349. Blood, 7

(Rose)

Bleue reappeared the next day around Nightfall. As I expected, she carried with Ana everything that was left for us to possess as we would migrate north.

Our city had become too uninhabitable for us. Drought and heat had spread and worsened every day, deeper into the ground and buildings.

There wasn't much left for us to save and that choice was a given we didn't need to concert about.

We could have asked for Nightmare's help again as Ana introduced it first, but it's clear we would be imposing and none of us are keen about it. We'd rather leave and go elsewhere.

Nightmare is not very fond of humans, her demands put aside.

Bleue was obviously rather unhappy to hear of the deal I had made with Nightmare.

B - We can't trust that thing.

R - Daiûas don't really lie. They can gleefully mislead and be full of themselves, but they don't really lie. I believe we can trust her.

I think they're generally trustworthy, in their twisted way. And Nightmare didn't appear to me as a cruel or monstrous thing the more I think about it. Weird for sure, but not evil.

Bleue is sighing deeply. I'm not changing my mind.

B - Alright... We'll share the burden then. How much blood did you agree to give?

R - There was no specific amount.

B - Well, you don't look like you should give a single drop currently, so I'll be the one giving most of it.

Nightmare doesn't really care.

Bleue used a syringe we had found in an old hospital and I kept using with my lab experiments. Bleue pricked herself in the arm where the vein is visible through the skin, and carefully filled the syringe.

Nightmare filled invisible vials with all the blood we gave her. It was as if we were giving a transfusion to a being made of shadows. The blood seemed to disappear in the air.

I know she was keeping it safe elsewhere, so she could someday make some sort of honey out of it.

As we did a little, Nightmare twitched a few times, but it was unrelated to the transfusion.

It was about the messages that some beings-like-her were transmitting to each other over the world like radio waves or through seismic waves. I couldn't understand what they said, but a few times I felt that magical presence passing through me.

Thankfully, Nightmare translated for us.

N - A few gods replied. It's mostly fine.

B - Mostly? What did they say?

N - The idea getting through most of the time is they don't care about all that. Some said they're fine not attacking Rose Blume on sight. They won't be aggressive if you meet them now. Two said they would still hunt you down for what you've done, but it's unspecific. I think it was two, but maybe it was only one and I heard an echo.

R - It's good progress if we have less demons willing to eat us. Would you happen to know where is this hostile one?

N - In the northern hemisphere, somewhere north from here. I can't detect more than that from here. It's far.

Bleue unloads the syringe inside the translucent arm of Nightmare a second time.

We can see through it, and the droplets seem to vaporise and disappear nearly instantly as she collects them.

B - What will you do with all this blood?

N - Play with life.

B - And more specifically? What's your final objective with the use of this power?

N - I haven't thought that far.

Bleue returns the needle toward her arm for a last suction of her blood.

She's still on her guards and uneasy with Nightmare, but she's as eager as I am to discuss a little more with her.

She's like a foreigner, everything she knows is from a different experience than we have. We can learn more of the world speaking a few minutes with her than travelling for days, or reading books for weeks. Especially nowadays.

R - Do you often share ideas with other beings-like-you?

N - Never. We're not united like humans were. And many are deaf to either kind of sound.

B - What else have you heard, before Dragod's last words? Or after?

N - A few opinions about chaos. An older hatred against daiûas like you. And a belief that one day a new god will rise over the ocean in the far north, where the source has landed. Unsubstantial beliefs.

R - I don't understand any of this.

N - It's just rambling, not prophecies. Nobody cares.

B - I guess the ones speaking to themselves cared. What was it about daiûas? I didn't get that.

Nightmare told us we are daiûas.

We found ourselves facing a definition of the name that is opposite to the one we've always used and known.

For us, daiûas are these strange demons from the other side of reality.

But to them, self-calling gods, we are the humans that have crossed halfway , or travelled and came back. Ones that made contact with themselves or their reality and powers, one way or another.

To them, we are the daiûas, the abnormal beings replacing humanity after its demise.

B - It's a complete shift. Even though Daiûa was a person...

R - So beings-like-you also learnt that name about the same way we did. I understand.

B - But what's about that feeling of being threatened by us?

