Rose Blumen ~ Exogignesthai

(Rose)

A few days after we left the shores beyond the southern horizons, our symptoms peaked.

Nightmare was more sick than me even, but we were both having a very hard time.

Although swimming through a soft water sea and jungle made it easy to gather living resources, it was also the worst possible environment for bodies like ours to stay healthy.

We were already long infected with more bacteria, archaea and viruses than either Nightmare could count. All I could count was how many times I vomited before passing out again.

Nightmare was a mess. Good thing the ocean water carried our filth away. But it also maintained a steady supply of pathogens our bodies were struggling to face. We wanted to prevail, and become able to travel through that environment. We were motivated.

But it was taking some painful time and harsh unusual strain on our immune systems.

Even the wings of Blume and Nightmare were now ridden with so many diseases, they were losing their feathers.

Unfortunately, Nightmare had never prepared panacea for such situation.

N – I knew it would be bad... But still...

She vomited straight into the water. It was awful.

A swarm of lifeforms came to eat and digest what we couldn’t and gave back, willingly or not.

We were floating adrift, a fortune raft hastily built that the wings were pulling and keeping afloat. Neither of my beloved demons was truly worried for our lives, so we were pushing forward instead of turning back to return on land.

Only a tough moment to withstand they said. Given how she looked, I think Nightmare wasn’t really happy with her obstinate choice.

She was used to environments with let’s say less vivid variety of pathogenic organisms.

Even Blume whom liked bacterial floras as she called them, was a little overwhelmed with the unending swarm of them the sea was splashing against us.

Nightmare had a taste of the water from the shore. It turns out that was the cleanest and mildest part of the sea. Now that we were away from the shore, it was a strain trying to eat us whole.

Since it didn’t change much our overall health, we could still dive every day. But we couldn’t sleep, eat, or regurgitate anything while underwater. So we spent most of our poor days and night times on the small raft, lying there hopeless while our guts tried to escape from ourselves. At least that was how it felt.

We often still dove, looking for food. And we cooked it as we could on this raft that barely floated.

Like everywhere else, dead biological material, including wood, quickly deteriorated. So it wasn’t obvious what to use to build something floating from an underwater forest, but it was still achievable.

I don’t know what would be impossible to achieve for the two of them teaming up together anyway.

Although my brain turned to mush from the fever.

Blume and Nightmare have their personalities and preferences, but share that innate power to bend biology if not even physics, to their will.

So although there currently are too many and too various diseases to face head on to be healthy with unprepared biological bodies, that soup was also the perfect food for the both of them to grow a solution and some learning.

A monstrous hybrid, neither quite plant nor animal, nor mushroom, but a floating thing grew between their wills in a matter of hours. Something fleshy with lots of air inside, to carry us all as a ship across this sea of life, in its most simple and aggressive forms.

Meaning the ship was sick too! But being a craft of theirs, it could obey different rules. It didn’t have usual cellular structure for viruses to hijack and was filled with an environment that dissolved and ate bacteria more than it could be infected by them.

In simpler words, it was a monster. Although with an odd shape of a floating bedding, still contaminated by yeasts; on a biological perspective it was the latest abomination beings-like-her created.

Given my bed ridden diseased condition, I wasn’t going to complain. But were I to forget whom the world belongs to now, the answer was clear.

Although a glance at my sister’s strained face didn’t make it obvious. It did make it funny however, for there was a little irony in our situation. I brushed with my hand her dirty coagulated hair. Her digestive system was in worse uproar than mine. It just was the most pitiful and sorrowful of shows. Only once were she as miserable.

Good thing shame was mostly a thing of the past, for there was nothing pretty about us for the time current.

After releasing more of the juices her guts failed to keep together, she just lied there on her back, coughing and sighing.

N – Being human is painful.

I laughed, so much, as she said that. Enough to make me tear up and release more than I’d like of my own half-digested juices.

I still kissed her forehead with affection. Our sense of smell was long gone anyway and thankfully.

N – I was living so simply and somehow happily, safely crafting birds on my shore side city...

I listened to her as I would any poor tired bed ridden sister. She just wanted to feel reassured, no matter how old she was. She just felt awful and therefore insecure.

I held her hand as she spoke of an idealised past from distant memories. Oh good old days.

N – And then one day, came the blue bird that foreshadowed the end of time.

R – ...

N – The lord of nightmares whom dethroned even me and brought more chaos to my existence than even the white day ever had...

R – ... Was I your worst nightmare?

She somehow realised what her feverish rambling had brought her lips to mutter. She saw me, although her eyes had been open the entire time. She chose her words with an impish grin.

N – You’ve always been my worst unimaginable nightmare, since that day we met.

R – Because I changed everything.

We exchange warmer grins, as long as our guts allow us. We share a nice bond.

~