188. Radiant day, 2

(Rose)

When I woke up, I was lying on the grass, a blanket over me.

I heard the music of a fire being tended to. I wasn't alone.

Could my friends be here?

I stood despite my pains all through my body. I was sore all over. I wasn't all mighty any longer.

As I stood, I saw someone I did not know but looking somewhat familiar. A woman with rather long and unruly hair, white, greys and another colour on the course of vanishing through time.

She heard me, stood up and turned toward me. I got a shock in my heart as I saw her face.

Mother? No... It's not her, but she has something on her face that reminds me of her. Something in the soft wrinkles perhaps, or the shape of the edges of her mouth.

Surely not the eye-patch. I guess she lost her right eye.

She brings me something sweet to drink. An herbal tea I think.

We don't say a word before I finished drinking the content of that small bottle she had warmed up on the fire. I look cautiously at her. She looks... confident. At ease, not worried and rather happy to see me.

R - Thank you for saving me...

L - You're very welcome dear. I'm glad I was able to help you. We don't see roses falling from the sky every day around here.

She chuckled at her own joke. Shen then gave me that very warm and kind smile of hers.

I feel like I already know her from somewhere. Maybe because she somehow reminds me of my late mother?

I introduce myself politely. She nods as if she already knew my name and then ponders a second before answering.

L - I'm Licht. Licht Trägerin. It's very nice to meet you, Rose.

~

She's not as old as she looks, and very skilled in living around. She's like a huntress and can read the wind and the faintest smells in the air.

She was after me actually, because she had caught up an unusual smell in the air, and came closer to see what it was.

It was the smell of me, Blume and Ogre about to settle things. All three of us carried similar smells.

I tell her about what happened. She's intrigued. I tell her everything but she looks like as if she already knew most of it already.

By the time I finished telling Licht everything, the evening had fallen. And now she's treating me again, for dinner now.

She's cooking some eggs from an animal I don't know. We keep talking about what surrounds us like good friend already. Then I finally ask her who she is and how did she save me. Because her name doesn't tell me much.

She loses her smile for a moment there.

L - I'm... Quite like you. I'm not human anymore and was brought to this world by a childish god... A capricious god... Then, we differ. You have little power while you and your creator love each other. Mine and I, we don't like each other at all... And I ran away with as much of its power as I could take... We're enemies now and I will face it someday.

R - It sounds as if Blume and Ogre had been one and the same for me... I can see where you're from now... Will this be alright for you?

She smiles quite heartily.

L - There's no need to worry. My creator cannot move. I'm free, and we won't have to face each other unless we really commit to it. We don't. We avoid each other truly.

R - So you're just at odds.

L - You could say that.

She smiles in a slightly sad way.

She repeats that she's free. Her enemy, she doesn't need to go face it anytime soon, if ever at all...

So she enjoys her life, and the world. She found confidence in her peace, or their truce rather, as she found herself free and her enemy unwilling to pursue her. She has power, she has wisdom, and beyond her fears for her creator, she had freedom.

She entered this world recently, with the same eyes as mine.

As of the power she stole, she shows me its extent this night.

~

She woke me up in the middle of the night and told me to look at the sky.

The peaceful night sky of summer. Licht is smiling I can tell. I'm barely awaken. I miss Blume.

Licht is doing something as I can feel something warming up the air. We look at the sky. The night is clear and the stars easy to see.

Something seems to burst out from her, a ray of blinding light. She creates enough light to blind me at first, and then to illuminate the clear light woods as if day had returned. A cloud of light spreads over us and slowly rises into the sky, slowly spreading its glow.

The sheet of sunlight slowly vanishes as I gaze agape at its light fading. The night slowly returns.

It dies in a swarm of sparkles, then the stars reappear in the sky. I'm unable to react for a while at what I just saw. Magic. Licht is a witch.

A powerful witch even. Or perhaps she's actually a being-like-her, only one whom managed to fully imitate a human body?

L - I know what you think. What you fear when you see a power far stronger than yours. I know these feelings all too well... Beyond that, wasn't it pretty?

R - It was pretty... However this reminds me that my wizard is gone.

L - Don't let your sorrow and worries overwhelm you. The more we touch their light, the more we tend to lose our emotional balance, and risk falling into deep depression. Be careful and remember who you are. Remember how fierce you can be.

R - I'm frail in times of peace.

L - You don't have to be, and I'm sure that's not entirely true. Adversity can be more than just a state of war. I'm sure you happened to show your will at peaceful times too.

R - You already seem to know me very well Licht...

She doesn't reply. I see it. She knows more about me than she should. Hints about it are accumulating over the short time we spent together since we met.

Yet, be it. First, she's right, then, I trust her. Because she looks motherly to me for one thing. Because I try to be the self I aim to be anew. I am not aimless. I am not lost.

Everything in life is a bet a way or another. I want to live... To gather up what's left of my past me and fuse it into something great and new. I want to move on. I have quite everything I need in order to do so.

Licht is trustworthy it seems, no matter what she hides from me, not very well by the way.

She looks a little what I want to be also. She's kind and very interesting.

Now, let's move on. We shall.

~

I'm still sore all over in my young body. I still cling to the decaying flowers of Blume. I'm not sure about where her mind is left currently. I'm sure some part of her still lingers very close to me.

Licht barely sleeps or eat. She can survive from her immense power alone, almost? She just sits there and looks at the sky. Or at me. Her eye is not quite showing curiosity. It's more a kind of... relief.

