(Rose)
Bleue and I learn to survive. I realise how different it will be without Blume.
It will be much harder.
Myls and her rose go on expeditions together now, leaving for days, returning with scavenged goods.
Zeslinry oversees her little society, or garden if I dare say.
Bleue enjoys training at archery. She looks really focused when she does.
My heart pinches, as I think that she's not Blue. When she sees me, and smiles while looking at me, something melts within me.
She's my blue bird nevertheless. She was right.
We end up going for an expedition with the young Myls and her rose.
These are Bleue's first steps into the world; even though she feels like she knows it a little already.
We gear up with backpacks and leave, walking on ice covered trails. We're going northward.
Other roses are looking through the southern ruins already, digging around the whole Merkabah area.
North is a more usual world.
Empty cities silently dissolving into the land; barely touched by nature for some of them, the most recent ones to fall.
Roads once straight now in ripples and scattered in broken bits.
We walk slowly as everything is frozen.
Myls is much more skilled than us at this kind of field trips. She knows where to walk, avoiding all natural traps as well as unnatural traps.
We see a few winter snakes slithering around, but not many other animals.
We see a giant wolf run into the distance one time. The other rose and I both recognised that one. Bleue is amazed.
We find the frozen body of a giant slug, bigger than a horse. Some mushrooms black like ink begin to sprout all over it despite the freezing temperature and sun light.
We then finally reach the place we were meant to. Myls needed some help there.
It is an old warehouse in the middle of a desolated area, and surrounded by scorched earth.
It looks like something exploded a little further and blown away most buildings, except that one.
This warehouse is still standing and heavily fortified, protected by that military kind of barbwires. It's not the same kind at all from the ones used for cattle.
And some pieces of clothes are stuck here and there on it.
Myls points at us a kind of flower or mushroom that grows on spots along there.
M - They grow from spilled blood.
This place starts to look grim. But to Myls, and to Bleue, this means there might be a treasure to uncover there.
So we'll find our way inside.
~
The barbed wires surrounding the facility are metamorphosed in a strange structure on one side of the building. It has become a strange sculpture of melted metals, stretching maybe five metres into the sky, and is a chaotic arrangement of wires, needles, poles and other things.
A grotesque work of art looking like an explosion or a series of explosions of metal, suddenly frozen in time.
We have no clue as to what happened there. Maybe the gate was there before and something did explode.
We can work with the unknown at times and we must.
Myls begins to climb on it. She does it and attaches ropes on a pole on top of it. She wants us to pull it down to open a safer access.
I wonder how it's safer, but she mentioned something about the fences being poisonous.
She slips as she's climbing down. The other rose and I caught her together as one. She shrugs it with a smile.
Myls still holds my hand to stand up and thanks me. She's welcome, we're friends I tell her. She grins.
Bleue is looking at me with round eyes.
R - What is it?
B - You and her reacted in the exact same manner. It's the first time I saw that.
R - Don't we look alike each other already?
B - Yes, but I never saw it that much before. I wonder if I could make you all dance a ballet together?
Both roses must have looked at her with a similar unhappy face I guess; as Bleue suddenly burst into a laughter looking at our reaction.
We pull the sculpture down with our combined strength the four of us. It slowly tips over and finally falls, to crash on the ground, and leave a ripped opening in the defensive walk around the building.
Myls taps onto my shoulder and thanks me for coming to help.
We reach the building with apparently indestructible walls and doors. It's not a warehouse but a giant vault at this point. One story high only, quite wide, very few windows. Walls thicker than bastions, it shows where they have fissures.
Bleue spots a hole high into a wall, close to the roof, as if a canon had pierced it there.
We climb onto the roof using some pipes and bring Myls to the holes using the ropes.
She disappears inside, leaving us three to wait onto the roof.
I'm feeling a little embarrassed in front of the other rose who also stays silent.
B - Are you alright you two?
R - I feel awkward with the roses.
- We don't resent you anymore. Of course we feel a little melancholic, but don't worry. And for you Bleue, I'm thinking that I can be myself and happy for you two. I'll be fine... It's difficult to let go of my past, but I accepted neither of you are any longer part of mine.
R - What are we then?
- Let's say... Friends?
R - I like that.
She smiles. It's bittersweet. Her face suddenly looks far less familiar to me.
She's become someone new to me.
Someone that broke free of the blue rose I guess.
After a while, we ear Myls yelling from below, but outside the building. She's just calling us to join her down there.
M - I've opened the doors!
~
Inside the building are a few offices without window and a warehouse filled with rows of very rectangular machines. It's a server farm according to Myls, but none of us really understand what this is.
She thinks she could dismantle all that to reuse it at the manor. If they need to build a wall, they sure can.
In the offices, we find a dew clothes and a few drums of chemicals that may still be good.
Bleue jumps as she saw something moving in the shades. Myls brings her light torch.
I recognise the darkness crawling onto the walls, fleeing the light; and explain to Bleue what it is.
We pack a drum and we leave. We let the creature in peace.
As we walk back home, Bleue keeps looking behind her shoulders, and all around us.
She likes it.
She likes this world.
As we reach Zeslinry's manor, Bleue grabs my hand and makes us wait a few steps behind Myls and her rose.
R - What is it?
B - Come with me. Let's go. Let's go right now. I want to go now.
It's still the middle of winter. We have no equipment with us. Still, I'm tempted and hesitate to follow her whim.
For a second or two, I just want to go with her like that, us two vanishing suddenly.
But I remember that I need to be smart in this world.
I must compromise with my wish, our desire and our needs.
R - Alright, let's not wait until Spring, but not right now unprepared. We'll go back with them, equip ourselves properly, and we'll leave tomorrow morning first thing. Alright?
B - ... Alright.
She smiles heartily, excited.
B - I can't wait to travel along this world with you! I can't wait.
We walk on the frozen ground a little further.
She suddenly spoke a few words, with an exaggerated deeper voice.
The few words that are like our family spell and even now can send shivers down my spine...
B - Once upon a time... There was a woman called Rose...
~