351. Sickness and health, 8

(Rose)

Like the northern coastline of Egypt, this coastline is essentially drought. The sea doesn't help that much.

Everything around is dry and dead. We survive mostly by boiling water from the sea and waiting for its condensation to cool down.

Some other things have different ways to survive.

We ate something we shouldn't have at some point. We're not picky, we should have been a little more.

Some of the dry fruit we plucked and ate during our travel were not that great for us.

Not as bad as the vampire fruits, but something alike unfortunately.

Out tummy were gurgling and become painful. It lasted for a few days, growing gradually worse.

Until we expelled the things through our faeces. It had claws, or sharp hair. It hurt out anus as it came out. They simply were parasites that had grown rapidly mature.

Seeing our own dejections moving, through the various insect-like legs growing out of them, it was especially disgusting.

Seeing my own waste moving away as if it had been a full living being, it was shocking and very unpleasant.

This disease or this hosting of parasites, it lasted for a few days.

They escaped with our waste, and probably as much water they were able to drain from us.

Even Ana, whom can eat rotting animals, didn't want to chase these crawling animals.

In farming human waste is used as fertiliser, so I can see how some forms of life can use it.

But in the meanwhile, these parasites got us sick for days, and all our bowels feeling on fire, bruised from within.

We could only drink soup for a while, and chopping wood or combustible materials became too exhausting to do.

Bleue and I slept poorly, inside a hole or another, while the burning day times passed.

Ana wakes us up when the sun becomes focused somewhere else on Earth. And the good bird also manages to catch fishes with her talons. We occasionally manage as well either with fishing lines or bow and arrow.

Bleue is the master of threads and sewing. She's even better than our mother now, in a different style.

We had the time to craft a few arrows back at home. With the different kind of heads for different purposes.

Some are meant for fishing. The arrows are hollow, with a coil of thread inside, and the head has a tiny hook. It works nicely.

This evening, I keep coughing and only catch an octopus. I'm not used to these animals, but I believe it is an octopus.

While I'm coughing and spitting, the little fellow raised itself on its arms as if they were legs, and ran back to the sea.

I ran after it and tripped on something, falling miserably in the sand and gravel, whilst it escaped safely.

When Ana tried to catch it back, she was attacked by something and fled, cawing her discontentment. When she returned to me, following my whistle, I found her oozing with black oil. Ink.

R - My poor Ana. How miserable are we today.

A - Hyaa...

Bleue and I could smile at our pitiful work of the day.

I keep spitting mucus where particles of parasites remain.

My digestive and immune system are slowly getting better. My poor Bleue however still has a few of these things to expel.

I hold her hand for the painful ones. She's bleeding. They're wounding her.

She kinds of jokes sadly, saying she hopes delivering a baby won't hurt as much. I think it's something else entirely.

Her tummy still looks slim, but her abdominal muscles do have moved, and not only because of the wings on her back. The muscles are rearranged in a very different manner from before now.

It's like she has abdominal muscles on the left and the right like more ribs,, and not much more on the weird looking hexagon of skin left hollow in the middle. The muscles at her sides join with the hips, the legs, the wings and the torso, but mostly the back is building strength along the spine.

She has weird curvy muscles along her back, covered with the soft fur of feathers.

That makes me think of something as I'm caressing her back.

R - Maybe it's not a baby you will have, but an egg you will lay.

I'm laughing. Bleue pouts.

Ana on her side is not laying eggs despite her maturity.

B - Maybe she's just too afraid we would eat them?

A - Don't know.

We slowly get better.

And keep heading north and east, along the coastline.

We see a ghost city in the distance. Maybe we'll find something nice there.

We walk slowly lately, but we are walking.

~