She is younger than she looks. Much younger. Much younger than I could imagine.

I realised it another day by a river.

~

We're heading toward my friend's house, south west from there. I have lost all my affairs but my clothes and my sword, so I have no clue regarding where we are. Licht knows the way of course.

Of course...

Licht walks swiftly, with agility. She has the strength of a bear in her slender arms and legs. When I fell, she lifted me up with one hand. She always has this tranquil smile on her badly aging face.

She smells her way ahead like a dog. She can create fire at will like Blume, snapping her fingers toward twigs, and much more.

She's very optimistic. She has a high opinion of me, of my love for Blume, and my aim of travelling with her to the continent. The world is so wide, she says, we ought to explore more of it.

We laugh like old friends already because we are very much alike on our good side. My dark side is under my control she says. Hers is too it seems. I can't picture her trying to kill someone though.

This new friend is like a perfect match to me. We laugh already of the oddities we both encountered on our journeys.

Yet hers was shorter than mine, despite her seemingly old age. Why was that?

I found out at this river, close to where my first friend lives, as far as I know.

We washed ourselves rather happily. After a while, we get accustomed to the stench of ourselves on the travelling time, but washing ourselves truly is a necessity, and a joy at this point.

The summer is still very warm. The sun is radiant. I'm gladly rubbing my skin all over as I float in the water, this feels heavenly. She's washing herself a little further.

I got out and began to dry my skin. When she returned, naked, I saw and understood.

Without her eyepatch, I saw her hollow right orbit. On her skin, I saw many strange scars if skin had been ripped randomly or burnt, or sewed back on roughly.

But what I needed to see to understand what she is, was her belly button.

The same as mine. A wide mark shaped like a crescent. One left from being created by one being-like-her I know rather well.

Could there be another?

R - Where does your god lies, Licht?

L - ... Over there, a few more days walk.

R - So it is the same one... You already understood that, didn't you? The one I called Dragon, is your god.

L - Ah... You understood. It was only a matter of time. Yes. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you sooner.

R - Are you what I think? From what you told me... You were the first one created by your god, but then others were made. They all look the same. Though they have no will or consciousness...

L - Yes. We were all created from you. From the materials you gave it in exchange for eternal life. I was the first, or amongst them, and I also inherited some of your knowledge and memories. I suffered its experiments at creating and controlling us, until I rebelled.

R - This means your... You're...

L - I'm less than a year old truly, yes. I've spent half of my life in the belly of god, under its control. Then, I fled, and lived freely ever since.

R - You're... a copy of me?

L - No. We were made from the same materials as you, that's all. The mindless roses are my sisters, not yours.

She got closer to me and looks at me with a smile showing empathy. A peaceful will, but a strong one.

Her anger I detect behind, is not against me.

L - Rose. This is my life and my family matters. My god, is not yours to care about.

R - You don't want me to get involved?

L - Exactly. I want you to pursue your life and journey. What I am is mine and mine only to care about. What is between god and me, is our matter. Please, let us deal with our problems by ourselves. Plus, you have your matters to care for.

R - I... Well. For a one-year-old, you're quite mature.

She laughs like an adult I can say.

L - Technically, you're younger than me now, Rose. Aren't you?

R - You're right... Though... Alright Licht, I won't meddle in your affairs. I feel less concerned about it than I perhaps should, but I'll leave it up to you. However, can you tell me what you plan to do?

L - God is a strong being. It can survive without its roses. I don't plan to kill it, don't worry about losing your way to resurrect once in a while. I want to free my siblings from its control and it to stop creating us without free will. I don't plan a war, but I won't give in. I want freedom for my people.

R - I wasn't worried about my way to resurrect. It's alright... I guess it's because of what's from me within you that I see that I came to trust you so quickly but you know what? I trust you. I won't meddle. Your god is all yours.

L - Thank you Rose. And you know, my history never made me think low of you. I knew you were out there somewhere, but I couldn't find you. That is until you came back from within it. Since then, I went back on my tracks to meet you, learn who you really are, and eventually, I helped you.

R - You already knew a lot about me. You're not disappointed?

She just laughs.

She brought me home, to my friends. She'll head back north. Us meeting wasn't important. What matters to her is that I live as I want to when I'm happy and optimistic. She wants my freedom, as much as her own, or the one of the so called mindless roses she'll try to free one day.

That day hasn't come yet. She's not ready yet to discuss the matter with her god.

Before we parted ways, I asked her to help me bringing me Blume back to me.

She pointed at my heart and poked my chest with the tip of her slim finger.

L - Blume never left you. How could she? With what you did as you fell, it's just a matter of days before she returns to you as you wish.

Blume never left me. I smiled at the obvious statement. I'll offer my apologies.

And soon after, we'll be able to resume our journey for good.

I have to say... I can't wait before we are walking along again.

On the empty roads, with none but ourselves. Her mocking me sometimes.

I loved that time, and I love her.

I'm gleeful, thinking that soon enough, this will become true again.

We'll start a new journey she'll surely agree with, toward the continent.

We reach the town, smiling. We say goodbye to each other.

Licht is a strange being I could have been responsible for. Yet she chose to embrace her freedom with all her might, facing her new world, her grim reality, with absolute confidence.

She wanted to meet me by mere curiosity for her origins before her creation, and that was all. That's truly impressive, and a reflection of her radiant personality I admire.

~