326. A cold weather, 6

(Rose)

For the time we spent here until now, it more or less felt like spring or summer.

But over the last few days, we were reminded that it truly is winter right now in the northern hemisphere.

Even the pool froze on surface. No falling snow however, so the colours of the landscape are still mostly the same warm shades as usual.

We had the time to harvest a first yield of potatoes from our crops, but not much from the part of the city that has gardens with crops.

Because we're now staying here, we can't just burn recklessly everything around that is combustible to make our daily fire.

With that in mind, Bleue built a complex apparatus on the roof of a building from this industrial site we inhabit.

Because that roof had a line of ceiling windows, she built a glorious field of mirrors that roughly follows the course of the sun and reflects it in a concentrated manner, inside this line of openings in the roof.

She managed to arrange enough scrapped materials up there to create the optical harvest of sun light. It makes a rather strong beam of sunlight go and move gradually along the day inside that main room below and heat continuously the huge machine there

It doesn't boil the water yet, but the hundred litre or so of water we can fill the main pipes of this machine with, they get heated and remain warm enough to shelter us during the night.

So we can't cook with that incredibly weird construction, but we don't need fire to warm ourselves for most of the night. That's not ideal but that's already a good help.

While Bleue was building that insane sculpture of rubbish that look like mirrors and lenses, I was building something a little less natural even.

Above our well, I erected a tower.

Since I didn't have a crane to help me, I enlisted the help of Ana a little, and our flying tree a lot.

Ana can't fly and stay at the exact same place in the air for more than a few seconds. It exhausting for her. The tree however isn't limited on that aspect since that's all it does.

I also planted seeds of the flying tree in other pots. I... Used that thing to accelerate their initial growth, successfully.

I feel sad every time it works. Even if it's a help I would be stupid not to make the best of.

And my idea was to incorporate these newly grown flying trees into the structure of the tower.

They more or less became the pillars of the tower itself, defying the laws of architecture known to humanity and even biology so far.

They obey their own rules regarding gravity and distance from the ground below them. The height they like to hover at is fixed, by parameters unknown to me.

As if invisible roots were there below them, they like to hover at an altitude that is about 1.2 times their own height as trees.

But there's a twist.

I don't know how they sense their altitude above ground, but I found a way to trick it.

Putting a wide enough disc with some earth on it below them, they use it as their reference. They think it's the ground, despite it being just a platter with some soil and dirt on it.

So the tower I built became a surreal structure playing on that.

With trees flying above one another, holding around them the dishes filled with earth, above which others will float.

The soft pipe of water I made to divert the spring mostly fills a pond at ground level, which then spreads along the small pipes of plastic sheet I built along the path and toward the fields. So this irrigates the area mostly, but there's more, since that's unrelated to the tower.

There's a small water mill that pumps some water so it climbs along the pole that is the main axis of this odd tower, as high as I could pump water up there. And then, there are small waterfalls from one container to the next aside and along the flying trees.

It's like a spiralling cliff, with the mountain itself missing. There are trees, vines, cables, cloth, water, but the whole thing is completely hollow. The waterfall almost seems to come from nowhere and to make its impromptu way between the flying trees and dishes.

Bleue added the final touch on this sculpture by painting the pole and the pipe of water with the sky puddles water she still had.

This kind of microbe mimicking the colours of the sky then covering the shaft made it nearly invisible.

We now have our garden of flying trees and waterfalls. It serves no purpose, but it sure is mesmerizing.

Funny enough, it was harder to build the pumping system to make the water rise than to make the trees surrounding them fly. We haven't found a way to make water levitate, yet.

And since it's close to the fields, we can't really see it from our new home. That's okay.

On top of this sculpture insulting sir Newton and many other scientists I'm sure, we put a log where Ana can land and throne. She liked it.

She caught two seagulls for me in gratitude.

Bleue makes her dress of huge prussian feathers grow, as fast as Ana can shed. She also began making one for me with the seagulls feathers we get. White and grey. It will take some time.

It's all fine.

~

One especially cold day came. The waterfalls froze.

We stay inside, where the beams of light keep us warmer. We just laze around that day.

A few days of real northern winter. Quickly gone.

Unfortunately the freezing temperature turned many crops to mush during that time.

Albeit it's not a big problem anymore, it pains me for agricultural hardships. It's tough work without all the control you'd hope to have over the elements.

With a microscope we ended up finding in a museum instead of a laboratory, Bleue studied more closely the new life forms I somehow helped to sprout, as side effects of the ones we were aiming to grow.

The little flowers and mushrooms that appear as foreign species, of which I seem to carry the seeds somewhere within me. They've never been seen anywhere else but where I've thrown that juice on the ground.

Unfortunately, Bleue was unable to observe anything conclusive evidence about where their seeds are dormant, between the ground and me. Maybe it's something else entirely. We don't know where they really come from in the end.

We just know I have the ability to make them blossom if I choose so.

B - Aren't you curious about how far this power could go?

R - Maybe a little... I'm always curious.

She's smiling.

A cold wind is yelling outside, but the temperature is above freezing point now. The waterfalls are melting.

Something else inside of me as well.

As I see Bleue slowly coming closer to me, walking on her four limbs to steal a kiss from me.

~