299. Qualia, 2

(Licht)

I'm running on a mountain path.

Maybe twenty metres behind me, a monster is roaring and galloping after me, on its numerous legs.

I keep my breath. I'm not panicking.

The truth is I'm not scared.

It's not Ogre. And I'm not the first Rose I used to be.

I maintain the distance as I look for the right opportunity. The skies after rain are clear and there is this freshness in the air I like.

I pass a few trees and reach a small cliff with a river below. This will do.

I unsheathe my sword. It barely cuts, but it can still pierce and crush. My eyes get this bluish aspect as I focus.

It's like lifting curtains and veils for me. My eyes normally see the usual reality.

When I focus like that, I'm opening them like other eyelids to the invisible light of the other reality. I see the flying ribbons and things that make the daiûas what they are.

With that, I can see a little better the true nature of things that are otherwise surreal.

This monster I'm about to face once was a dead raccoon. It still carries most of its corpse, along with a mixture of dirt, mushrooms, oils, moisture and beings-like-her that all coagulated in what it has become.

Like everything else in the world, it's a new free and random lifeform, struggling to find what its reality is supposed to become.

Biological freedom turned many things into monsters unable to live logically with old metabolic processes. Humans were no exceptions. I were no exception.

Our chemistry has changed. It had to.

I turn around and face the beast that is violently trying to figure out what we both are. All it has to exist are cellular instincts and whatever thought processes were preserved from the dead animal, which is surely not a lot.

I dodge swiftly the charge, and slash. One quick step further on the side, and I follow the attack with a strong kick against the beast's side. Between its momentum, its surprise, my slash and my kick, its balance is lost; it now falls pitifully the small cliff.

I breathe as I clean the long-edged sword onto my clothes, and sheath it back.

As I look below, I see the beast wounded and knocked, but alive and recovering.

It's not really wounded since it lives on both sides of reality, but it's confused. It's very confused about everything.

It's gradually more aware now of what life is or can be, now that it was slapped by me.

A new consciousness is waking up inside that thing. It will quickly evolve, but in which way I can't foretell.

Maybe as another more normal animal, akin to the species of old, but perhaps as a worse monster as well.

I can't predict. I can only act as I think is best.

Seeing it's not going to pursue me anymore, I resume walking away, while my sight returns to normal.

A few flying snakes are playing in the sky, catching bugs probably.

~

I'm still hiking across the European mountains. I'm lost somewhere in the north-eastern side of the Alps.

I'm unable to guess which country it used to be since the fall of the Habsburg dominions.

It's all wilderness now. But some ruins not yet swallowed by the elements let you suspect there used to be an empire around.

Sometimes in the ruins of a city or village, I can see ghosts.

Wanderers trapped between the two sides of reality. Beings-like-her learnt to exist on both aspects at the same time and use this non spatial interface at their advantage, like how trees live on land with roots underground, making the most of both sides.

Ghosts here are things unable to dig their way into neither side of reality.

They're floating memories partially incarnated. They do no interact with anything. They just are there, doing nothing or very little else but moving. No roots and no leaves.

They carry the memory of an appearance most of the time, animal or human, but it can be shapeless or other things.

It can be sounds, smells, feelings and even abstract knowledge.

They are but memories now unable to fade. The flesh is gone, but now some memories remain

Pieces of souls, a devout one would say.

The world is littered with them. And they are especially present and numerous where many people used to live, when the world abruptly changed.

As if some human testimonies managed to survive, and linger a while longer after the passing of their masters.

I can experience a slither of what they are when I'm going through them. I suddenly experience a brief glimpse of a silhouette standing in front of me, a ghost.

But it can be just as well suddenly hearing a sound, a voice, or seeing abstract equations in my mind.

Walking through some of these places where all these memories stagnate is like passing through a haunted village. You keep seeing and hearing ghosts escape all around you, hearing whispers close to your ears, while feeling and even smelling things brushing past you.

Some of the new wildlife are eating these memories.

Some cities are like swamps where the decay of memories become malice.

And some places are like orchards where these ghosts grow and even multiply, like fruits, or dandelions.

These ghosts are like primitive lifeforms, or bubbles of aminoacids, from the meeting of both aspects of reality.

They have the potential to evolve in either direction.

These ribbons and seeds, these ghosts, they are particles where both realities can collide, making sparks, interacting.

Particles of information and energy from both worlds collide endlessly to give form to these kind of things.

It's the new chapter of the adaptation and evolution of species. Or its new book truly, since we're not talking about species anymore, but individual lifeforms. Life isn't bound to its past limitations anymore, and the new laws of physics that rule over them are hard to apprehend.

I truly witness this, everywhere, and in every thing I encounter.

Trials and errors of life trying to survive. Trying to grow, to become self-aware, or even just aware.

Seeds attempt to become alive.

I walk with some anxious delight in these gardens of self-creation. Because what will grow is not yet for me to know.

I see new flowers and things blossoming every day. But what will they become tomorrow...

As I also meet new monsters trying to find their way, and I realise they have the same roots as the prettiest flowers from the same day. Biology always have had its toxins, its venoms, its poisons, its parasites and its diseases.

It's not that different with monsters. It's just more visible when it managed to grow our size.

Being myself born as an unholy creation in more ways than one, I can't forsake nor judge them unfairly.

I'm trying to be smart, not arrogant.

I'm slowly walking my way to the pacific ocean. That's my current unsettled aim in life.

It could change, but meanwhile, I'm living for myself along this silky road way.

On very rare occasions, I'm meeting people as well.

Lost households. Sometimes even villages, in the middle of nowhere and far from the bigger cities of this infinite continental land.

I was doubting like the others.

But there are survivors. Humanity lives on.

We don't speak the same language. They mostly sound polish or Turkish to my ears. I haven't learned this new European language that is Zeslinry's tongue as well.

Though language doesn't matter as much as one might think. As humans, we can understand each other a lot, even though we don't share a common language.

Showing my hands. Putting weapons away. Sharing a hunt, or a meal.

It went well, most of the time.

Adults and elderly look tired, and are always a little scared of a new face like mine. But when they understand that I mean no harm, it usually goes well.

They usually are a little saddened when they realise I don't speak their language nor can bring them much news about the rest of the world.

They're also sad in a different way when they understand that I won't stay. There's something about that which is bugging me, in a way I can't quite put my finger on yet. Something odd in a way that it only affects humanity, and so obvious that I can't quite see and realise it.

But anyway, I only once had to fight my way out against humans.

As for children...

That's part of the point that bugs me.

I don't know why, but I haven't seen any children, anywhere.

Curious... But let's see what lies next and ahead, shall we? Let's keep walking.

~