(Rose)
Since I got better from the fever, I can see the invisible floating ribbons again. Bleue cannot, so I have to describe to her things that look like they are only within my mind.
B - Are you really sure you don't feel feverish anymore?
R - I'm pretty certain. I can tell the difference. These are real, just not physically real.
Ribbons and shapes are looping around tree branches joyfully along our way. Invisible and transparent insects and flowery spores, following the wind that carry them.
Bleue's right arm can now move a little. New skin is covering the missing chunks of flesh, and they are not sweating blood or plasma anymore. You can see where she was bitten and her arm lost almost the entirety of its muscles there. Her arm is just bones covered with translucent skin on some places. The slim muscles that remained before have melted away, maybe helping the new skin to grow.
This corpse-looking hand is clinging to mine still, because it can. I hold her hand.
And the road ahead is clear.
I follow the stream of transparent butterflies and animated shreds of cloths.
I describe to Bleue all of them, to the extent my vocabulary allows.
Until one day, she suddenly told me that she began seeing them.
B - I can see these translucent petals here and there. They bounce over whatever they touch and are always in movement. How odd I never saw them before...
These petals she mentions can't stay in contact with anything. So when the wind isn't carrying them anymore, they keep flowing in inertia weightless, and bouncing from one solid contact to the next.
Bleue manages to catch one in her left hand. It keeps moving inside like a trapped animal. It tickles her apparently. She laughs and lets it go. Another spore of daiûa flowing inside the invisible sea, changing colours along its way.
We enter the area where these transparent petals are from.
We can tell as a growing concentration of those is flowing along the ground, and we are walking upstream of it.
The ruins of a city like a million others lie further ahead.
Grey buildings, shaved over time by wind and bad weather.
Streets barely invaded by moss but certainly by dirt and soil. These streets are like long flat wild footpaths; where a translucent and silent flow of petal becomes a stream.
It smells good Bleue notices.
There is a pleasant perfume in the air it's true.
We reach a park. It looks odd as the sky is fragmented above it. It looks like clouds are in hundreds of random bits above this place, and stuck in that geometry.
I see twirls of the small ghosts around the place.
It is another one.
R - Another new species, or entity.
As we got closer, we discover a cluster of blooming flowers. It's like a giant sculpture of grapefruits built in glass. And each of the raisin, the size of a car maybe, is a large flower bud with thousands of petals to share and spread.
They are opening up and spreading their petals. These flowers have both real visible aspects in their main body, and unreal sides in these swarm of petals they grow and seed around wildly.
R - Maybe it's more like dandelions pistils actually. Seeds.
B - I'm glad we got here at the right time to see them bloom.
We sit on what probably was a bench in another time. We nibble something, looking at the twirl of transmitted colours.
All the world seems to become kaleidoscopic with these.
Plus they smell good, like some fruits.
We close our eyes to rest then. The show can make you dizzy. We doze off on this nice day.
Thank you for this moment, wild cousin of Blume.
~
We wake up under a blanket of petals after witching hour.
They're not bouncing anymore. And they became opaque and real. Maybe they are wilting like morning glories?
They still smell nice. And they're soft.
Since they're light, Bleue wants to carry a good bag of them, to use as blanket or mattress later.
I let her have her fun, and then we walk away, knee deep into the fluffy snow of petals, toward the closest building.
From there we climb to the top floor, and set camp in an antic apartment for the night. All the furniture has turned into mush and earth a long time ago.
Bleue spread the petals over what would become her bed. It looks like a bird's nest.
Fitting, for my blue bird, I think and grin to myself.
~
On morning as I wake up, I find Bleue still deeply asleep atop the petals, a look of bliss all over her face.
She sleeps shamelessly, but obviously her idea was a good one. She's making me jealous now.
By the hollow window frame, I can see the giant sort of a vine that grows all across the park. Its bark slightly reflects the lights of dawn.
The flowers that grow along this enormous thing turn from slightly orange to transparent as sun rises over them.
And suddenly, after a second of warming up, the petals scattered all over the grounds began flying again, and bouncing all over each other. They fill the air in a swarm and rain jumping from the ground without a sound. The fluffy snow storm fills the streets like a rising level of flood, but less compact as they flow away everywhere around and then follow the slightest stream of wind.
They didn't fully wilt last evening, they just went to sleep as it became dark and cold outside.
The giant grapes twice as tall as all other trees begin spreading more petals as well I see.
Meanwhile, I look back at Bleue, wondering, as I notice the morning light is about to reach her bed through the empty window.
Should I wake her up?
Hm...
Nah.
Her mattress begins to shiver. It tickles her. She giggles in her sleep and rolls around.
Then the bouncing of the petals becomes too strong, and she thrown out of bed in a flowery storm. She gasped with a funny voice. I'm giggling generously.
Bleue rises, half amused, half surprised by the escape of her mattress, half mesmerised by the show, and half pouting at me and my amusement.
B - So flowers sleep and rise too I guess...
R - That was so funny!
B - Oh you... I'll slip some in your bed tonight!
I laugh as she gets herself back together. Her hair is a mess, with a few petals still trying to escape her locks.
I help her. It still smells good. I think she caught their perfume.
R - You smell like them now.
B - Ah ah, really? Interesting. Should we cut one of the big flowers and keep it? To make more beds as well.
R - Well... We may as well try.
And so we do, carefully.
We try to cut one of the lowest flowers, reaching the ground.
They are still bigger than us, so it is rather challenging.
The stem is hard and heavy like iron, and we have a hard time breaking it.
In the end, we bag up only a small piece of the big translucent flower.
Bleue is happy nonetheless.
The bag she carries is trembling on her back when the sunlight warms it enough. It looks queer or shady.
But let's find the next weird flower she says, and I agree.
~