(Rose)
As we kept walking toward the south of the country, the weather quickly changed.
The winter got suddenly warmer and all snow turned into cold but flowing mud.
The rain feels colder than the snow, and days of downpour are wearing our clothing and skin rapidly.
We go from shelter to shelter when the weather is slightly better. Okay, slightly less awful, enough to walk or run.
And the rain is probably not just water, as our clothes are losing their colours and get attacked by the rain slowly. It itches a lot on the skin as well.
We built a kind of very large umbrella with a metallic panel stuck with small poles to hold it.
This helps us a little.
We follow the road that turned into streets as we cross a deserted city, void of life.
I think it's one where I met a monster a few years ago already. Now it's all peaceful.
We go for the exit straight across a big building.
But we stop, as if our instinct told us there was something we have to check behind us.
We both felt it. Looking at each other, we shared a quiet nod and understood.
We put our big umbrella down by the main exit of this very wide building.
We turned around and ventured inside this place that somehow convinced us to stay a little longer, without a word spoken.
~
Our electric torchlights show us a small market town within a large building.
Though most are closed or damaged, we go by a swarm of stores aligned along streets with small gardens in-between. All within this giant building.
It's a collection of shops from a different time.
We walk by piles of various rubbish or tooling aging differently.
Instead of humans to animate them all, only green mushrooms now inhabit this place and its every rooms.
We find shoes, some ridiculous looking, and some still good to use, so we help ourselves.
I see fancy dresses but no accessories I'd expect. Bleue has learnt to feel more at ease with trousers than skirts since she arrived, but some habits remain with us.
Needless to guess what colours were our main day dresses at home for us four sisters. We each had our prised colour domain. Anyway...
Some clothes in another store are either melted in a puddle, or rotten to the core in a fur of mould, or covered with small mushrooms.
In the next stores, they either are one of the above, or still oddly looking like we could safely wear them right away.
It varies a lot from parameters I can't see.
Bleue found a shirt that she likes, with what I believe to be a stylised dragon skull on it? Befitting a witch definitely.
As long as the cloth is sturdy, I don't really care what we wear so that's fine by me.
I'm more interested in the kitchen tools store that comes next. They had good knives. Some still haven't rusted and are still sharp to this day. They're a taker.
And some ergonomic camping boilers and kettles. We resupply eagerly.
When we have scavenged more than enough supply, we return toward the exit of the building.
And something still makes us want to stay inside.
It might have been just the awful downpour that awaits us, but we both feel like something else is at stake here. We're feeling odd.
We can't make a step further toward the exit, for no fathomable reason.
Something is stopping us.
B - Something is playing with our mind?
R - There likely is a being-like-her here... They like to do things like that, and can release poisons in the air to influence us against our will sometimes.
B - Should we try to reason with it?
R - If we can, sure. Let's have your body ready still, just in case we can't. I don't know what we should expect...
I'm becoming nervous, now that I realised one of them is near, and probably already has us under its gaze.
B - What about your rifle?
R - Trust me, you don't want me to shoot while being inside the same corridor. The sound would knock us down. In worst case though... I'll have it close yes.
B - Alright then... Let's find the djinn playing around.
~
The rain outside silences everything inside.
We venture from store to store, deeper inside the mall, one level after another in this small isolated city.
The deeper we go, the stronger the feeling becomes.
The weight in our mind that we shouldn't go outside.
That we should come closer...
We're being pulled inside the cave...
Bleue has an arrow ready to be pulled. I have a knife close too. Some instincts began making muscles I'm not used to normally to twitch here and there, in my arms, legs and neck. I'm nervous.
Another shop with little damages due to time is found around that next corner filled with dry mud.
Boxes of shirts. The kind my friends wear. Slightly elastic, with short sleeves and no opening on the torso to button. No buttons at all.
You have to pull them from beneath and onto your shoulders to wear them.
They're tight, but they hold well. And they're good weave. Bleue found a few she likes.
I pick up a few others.
Then we get to the core of the building, where it hurts our head.
We missed it on our first way through, it wasn't visible on the ground level.
A spot of light from above. A column of painted metal.
Light from outside enters this column of air, isolated within the building. A big opening to the sky in the middle.
And in the middle of this rather wide patio, is a gleaming pillar, with sharp edges.
