321. Creating life, 2

(Rose)

After a few days tending the fields, using everything we can find as seeds and fertilisers, a few things already began to sprout.

Bleue made gloves for us rapidly from scraps, different kinds of cloth found here and there.

We found in a corner of the factory a few huge rolls of transparent plastic wrap. Two metres tall rolls, maybe a kilometre long given how thick they are and how thin the plastic is when we pull it.

It will probably help crafting soft pipes for the water along the ground.

Using a wheelbarrow crafted by yours truly, Bleue and I manage to carry more things around the field and from the city. We have a better understanding of the streets that are accessible by foot and where they fall into or against cliffs.

And generally speaking, with persistence come results. The city appears to be mostly empty of any kind of food preserves or common tools, but we can still find a few things left behind when we really look thoroughly. Then ingeniousness compensates.

Persistence and obstinacy always make the difference.

We found a corundum left in a museum. And even a few diamonds around the chest of a store. They're pretty, nut they will be merely tools to us.

Using them and some of the heavier tools from the factory, I was able to cut the blades I found into smaller pieces, and sharpen them into new knives and even sewing needles. Not for silk obviously, but good for thick leathers, with the appropriate curvature.

Bleue has her set now for heavier craft of leathers, which she quickly put to good use for our shoes and my new mantle.

We found a few mattresses that were clean from living spores from the foam tree in another part of town.

And we had the chance to stumble upon more gardens with vegetables growing wild, which we were able to harvest while we wait for ours to grow.

We even found some clothes eventually, in one of the houses on the southern end.

So we're getting alright.

A quick glance is never enough to ascertain how much a place has to offer.

If we unfortunately didn't find many basic tools, we however found enough pieces of soft metals and sturdy machines allowing us to craft them.

One of the next things to consider building will probably be a tower for the source of water. The higher we can bring it, the easier and farther it will then flow in the future trenches and makeshift aqueducts.

The factory we chose had a kind of wide hole behind a parking lot. We flooded it with the idea to make a reservoir pond there, but the water quickly sipped into the ground. We'll try sealing it or something else at some other point in time.

It could be very nice to have a pool.

Regularly I check the sprouts. I want to identify the species that react well to the fairy dust.

Find what we could focus on first for the first year.

After a rainy night, I was a little surprised.

~

What I found in the field that morning was nothing I would have expected.

At first, I thought it was a large dog or slim boar, rummaging around for edible roots or something.

But what I was finding there was a monster, born there that night. Well, not born stricto sensu, but grown from the earth here overnight.

The thing was a grotesque and moving pile of decaying plants and vegetables. It had bark in random scales, soft branches whipping the air around and a head with roots getting fine and thin like natural hair for a mouth. That thing was uprooting everything around to eat them through this mouth of filaments.

It was a mess. A chaotic body growing badly, with ruptures, mistakes, and perhaps even pain.

No clear intelligence was obviously ruling it, or too blinded on the primal instincts.

The monster was just destroying everything, not really making a good use of anything. It didn't have eyes nor ears nor nose. Just a mouth of some sort. And only one instinct.

It didn't realise I was there, appalled.

I ran back home to get fire and swords before bad became worse.

~

I've known this feeling before.

This excitement. That light thrill of insanity running through my bones and waking something down there in my marrow. I felt it as I grabbed my sword and ran.

Bleue looked at me agape. Maybe I was grinning.

I yelled something to her as I ran, about telling her to come and help as well.

I jogged to the field and reached the plantation out of breath.

The beast is just ploughing a little further, digging out anything organic and edible.

Odd branches and shapes are sprouting on its trail though.

A kind of tall grass, with animalistic movements to it is spreading in its wake. Another opportunistic species is rising behind that chaos.

Not a kind I can coexist with I fear.

I lit a torch, and begin burning the sprouts that move on my way to the beast.

Fire spreads. The monster without face nor voice, really just a crazy plant, notices something is off and now moves erratically in panic.

I harpoon it with the sword, immobilising it on the ground. I then keep and leave what's left of the burning wild grass reaching it. It's stuck on the ground and the fire gradually comes to destroy its body.

It burns rather rapidly, collapsing into nothingness without a voice to be heard. As it ruptured, its body regurgitated a soup of the last vegetable and roots eaten, partially dissolved.

Bleue watches me put a foot over the ashes and pulling the sword back from where it stood.

I cool down after that. My moment of excitement calms down.

We created this abomination by accident and it's easy to guess what was the main root decision in the causality that made it to be. The fairy dust.

But it's not what surprises Bleue the most.

It was more my behaviour. My sudden change of behaviour.

B - Your face changed.

R - It's what I call my thorns, since I'm a Rose. I've had time to be conflicted about these comportments I can have in face of strife. And I want to think that I've matured over that feeling. At first... It was just survival necessity, fed with all my anger and darkest hatred. Now it's more... Enjoying it, !I guess?

I can't say I was unhappy to have a small fight. I missed that thrill.

Bleue seems shocked however.

B - You enjoyed killing this thing?

R - Not really, don't get me wrong. It's more the rush of adrenalin from the fight that I learnt to enjoy a little since I came to this world. Not killing. I was horrified from what I felt I was seemingly becoming during my first weeks here. Because of what I did and had to do to survive.

Bleue had to fight too a few times. She can understand how I felt.

R - My thorns are gone now. But when I need to fight, it's like they grow back. I've learnt to fight to death very violently. Even if my left hand and my shoulders don't show it anymore, you know...

Bleue still seems uneasy.

It's not like I'm proud or happy, but I try to make the best of my thorns...

They're asleep again now that the danger is gone.

We begin to clean and repair what the spontaneous life-form destroyed in its wake.

Something nicer will grow next.

~