296. The blue rose, 6

(Rose)

My arrow flies too straight ahead, for a hundred metres or more. It pierces through the body of a small goat. It's wounded, but runs away.

I follow the line now attached to it, until I find it. Its strength has been drained by the wound rapidly. Now too weak to walk, it's just sitting there, on the dry ground of that wide landscape, breathing rapidly.

I feel sorry for your suffering. But I need you with me.

I pierce its heart and hold it as it dies. I then wrap it and carry it over my shoulders back to camp. It's two hours away.

The radiant smile of Bleue on that day, her face smudged with her own blood, it's a picture now carved within my mind.

I keep thinking about it.

I keep getting back to the fact that the frail and absent-minded little girl I once cared for doesn't exist anymore.

Time has passed. The changes it brought to her, and me, suddenly struck me.

My little princess is gone.

I kind of miss it, miss her.

My love for you has changed a lot as well.

B - Kiss me.

R - You taste like blood...

She kisses me nonetheless then. That bitter taste, raw, is you; beyond all memories. It's the real you on this day.

A full personality I can't fully...

Accept? Understand? Control?

Something I'm not always at full ease with, and a little of the aforementioned as well.

B - That's because you've always been a dreamer Rose. You're an idealistic Rose. And I... I'm just human. I won't always match your ideals of the time. Nor will you.

I'm fidgety, uneasy, and she kissed me again, for a longer time. The taste of her wounds on her tongue is staining, lingering in my mouth. She holds my hands, smiling.

B - Enjoy what's real. You don't need to stay afraid. Enjoy being with me.

Something was swelling in my heart.

Warm. A little scary. Probably happiness.

~

I reach the camp as the sun begins to set. I start hanging the goat from a tree to skin it and empty it.

Bleue was barely able to move for the last few days, because of all the blood she lost.

I boil a soup of the goat's blood for her. It tastes awful I'm sure. But it will be nutritious.

The giant crossbreed of crow and eagle is there on the stand we built for it, looking at me.

It doesn't shriek much, and never attempted fleeing either. I wonder why.

I hand over to it a little chunk of raw meat from the goat. It leans forward and pulls it from my fingers with a strength to recon with.

I saw pictures of eagle hunters when I was a child and I recall they held them on their extended arm.

But this bird is already bigger than a swan. There's no way we could hold it.

This bird doesn't have a third leg, third eye, nor second head. It looks normal, even though it probably is a new species like the others. It's like a giant eagle, with proper beak and talons, and overall shape, but also crow colours and more specific crow shapes. Around the head and shoulders, and the beak shape too is in between. It's definitely a hunter on the eagle side first, and its eyes show it. It keeps looking and focusing on what I do.

R - Have you thought of a name yet?

Bleue sits up onto her bedsheets stained with blue medication, dry blood, leftovers of ink and sweat. She's pale and covered with stained bandages.

B - I'm thinking about it but I haven't decided yet.

R - Why do you think that one is so different from the other birds we saw?

B - It's a different species. That's what I noticed up there. They were not just eagles. They were all kind of birds, all gigantic and they helped each other I think.

R - A society of birds... And you went for the crow looking one?

B - It doesn't behave much like a crow so far, but yes. I recalled they're smart, and it looked differently at me.

It had obvious fear at her intrusion into the nest, but also a spark of curiosity she instantly recognised. As if a word of universal language had been spoken between the two, the moment they met.

~

B - I've found the name for her.

R - Her. Yes?

B - It's Ana.

I lose my smile instantly, as it reminds me of something sad.

Bleue is looking at me, waiting for my approval.

She's testing me and my emotions again...

Life goes on, I sigh to myself.

I'm sorry Ann.

I look at Ana and then Bleue.

R - I'm looking forward to playing with Ana and you.

Bleue smiles and cheers. Ana looks at us cautiously and quietly.

~

Time flies and I think back lately.

I can't help but think that everything I've been through in my modern lives was an unfortunate turn of events.

Bleue would call that string of chaos the destiny she wished for.

Once upon a distant time...

She's more prone than I to believe that current reality makes sense, and is to be enjoyed.

I keep thinking somewhere that it's curiouser and curiouser, too afraid to embrace it fully.

I do embrace most of what reality has to offer, but it's harder for me not to look back...

Bleue is moving forward with far more ease than me is this lawless time.

During a night when the wind made a nice music in the nearby trees and rocks, I tried to recall all of it.

The series of adventures and events I've been through.

Me, the previous me, the other roses after they were created, along with Blume, Bleue herself and everyone else.

Some moments that shocked me more than others...

Horannah summoning thunder like a god of Antiquity over a dead city.

The storm over England that flooded the plains in minutes.

The incendiary fight of the second Licht.

Every encounter with the Ogre...

My friends Myls and Zeslinry.

Grape.

The giant flowers of Blume towering above the sands. Or even her existence as a forest shrouded in red mist in the beginning.

I wonder if I should write this all down before I forget, or die again.

I'm feeling very nostalgic on this night. About everything my life, our lives, have become.

As I would say many years later; sailing blindly through night time, real and imaginary, over the sea of chaos.

These words weren't there yet in my mind, but I already smiled at their vaporous idea.

There's something chaotic around me...

And I'm happy.

I've had ridiculous fun, clumsy romance and violent or heroic struggles.

And most of all, whimsical encounters, with daiûas of a kind or another.

Father, how happy and proud would you be?

I'm kissing goodnight the hair of the one I love as she holds my hand.

My own hair is slowly growing back and looks very uneven for now.

Whatever the chaotic future may hold for us, we've been insanely happy.

R - Our blue rose is in full bloom, isn't it?

Bleue looks at me with round eyes as if I had said something shocking. She then bursts out laughing merrily. She didn't expect that from me. She's smiling and laughing so much it hurts her.

B - You're hopelessly yourself Rose...

~