It seems out of place. It's way bigger than a normal statue as it spans many floors.
Bleue notices some wings marks that damaged the walls as it came inside this place, from the sky?
As we look closer below, though the levels further below are still numerous, and damp, we can guess what might have been a fire, or extreme heat.
R - This is... A spacecraft.
B - A plane? From recent days?
R - I think so. It looks rather recent yes.
We see the access to the ship a few levels below.
We find our way.
We go inside, through the opening in the hull that reaches part of the level.
It looks like the ship landed in this place a while back, cutting rather cleanly its way in but not really meant to land here in this place. It's really out of place.
Every floor below the access is just soot and ashes. The upper levels have been cleansed a little by the weather over time, but the marks of ruptures and fire are still noticeable everywhere.
The building structure being rather hollow on every level, the last levels absorbed most of the fire from the ship's engine. It's all ashes down below.
Within the ship, we have to climb parallel ladders along the main corridor, since it's tilted vertically.
Bleue and I climb it back against back.
We reach the cockpit exhausted.
It's empty.
But some electrical commands are responding.
Bleue is excited of course. I'm quite curious too. But...
B - Should we try?
R - I don't want to die... We know nothing about this thing, how to use it and if it still works properly.
B - You're no fun... But I think you're right. And where's our djinn then?
In another place I guess. This human ship is abandoned here. It just doesn't decay nor rust away as fast as the rest.
B - Maybe... It's a new being-like-her, born in here while this spaceship was flying. And now it wants our help in going back to the stars. That's why it was summoning us. It wants us to start the ship and to let it fly away!
Her idea would have been fun I must say.
We ventured deeper in the burnt levels with shirts on our face to breathe less ashes.
It's been damped so we don't need them much.
Below. All is a sooty and uneven black mud. From ceiling to floor.
Below the ship, so deep in the basement we can't hear anything from the weather anymore.
The rain falls on other levels above us, elsewhere...
There, amidst skeleton of cars, in a place covered with soot from floor to ceiling, we found an orange puddle.
It moved slowly, it reacted to our presence.
And we reacted to her reaction that sent a shockwave inside our mind.
B - I feel like it just screamed in surprised at seeing us...
R - Me too. I guess we weren't especially targeted, we weren't real to it until we appeared here.
Myls taught me to be cautious. We make a step back and I try to speak, while remaining ready to fight or flee.
R - Can you speak? Can we help you? Would you mind letting us go?
B - That's so straight to the point Rose... Do you come from the stars? Can you swap to a different colour?
The puddle suddenly changes from bright orange to a fluorescent pink glow for a few seconds, before returning to its normal orange.
B - See? It agrees.
R - Please tell me this is a joke...
We don't hear words, but some ideas permeate directly inside our heads.
It didn't realise we were there until we were physically that close, as I thought. And it grasps some of our thoughts more than our spoken tongue.
It reached awareness there. It's probably not from space.
It apologised for catching us in its nest. It wasn't meant for us especially. So we're released.
B - It's a monster fishing so. What is it trying to catch?
R - Ah, right. I think it's trying to sieve energy... The same as every other, of course. It's rather simple Bleue. As humans eat food like building materials and chemical energy to grow and live. Beings-like-her do the same but using mostly magical energy. It's just hungry and trying to eat so.
B - So we look tasty to it?
It says no. We look scary to it. It's actually more afraid of the opposite, that we would eat (or drink) it.
B - Though, if your net is made to catch magical energy. Does this mean...
R - Everything alive today carries some of it now, yes.
B - It's more than none.
R - You're right.
Bleue is thinking seriously about something, looking unusually focused.
The puddle asks us to leave, before we leave too much of our bacteria near it. It could infect its weak biological body.
We don't really feel flattered but I can respect its hygienic concern for its safety.
We leave. It lifted its influence for a while so we can leave. And we're out rapidly after.
B - Rose. I have a request.
R - Yes?
B - I would like...
I know what you want. To use spells.
But Bleue looks actually more grim than excited to my surprise.
R - What is it?
B - The way it lives, in this world of soot, makes me anxious about myself...
A shade of introspection flew around her
She's picking up the umbrella.
I begin patting her head and caressing her hair as she requested.
It's fine.
~