Rose Blumen ~ Exogignesthai

(Rose)

After feeling down for a little while, hope resurfaced with the voice of Blume.

R – Rise and shine little flower.

B – Good morning Rose.

I’m really happy to hear and see you again.

We update her on the little things that occurred while she was busy keeping our brain alive, and recovering from her own damages from age.

Nightmare and Blume have both understood fully they really are mortals, whether they have a body or not, partially because of me.

B – I’ve always known you would be the death of me Rose.

R – Gee...

B – Ever since the first time we really spent together.

That takes me back to a time when I didn’t have grey hair nor wrinkles on my skin.

I get teased on both sides by them for what misery I brought to them. I let them play.

But more than their own individual mortality, Nightmare realised their future as a kingdom of life (not really species) is probably more limited than first easily expected.

Picking up the leftovers of humanity, they thought themselves as gods.

Today, these two here realise that their time on Earth may end up an event a thousand fold shorter than the time spent by the human species.

Humanity as a species is millions of years old. As an intelligent culture, many thousands of years.

They might last far, far less than a millennium.

The ocean of T.I. that covers the world could dry as quickly as it appeared for all we know, and leave them stranded in a reality that cannot sustain how they exist currently.

Between that realisation of their precarious reality and the clarification that they are indeed mortal, it was a sad day for them. And by relation, I suffered with them.

But we’re feeling pretty good now, as the sun rises over the sea and its muddy islands we can see.

They may not have D.N.A and floras to carry, but their brain structure has structural limits in their abilities to self repair and regenerate as themselves.

Life can always regrow, but an identity is somewhat more difficult.

R – How do you feel, deep inside?

B – Older. Alive. Happy to be there.

R – Same for me.

Nightmare was flexing a little.

She picks up a transparent pearl out of nowhere and throws it into the dark sea.

It bubbles. And something of a monstrous soup of flesh and oils grows. It grows into a floating tongue, wide enough before the exhausted pairs of wings crawl there and collapse more than they lie down.

We’ve overcome the swarm of diseases. We’ll get over our exhaustion. I’m quite confident in ourselves, even if I can’t know everything.

As for what will come... We’re unable to predict.

So today, we sail further into the unknown.

~

Nightmare and I dive, leaving Blume on board.

The sea is still clouded with dusts of all kinds, but they settle slowly. They flow like smoke, only slower.

The forests reappear. Shaken from some of their leaves, but still holding well.

Swarms of small fishes and insects come around, feeding on the oily streams of vegetable wastes the sea uprooted.

We avoid the most colourful clouds, Nightmare recognising a strain of very hungry bacteria.

They’re colourful so I was curious. She held me back, preventing from getting too close.

Cyanobacteria she would later tell me.

I couldn’t find much fruits in the fog around the forest level, but Nightmare fished hundreds of the tiny fishes swimming in swarms.

Later that day, we boiled half of them in a soup, and fried the rest with some of the sea oils.

We left nothing behind. We were starving.

The island of mud, barely protruding from the surface of the oily sea, dried into a crust that cracked like an old varnish or burnt cookie.

The sea mud isn’t as appetizing as a cookie though.

R – I’m beginning to miss the taste of biscuits of all sorts and kinds.

N – I can probably cook a fish biscuit for you.

R – Hm, well, it’s more the taste I miss.

B – Hm... Let me see what I can do from here...

Blume makes her wings dig into the flesh of the ship, to fuse with it.

The wings were too tired to fly anyway, so Blume tries to repurpose them into the kind of things she’s more used to.

By the next day, our ship had been completely invaded by Blume’s vines and roots. Shrubs were growing.

Nightmare was cursing the plant at regular intervals like an angry raven, but wasn’t really mad at her.

She just surrendered the control of the living ship she had created to a Blume growing back to full bloom in a new way.

And as her roots grew into the sea, she turned into something else faster than we could have realised.

R – I guess... You feel better as a more sap based organism than blood based, right?

B – How could you tell?

It’s only been a few days. And we’re now sailing over a mangrove tree as big as a real ship, so the clue is subtle.

The trunk is very short, but the foliage spreads far, farther and farther each hour. Her roots as a plant jellyfish, or mangrove tree, now reach dozens of metres in width in every direction.

She’s growing better alright. That’s understating it. She’s even chuckling her happiness.

The floating tree with tentacular spread is even able to sail by itself, as she makes some roots oscillate.

Nightmare is very annoyed. She hasn’t crafted anything in a long time. I can tell she’s ticked off, seeing Blume having all the fun.

I can see a new competition rising.

~