172. Visiting a city, 5

(Rose)

Heading north. Entering the ruins of another city. A small one. Older. Just as ruined as the others though. I can tell it's older at the remnants of architecture. Stones and bricks were replaced over time by concrete, which was replaced by glass and steel, then glass stronger than steel.

I've seen walls in shambles where the steel melted, the building collapsed, but the glass walls remained intact, facing the street, still looking clean.

Blume says it's a kind of ceramic, but it looks nothing like it.

She's blooming all over me joyously. I already have a scarf of flowers, flying in the wind, turning into a cape or mantle at will. She's radiant.

We explore the old city at day and camp through the night. I'm feeling very good lately and so does she.

She speaks with her flowery voice again.

Now she often holds my hand as we go. She wraps herself around it in a very sweet flowery glove.

I remember when my left hand was damaged... (I still have a little bone in my bag as a memento from the other time I lost bones.)

She's sweet. Sweet to me and my senses. She likes to pretend kissing me to wish me a good day and a good night. She only brushes my lips then, but I enjoy it too... In more ways than one...

Everything is complex.

Life here. This town has some building upside down, literally, and crumbling away. What happened?

The street is destroyed as if bombs exploded, and some buildings are lying with their architecture upside down, on both side of the street. Why? How?

Another new one did this? All seems quiet.

I enter the building that looks in better shape. I wouldn't want to be buried alive again. When did I experienced it the first time? I can't quite recall. Sometimes I have these doubtful memories passing by. Well, it doesn't matter.

Inside, I walk on ceilings covered with fallen and rotting furniture. Nothing interesting.

Ah. Skeletons. I take a closer look at them. A family, sitting together against a bed. They've been there for years. I crouch in front of them, observing them carefully.

Two adults. Two children. All reduced to bones and mummified tissues, mixed with clothing. Sitting together, trying to sleep together in the ruins...

I tilt my head back to normal and stand up.

R - It's the first time we find remains that seem to date from the end of time... Why?

B - I don't know. They seem to have simply sat there to sleep. And their bones didn't decompose like they usually do now.

R - Where did everyone else go? If everyone died, how come this is the almost first time we find bones?

B - I honestly have no idea. You generally don't leave bones for long anymore.

R - It's a little sad that even our bodies vanished, but the city probably would have looked like hell if they all had remained.

B - ...

R - What is it?

B - I wonder what might happen to make most of the bodies disappear entirely. However... This island might have been mostly deserted already.

R - Great Britain, deserted?

It sounded ludicrous to me.

But again, I wasn't there. And who remained didn't necessarily spoke English. So perhaps, she's right.

I climb the slide the reversed stairway is in this building.

On the next floor, amongst broken furniture, I find some clothing. I grab a few underwears that look still good.

I then find a comfortable mattress and a heavy blanket. Even though it's the middle of the day behind the broken window, I roll onto the pulverised bed and take a dusty nap.

I quickly fall asleep because it's the softest bed I had in months.

I'm thinking that I'm no longer human.

I've evolved into someone very different from what I pictured...

I'm able to sleep peacefully in a house full of corpses, in the middle of the day, because the bed is very soft.

And I'm enjoying when the odd flowery blanket and living thing she is, is cuddling me and caressing my skin.

A part of me, a little one, is still nauseous. Another one is proud.

When all morality became pointless, I guess pragmatism prevailed. I'm still a little idealistic at heart though.

I still have my morals, my ethic and my doubts. And I won't burry those bodies downstairs, because to me they're already at rest where they belong.

~

Blume is playing with me as I wake up. She's tickling me, brushing me, pressing my skin on different spots with her flowers. It's the equivalent of kisses for her.

I kiss some flower back. She's very happy.

We go outside again after a moment of such play. I wander through the streets. I spot some lizards running away from us. It's still rather cold outside though.

I see another shooting star falling through the sky in the distance, even though I can still see the sun.

The streets are randomly destroyed. Some look fine, some look like they've been mowed down.

I find the stockpile of a market building, with remaining crates of cans. Some don't spoil fast, but they're obviously getting rarer over time.

Some fruits in juices. They're good. I take what I can carry, mark the place on my map and leave the rest where it was.

We go further. Night falls. I make camp in a house at random. In this block, all doors have rotten and fallen into mush.

There's an opening in a ceiling, to an attic. Blume expands herself, stretches our combined body. She pulls us up toward this opening far above my head.

I land in a weird place full of colours. There's a couch, and piles of those colourful discs, rotting or melting on the shelves. Some screens cover the wall. A television or computer I've learned. Never saw one working yet though.

I sleep there. I hear the rain falling slowly outside. Blume is resting right next to me.

It's peaceful.

~

I wake up with my good morning kiss and greeting.

I smile happily. I stretch longly. Blume helps me doing a few minutes of exercise. We will walk a lot today.

First, leaving this attic. Blume stretches into the flowery ribbons all over and slowly lifts me down through the opening. I can feel her roots attached to all of my bones playing the role of a harness inside my body. I land safe and sound. She then returns to me and wrap herself around my clothes.

I begin to leave the city. I go through suburbs that have been blown away by a titanic explosion a little further. I see a deserted land spreading. Only a few trees are growing there, among dead stumps.

It's wide. Kilometres wide.

R - What is that?

B - This looks like a nuclear explosion site, but I don't detect the radiating activity I would have expected.

R - Nuclear?

B - Ah... It's like... An explosive like the sun uses. It's a force of nature beyond chemistry, it's the strength of stars.

R - A power beyond electricity and oil?

B - Far beyond. Think of it as a touch of the sun, and that's only the start.

R - I can't really picture that...

I walk inside a desert unlike any I've seen in books. It's very flat. There are chunks of melted materials here and there, and that's about it.

Nothing else to see but a few trees, and buildings foundations. Everything above ground is gone.

Blume tries to teach me the essentials of physics, to understand what probably happened there. But she seems distracted by the absence of something. She too is a little puzzled by the difference of what she knows in theory, and what she observes in reality. Some things are odd.

We cross the path of a railroad. I see how it melted and warped, blown away in a twisted sculpture in the area of the explosion. It looks like half a very distasteful arch. Now it's frozen metal, rusted deep through.

I open my bag. I pick up a few of my metallic flower seeds and drop them around.

In a few years, this might be interesting to see.

~

The town is behind us. The countryside is normal ahead. We walk all day. She rings like little bells now and then, as if smiling to the scenery as we walk.

Everything is at peace because it's empty. There is little wildlife. And there are little remaining buildings still looking good. It takes work to keep a house or a church standing.

My friend I should visit again soon enough sure is courageous...

~