134. After a bad dream, 2

(Rose)

R - Curse you, mean spirited little flower!

B - Oh Rose, you never called me like that before. But you were right, it is interesting.

She's mocking me ever so tenderly. She's even teasing me I could say. One night, by the campfire, she finally managed to move my left hand with the fingers replacements her flower stems makes, according to my commands. It was like teaching her to use a musical instrument, like playing a piano. I say a finger name and she moves it accordingly. She finally got the just of it.

And the next thing I know, she used my lessons to tickle me...

Devil...

R - Devil!

B - Hearing how much you laughed before you pulled your arm away, I guess it didn't feel that bad on your belly?

R - How rude! How mean are you? You stripped some of my dignity away just now. Mischievous child! If only I could make you pay that back.

B - I do share what you feel.

R - It still feels to me like you're the one enjoying all the teasing. How can I mock you?

B - Well, I mostly reside in the flowers you have on your torso. Though there are some muscles and nerves reaching through, there is little sensitivity there. Though next to your belly skin, I guess everything lacks sensitivity...

R - Ey! I heard you!

B - I'm sorry, I meant nothing bad.

She's lying! She's not sorry at all and is playing with me. And I can't win. The part of our body where she resides lacks dermal nerves. I throw a little flick at the main flower on my torso as if I were educating a pet. Bad flower, bad.

Then I manage to sleep, though she doesn't. She already told me it felt odd to her, seeing me sleeping, being in that state of different consciousness, a third of our time together.

Since her brain isn't physical, she's free from such burden. She cannot dream either though. She said it surely makes her kin grows with little imagination and very low emotional resiliency.

She can feel how her nature easily tends to slip toward obsessions and different behaviours. Since she cannot rest, she only can evolve and transform herself. What is true for her body is similar for her mind. Since she wants to stay with me however, she tries to adapt her behaviour to mine regarding sleep. At night, she lowers her attention and slows her process of thoughts. She tries to enter a lull, softening her control over some of our body.

Nights still are long and boring to her. Now she trains herself at pulling strings softly inside my body, we agreed upon that.

To avoid conflicting orders of movements during the day, her training only occurs while I'm at full rest. She can move my fake left fingers she built with her plant-like body, and slowly learns how to move what's beyond the closed wounds, the true hand itself. Slowly. Sometimes I can feel my left hand moving a little while I sleep. Or my toes, or some other part of me, slightly twitching as she does careful tests. Some of my muscles slightly move and she learns where they are and what they do on a more global and accurate level.

One day she'll be able to move me with her own will, as if we fully shared my body.

Somehow I'm please with the thought, because amongst other things, it feels as if I was helping her becoming human and free, like a freed slave, or a growing child.

We do share the same body. And I slowly learn to move those slight, thin but long muscles within the flowers and their stems. This inhuman flesh obeys as if it were normal.

They can slowly move around at will like very thin and long tongues, though insensitive. They have no bones nor nerves to focus or detect the movement from direct feel of it.

~

I dream at night. Of you.

Of her. Of what I've done to this child.

And guilt turns my dream into nightmare.

I still have bad dreams from time to time, as I always have, but these ones wake me up in cries.

Tears roll on my swollen face. My eyes are stingy. My mind and heart are in pain, real pain. Cold sweat collects on my skin. I cry. Over what I've lost, what I've done, what I've been through, and what the nightmares turn them all into.

Only now, she's there. So close to me that I forget it when I wake up. She feels everything with me, and ever so gently soothes me.

With all the kindness in the world, she comforts and consoles me. Softly calling my name to remind me of her presence. Appeasing me with slow and soft words and touches. She's wholly here for me.

The truth is, I've never seen such love before. And in this world, in this life of mine today, she's all I could ever have hoped for.

She cannot take me into her arms as I cry, when I suddenly wake up from these occasional nightmares, but all of her being supports me and helps me.

More than when I'm at peace and confident through the unknown under warm days, it's when I'm drowning in the pain from the past that I truly fall for her.

Because then I experience the extent of her noble soul and love more clearly.

The flowers on me and within me are consoling me, body and soul, softer than anything.

The flowers, the white pale roses blooming on me, have a slight perfume that is now to me like the one of my lovers embrace. That smell reminds me of everything good that can still happen, and that I'm not alone in this world. Something else is with me, and I can overcome my spikes of sadness more rapidly.

My tears sip through the roots sprouting on some of my scars like wild hair. That's how I also can drink water nowadays, though not much.

I stand up and breathe. The coat of flowers and leaves embracing me slowly recedes. She calls my name and reminds me that she loves me.

I shed a warmer tear.

You may be gone sister, but I'm not loveless or alone.

I might never be anymore.

~