320. Radiant day, 5

(Rose)

I'm breaking down the stone into dust inside a makeshift mortar. I mix in some vegetables leftovers.

The wish stone breaks like glass, even though it looks like diamond. It actually is more fragile since Bleue used it.

It was harder at the time, and had more prismatic effect.

Now it's glass, that I pulverise in order to use as a fertiliser.

Bleue got better, in a way...

Not much progress if you're looking at it from another perspective.

Her body didn't manage to purge out the contamination.

As they both were reaching a pyrrhic victory, they stopped fighting, and made a deal instead... That's the only way I can describe what I saw happening.

The contaminants receded into newly formed fatty deposits, a few small organs now scattered and working peacefully along the body. They're not trying to invade it anymore, and Bleue's immune system doesn't try to root them out anymore, at dangerous costs.

So there's still a foreign body within her, but a deal has been made between the two life forms they are, down to a biochemical truce.

Of course it worries me.

But... I want to hope with her, that it's not that different from how it worked for me and Blume in the past.

Symbiosis can work. Let's pray so.

In a way, this invasive species claimed a right to become part of her flora. And won. That was unexpected, and stressful for us. But now, what is done is done.

More importantly, arguably, we noticed that Bleue is now growing feathers along her lower back.

Very thick hair, almost a coat of fur, has grown along her back and behind her shoulders. Where it's the thickest, the hair becomes feathers.

They're similar to Ana's smallest feathers, with similar frame and colours.

There too, we're learning a little flabbergasted how nature works nowadays.

Species contaminate each other, in more ways than one, including ways that were inconceivable in the past.

Blume would call the example here a phenotype transmigration; I guess.

Pieces of Ana, invisible fragments of her and the information that make her as she is, are scattered like lost feathers in the invisible world. And while we can easily not eat a fallen feather, our bodies can more easily absorb the invisible counterpart, unknowingly. Meaning our body adapts in ways that reflects its environment, but in a little more porous way than expected.

Unless one of the subconscious wishes of either Bleue or Ana became a guideline for the infection and the wish stone she held in her hands. i don't know enough yet to see which hypothesis is more likely.

Having feathers, prussian blue in shade, is one thing, but...

Wings...

That's likely what was wished for, but couldn't appear just like that. There wasn't enough materials and energy, or conscious will, to make them appear like magic in one instant.

A mistake in reality and wish granting biological processes, maybe affected by an opportunistic infection at the same time.

There were more than one cause and one consequence for everything that occurred inside Bleue's body these last weeks. Everything balanced itself into this new equilibrium, where a peace was reached between Bleue's body and her infection. But at the same time, the web of causes and consequences also had this unexpected consequence somewhere along.

Bleue is now growing feathers along her back.

No matter how it scrambles my mind trying to understand what is going on, what is, is. And Bleue now feeling much better is even a little happy to see that feathers grow onto her skin.

She already has her dress of feathers growing slowly, that will go along what happens to her skin now. Black and blue are her colours.

I'll keep the auburn and ginger fox fur for myself then.

She's standing, eating and feeling much better now. It went as weirdly as it could be, but at least she's back to herself and even smiling again.

~

Bleue and Ana found in a remote private household the real gold that will make us rich. Potatoes. Even more luxurious, they were along other growing vegetables and fruits.

Meanwhile I realised the soil of the park was poor, scratching that option from the list.

However we found some abandoned agricultural fields, in an area a little remote on the western end of the city.

Being just outside the city might work better if we want to grow a lot, and there we have enough space to grow anything we want.

And one set of buildings along these outskirts, though industrial in nature are looking like potential houses that might work just fine. The more we venture through them, still standing, the more we begin to settle in.

What closed the deal for this place was when I found a stream of fresh water in a crevice close by. Smaller rifts than from within the city also are scattered around here, but deep and sharp enough nonetheless to break large pipes that were buried a good two metres below. And some of these were clearly carrying fresh water from the distant south-eastern mountains.

In other words, we have a well.

As for the dust of wish-stone I crushed, it should hopefully help things to grow much faster for a while.

That seems to be what magic power does most of the time, speeds things up.

With a fortune shovel for now, I'm beginning to plough a field and sow various fruits, randomly for now.

To help them sprout fast I sprinkle then a pinch of fairy dust, and lots of love of course.

