(Rose)
It's a young island in the eastern area of the mediterranean sea.
I've seen things that weren't able to fly before, now flying.
But trees, I don't think I have until there.
As we came back to enjoy it like children, we also planned to study them further.
All around this place, trees grow in every direction of space, as they hover peacefully above one area or another.
They don't get carried away by the wind, never fly too high above their level nor they fall fully, unless they died.
Something keeps them at a specific level of altitude, and something keeps them above the same place.
And something, maybe the same thing, maybe another, makes them fly!
Giant balls of spiky dead trees and wood are cluttered together in some of the valleys and ravines of the island. Dead trees don't hover anymore.
We look for the younger ones to see how they start.
Bleue finds it. Puddles of mud. Seeds sprout there, then balls of mud grow and rise in droplets along them like fruits.
The balls of mud and seed grow as they rise, until they detach and end up floating, a few centimetres above the puddles.
From there, the plant begins to sprout on the top side, affecting the balance maybe, and as the ball slowly turns over itself, more sprout appears over time around the top.
In time, the plant grows in all directions quite equally. We didn't notice, but maybe the trees keep rotating as well.
What I noticed where the threads after we arrive.
As if thin fishing lines or cobweb threads were linking most of these floating tree balls to the ground.
Taking a much closer look at it, we noticed that these threads were sticky, and pulling nutrients out of the ground and to the trees.
Basically, they acted like roots. These few filaments, as thin as spiders silk, were their roots, to keep growing beyond their initial fruit or egg of mud.
Bleue found a few trees with fruits and began harvesting them. She wants to try eating a lot, to see if it could make her fly.
It turns out it only made her really sick. I was split between sympathy and amusement or mockery at her pain.
My poor Bleue has been struck with gazes and diarrhoea for a few days. And she didn't fly.
Meanwhile, I tried other things.
With a cluster of trees about two metres wide, all flying at the same height above me, I attached various weights to them, to see.
As I guessed, it is a physical strain, they can withstand up to roughly their presumed weight added, but the heavier the load, the faster they get weaker and lose altitude.
To recover strength, they use sunlight, and their filaments. Too bad Blume isn't there to tell me more about photosynthesis. I'm sure she would know.
We'll see what we can figure out by ourselves.
~
We only use the dry dead wood piled in the crevices for our campfires. There is no normal tree around this island. They all float in the sky.
With one of my swords turned into a makeshift axe, I chopped one of the flying trees down.
The lighter branches with lots of leaves just slowly fell upward into the sky.
The heavier and more central logs I had were weightless, as was the sap. The drops of sap hovered like bubbles.
We made a soup of chunks of green wood and leaves, to extract the sap.
It turned the water into something really whimsical.
The boiling water seemed to become a living thing, as if a swarm of jellyfishes suddenly flew around as they melted into and across one another.
Transparent sheets and balloons flew away, causing sparks of rainbows and odd optical effects.
My pot ended up empty at the end of the show that left us stunned.
We then extracted some sap of the bigger flying trees as we would do for rubber, stopping as soon as they began feeling a little weak.
It's a very slow harvest.
Bleue is wondering if we could turn our boat into a flying machine I can tell.
R - I think the boat will remain the faster machine for now, and the trees still need roots over land to live I think.
B - I hope we can fly like Licht someday with this sap.
R - We shall see.
The bottles filled with sap have a weight close to zero, or slightly negative.
We played a game to decide whom would try it first, and I won!
As I began to spread a thick coat of this turpentine over my skin, Bleue watches me, pouting mostly.
B - Will the power be strong enough?
R - I suspect that something inside will react with me and allow me to control its effect, to some extent. But we'll see.
I also expect the living part of this thing to react and adjust to the weight of the object its mixed with.
Once turned fully ochre, and all sticky, I do realise that my balance feels very off. I'm a little dizzy.
B - So, can you fly?
R - My skin feels very itchy... But it does feel like my weight has changed a lot.
I try to walk and just fall pitifully, and bounce back on the grass a few times, before finally sliding a little more before I can stop. Bleue is finding the show hilarious. At least there's that.
I try again. Basically it's as if my weight has been greatly reduced. If I try to move too fast, it's like the air is stopping my movement in an odd way or that I had thrown my entire strength and weight into the movement.
If I walk very slowly and don't turn around too quickly, I'm fine.
R - Flying probably won't work, but I feel like I could jump very high.
I give a very light impulsion on my toes. I rise about half a metre and slowly fall back.
I was not touching the ground for a few seconds there, that felt rather fun.
I crouch, and jump.
It makes me rise by maybe ten metres above the ground. It's scary and really fun!
I slowly then fall back down to the ground.
Slow, but high. It hurts my legs on impact, as if I had jumped from a horse maybe.
Bleue looks like she's witnessed an angel land.
~
We have fun. Bleue didn't wait long before covering herself with the same magical goo.
As if gravity was becoming sleepy, we can't really run, but we sure can jump.
We go from flying tree to flying tree, like weird monkeys, up to the highest point above the island. Once you get the gist of it, it's rather easy to jump straight through the air from one place to the next. I love it. Bleue too.
Bleue then gets the best idea ever, there as we watch the sky together.
B - We should craft ourselves wings like Icarus. With wings to flap and this sap, we really could fly like birds in the sky.
I kiss her in admiration.
One day, we will do so.
Our final and highest jump brings us in the lowest clouds above the sea.
We fall slowly toward the water, laughing. Our slow fall last one long minute, gradually accelerating to a rather normal speed.
Funnily, the water refuses us entry a little. We float and bounce. This makes laugh as well.
We swim back to the island, sliding like oil over the water more than inside of it.
It still washes us slowly and gravity reaches us again as we arrive.
As we stand up and out of the water, we suddenly feel so heavy and old.
This sap could really be addictive. It gives such freedom.
We harvested what we reasonably could.
After a last night under the trees, we will resume our journey.
~