, or yourself? It doesn't matter. I'm healing your wounds.
R - I'm feeling rather good. I'm mostly wondering about what happened. I was pretty confident that it would be an easy fight. Had she bond herself to a being-like-you? I underestimated her so much...
B - Hm, no. She was alone. But she managed to become essentially a being-like-me, living first in a manner as such, despite what the body became.
R - I had that understanding indeed... It's the first time we meet a human or anything that fully shifts on the other side... How was that possible? How did she do that? I didn't think it was possible for any of us to fully change their nature. How?
B - If it's the first time we see it happen, it still might have happened before. For us to reach reality, we create proxies, links, until we manage to create a body. For you to become one of us... You would need to create... Well, you would need to create a life like me, similarly. Creating an equivalent of yourself, and then dying. I guess. And what structure you built and left would remain as your heir on counterpart.
R - Isn't that like the picture of me you save already?
B - No. My picture saves all your atoms kind, position in space one next to another, momentum and energy level. It's like a book of data, to replicate you as a human. It's abstract looking on my side, like a book describing how you are. Whereas she somehow created a functioning structure, or primitive lifeform, somewhat equivalent to her human mind, well, equivalent to what it had become at least, I think.
She probably fused with a passing spore of daiûa that allowed it, but it's her lingering will that took over. And chose to transmigrate first instead of resurrect. Odd...
B - What I'm keeping as a picture of you is really just a record of all that makes you, not a functioning copy. In my world without atoms, the biological and electrical systems don't work. So even If the structure is life-size, it doesn't work. You need to translate it, and it's almost impossible to do without help or experience... She probably had help from below at some level.
R - I was thinking that as well. But why her? What made her so different that she managed to transform in such a way?
B - My guess would be, hard feelings toward us, toward you, with my powers. She might have unconsciously taken the path leading to what she envisioned as the best way to have revenge. A powerful body fuelled from the other side, similar result to when she used me. Needless to say there wasn't much of her personality left or intelligence saved at the end of this.
R - She was dead. You killed her. How?
B - I thought... Killing her brain would be enough. And then her body began to die. Something must have remained of her hatred around there like a haze, and regrew. There were microbes and spores in the air like everywhere else. Some of them must have been the perfect ground for some flowers of some hatred of hers to regrow rapidly. I'm sorry I didn't notice it.
R - Well, if we both made terrible mistakes regarding her, I'm definitely more to blame than you are. Not that I can tell easily what we should have done differently. Aside me being less over-confident before the fight obviously.
B - Let's move on. It's over. She's become dust and very little memories.
I hope it is this time...
~
We have to discuss some details regarding the wish I want her to grant me.
B - The Dragod isn't answering. Maybe it can still create a doppelganger body for us, but we should assume it cannot.
R - How much time would you need to create adult human bodies?
B - Here... Maybe a year or so. I'm stronger than before but I would need to gather and create lots of organic compounds, and gather water. A swamp in Italy would be more suitable than this place.
R - The place doesn't really matter, even though I like this place. One year you say... Well, the world shouldn't change too much in one year.
B - Wouldn't you want younger bodies for you and her? It would save me some time and power also if you're children.
R - I wouldn't feel at ease in an immature body with my current state of mind I think. Just adults is the best way to go I think.
B - Alright. I should be able to save you however, so... Do you really want a new body? I remember you didn't take it very well when you realised that resurrection meant the creation of another copy. The you as you are now would need to die if you don't want two of yourself to exist.
R - These are difficult questions I never studied in philosophy you know...
I think about it seriously for a while.
R - If there are two of me, I guess you would be happy living with either one?
B - Yes. But you wouldn't, knowing the other one is living your dream.
R - And since she, well, my sister, would be in a way an artificial being that isn't a true copy of her past self either... Can you make a modified copy of myself that would suit you and her too?
B - Modified how?
R - Blank memories from this world. A virgin me, all for yourself.
B - I'm conflicted about this... The mindless roses aren't you. I just love you.
R - Couldn't you create the right one for you, between me and a mindless rose?
B - To me, it would just be less of you. I would feel sad.
I remember that she agreed to just leave me if it came to it, but as much as I can, I would rather also give her what she desires most.
R - I think the best option remains for you to stay with us. We don't have to go on our separate ways. Though my attention would mostly go toward her and less to you.
B - I don't mind.
She said that with a really kind voice, as if to emphasize it.
B - And you said she would probably enjoy meeting me.
R - I'm sure of it. She was more into daiûas than I ever was.
B - And she loves roses. All the Roses.
R - Probably!
Laughing within a dream tastes hollow, but we still grin.
R - I know what I want, and even though it may surprise you, I've taken a long thought about it.
B - What is it?
R - Our journey together as is will now end shortly. We knew it wouldn't last forever and enjoyed it fully...
B - I wish it had been a little while longer. A few dozen years, until you grew too old and died.
R - But we're not done yet spending time together or travelling. I'll explain the true change.
B - ... Meanie.
Got you.
R - To create my wish, this persona I dream of, remember, idealise and desire...
B - In more ways than one?
R - Shut up!
Darn it.
R - Well... To do so, to make her real, you need to gather everything of her that exists in the world, as memories and whatnot, but also to fill the gaps, either randomly or as I want it best. My preferences will do?
B - That is correct Madam. Her D.N.A will be based on yours mostly, and adjusted upon the requirements.
R - Her D.N.What? Well, we understand each-other. Alright. Well, I want to help you create her from within. I want to help you as you create the new her... and the new me. And I want to help you from within you.
B - You want to come within me? To reverse the roles?
R - I want to enter your world. I want to go to the other side of reality you originate from. There, I want my soul and my memories to help you create the next me and the next her.
B - So you're ready to give up on your life in this world, in order to live better in the next one... When did you grow such a devout faith?
R - Probably somewhere along the time when you saved my life by being ready to give up yours. Or around the time when you brought me back to life after my death. One more thing. You said ascending to the other realm meant translating all of what you are and then let the original die?
B - Yes. Otherwise, as soon as the magic or bond keeping the synchronicity between the two sides of you is cut, there would be two of you... Oh my...
R - You got it. I want to help my ideal future to come to fruition. To do that, I want to ascend to your world. But. But as you will devote yourself to them, I want my fate to remain a mystery to them.
B - Why would I stay with the new and different Rose and not the original you? I love you. And I don't like the idea of keeping secrets from any of you.
I smile oddly.
R - I dearly hoped you would say this kinds of things, rather than just accepting the idea as is. The truth is... This will be a kind of surprise for the next Rose. Whether I am still alive or dead will be hers to find out.
B - I don't follow you Rose...
R - Don't worry my love. We have about one year to sort everything out. My idea has some surprising implications even to me, and a few things left to figure out. I'll need your help for all of that. Trust me, in the end, we'll manage to polish a plan for the future that fits all. For all of us.
B - Hm...
~
My plan is happy, optimistic, and a little bittersweet altogether.
Blume and I will remain together until the end.
Whatever the outcome with its uncertainties and unpredictabilities may be.
One way or another, I will die eventually.
Today I have the true chance of a time, once upon a time, to make it truly count the way I see fit and want.
It starts by seeing her world, and all the consequences it implies for me in reality.
~