We will see what grows in the next weeks or so, before we start doing things seriously the old ways.

While we let the field and the seeds figure out what to do, we explore the surroundings area a little more.

I did a hike beyond the hills and woods at the western end of our domain.

Beyond the south-western woods, there's a clear fall in altitude to a lower valley, and then steppes. As far as one can see. Flat lands where grass grows wild. I do notice boats wrecks along the ruins on the edges of this steppe. I wonder when it stopped being a sea, and how far toward or even into the Aegean sea this steppe has spread...

It's weird to realise there was a sea reaching here, and now it's gone so far I don't see it, and herbs have grown since.

The black sea on the other end of the city seems to have on the contrary conquered many kilometres of land.

I can't help but wonder how such massive geological changes came with the white day, about a decade ago, or if they even did. There's no one left to say. I turned back, thinking that this new land isn't for me.

Meanwhile, Bleue went to explore the other industrial buildings that stand between the city boroughs and our fields.

To find the best one for us hereon, Bleue is excited. Ana tags along with her.

~

I finished ploughing about a hundred square metres of field.

I'm exhausted and my whole body aches.

I go to the small rift, the crevice in the ground in the middle of nowhere, with the busted pipe carrying water.

I roll my clothes together and plug the exit part of the pipe with them. This evacuation kept the level of this small hidden pond constant. Because of my plug, the level slowly begins to rise, until I can shamelessly bath in it.

The water level slowly kept rising and eventually reached the ground and field level. There it began to flow away in the grass, flooding the surroundings into mud.

I don't care right now. I'm just relaxing in my cold refreshing bath, letting myself float.

I'll let the afternoon pass and leisurely wait for Bleue to return.

In the future, I'll probably dig trenches for the water to flow by itself everywhere around the area we're beginning to build.

~

Bleue finds me floating in a spring and surrounded by muddy earth.

B - How shameless of you...

I throw a ball of mud at her to shut her up.

It makes a glorious splash and splatter and I laugh a lot.

Before she can get back at me, I'm rolling and diving into the crevice, which she can't really see from the flooded surface. The sky is reflected on the surface of the water all around her.

I stay down there, in that delicious freshness as long as I manage to hold my breath.

I resurface to breathe. Bleue is crossing her arms on her chest, but looking at me with a motherly expression of happiness. I think she's proud of me.

Ana flies away in time to avoid another ball of mud which hits Bleue all over her face. And her expression then adds even more spice to my uncouth laughter.

Bleue doesn't react right away, despite my very disrespectful laughter at her misery.

I see her undress herself and throw her dirty clothes on the side of the impromptu pond.

She then runs wildly at me to splash me as she falls in the hole of water.

We laugh together. We enjoy this cold, refreshing bath, in the middle of a beautiful land.

Bleue leaves first, getting cold.

B - I'll start to make a fire in what will be our new home.

She walks away. From a distance, the feathers and hair growing on her back look like tattoos of wings. It truly is you...

It was your wish more than anything, that left a mark on your skin.

I dive a last time for the day, to unplug the drainage side of the pipe and resurface with my clothes.

As I begin walking and feeling the cold in the air, I notice Ana passing in the sky far above me.

~

What Bleue decided upon in the end wasn't in the somewhat residential buildings a good stone throw away, because they weren't as nice as they looked from the outside. She chose one of the few old factories.

That one holds a building of offices that still hold some furniture for us to live.

As for the factory ground itself, it has a few warehouses, mostly empty; lines of production, void of any products but some heavy machineries we don't know the usage for.

Some machines are taller than a normal house and stretch for more than a hundred metres of odd apparatus and gears all along the way. I have no idea what they use to make here. It looks too complex.

There also are metallic fences like cages everywhere, with pumps and robotic arms trapped inside. Big claws with probably hydraulic compressors for muscles.

We also found an incinerator that could become our chimney, oven or even kiln.

And then, giant mixing vessels that could be used as tanks to store hundreds of litres worth of volume.

Tanks to store water, or food perhaps. We'll see.

This place was clearly a great choice. It will take some time to see everything and make the most of it, but it's brimming with potential as our mother used to say. It's really looking good.

I join Bleue aside the new fireplace, on a balcony to share a drink with her.

I doze off rapidly.

Life is nice.

~