R - Some of them see humans as meat, food below them. However daiûas like us who were once humans, we can defeat them, sometimes. So we are in essence a threat to these ones. Beings-like-her tend not to care about others beside themselves, while we tend to meddle with the affairs beyond, and theirs as well. So strife occurs. Like with me and Ogre.

N - That's quite right. You're the ones bringing strife to us, always.

B - Well, if you left us and humans to live in peace, we would be less hostile with your doings.

N - You too eat animals to live and sometimes kill things just for fun.

I remember seeing Blume like an immature child for this kind of behaviour. They can be very childish and inconsiderate, no matter how powerful they can be also.

Hearing Bleue and Nightmare argue about that now made me smile a little. Between them two, it's getting more heated. They argue about the legitimacy of murdering living things to eat them, justice and morality. Now I realise how much peace and diplomacy can be hard to achieve.

Some things we just cannot accept, in others. In our world, if another species had come from space to harvest us like chickens in farms, we would have waged war on them until we annihilated them or they enslaved us all.

Yet, chicken were not able to do the same to us. So where justice lied can be difficult to debate.

And Bleue is facing someone with a sharper tongue than we expected.

N - What if we created humans with the brain of chicken then? Could we eat them then? And would you eat some?

Bleue is losing the debate she opened likely out of spite. Mathematicians may be able to debate with logic only. But for us and them, debating about life and philosophy in this world, we can't pretend to work on logic alone. We're emotional, irrational, unfair, egoistic, arrogant, and most of all, biased in our opinions.

I'm having fun listening and seeing Bleue and Nightmare argue with each other.

R - At least, we can talk instead of spilling blood.

N - Don't. Give it to me instead.

Bleue is gawking at us, while I'm laughing.

She is wondering if that really was a joke Nightmare did. I believe it was.

I believe the lord of nightmares just had fun debating and saying that remark as a joke.

Bleue is spooked by where I chose to stand in their debate. That adds to the fun.

They're very humans, in more ways than one.

~

Daiûa, the word now has different meaning. For us it's them djinns. For them, it's us, travellers and witches in contact with them and their strength. In the beginning it might have been the name of a woman, in a very distant world and older time.

Someone who brought the rupture between the two sides of reality to collapse, for humans and them, bringing more travellers like us in her wake.

According to them, that's how it happened, and Daiûa rings as the kind of dangerous witch that person able to stand against god had been.

Humans being mostly extinct and in decline nowadays, they see us daiûas as a rising dominant species. Well, some of them do. Even though the decline of humankind mathematically implies there won't be ever that many of us.

Unless we began reproducing on a scale beyond human reproduction maybe, I don't see that happening.

That's not in our plans for Bleue and I anyway.

Still, I can understand why beings-like-her can feel uneasy about us, as much as we can feel about them.

We don't have to fight, but on an ecological context, we can be seen as competing species.

Though neither them nor us truly are species so to speak.

We're all just random individuals.

But I can see where our instincts for survival and propagation can meet their owns, and fear rise on either side.

That what Nightmare calls the chaos of life.

There is no leading order on either side, so every encounter remains an open door to the unknown.

Some called to war, and probably on both sides. But thank goodness, most of us on both sides don't care enough about what others think, and prefer to keep our freedom, refusing to follow these calls for conflict.

None of us aside the craziest wants an all-out war. And because we remain free, the unavoidable conflict will remain limited to the petty wrath of the very few marginal individuals blinded by hatred.

And Nightmare helped, shedding the doubt of a few whom were uncertain whether war was the answer to anything.

N - I offered to help because I prefer the chaos of life over the order of war.

R - Given the population you and I seem to represent nowadays, maybe anarchy is the better call... I would never have thought I could say that one day... Blume kept telling me the rules didn't matter any longer. But I remain bound to some value of our culture.

The world is chaotic. Without order.

It's fine for now.

As time goes, maybe the climate will change and either them or surviving humans will try to gather under a new rule. Maybe civilisation will return in another way or form.

The future is not ours to know.

Especially if like me and Nightmare, we're not strongly eager to participate into building a new order.

For now as Nightmare and I discussed, we found out we both fully agree on a few things.

One of which being that we enjoy this world a lot as it is currently.

With the chaos of life and opportunities.

The cloud of unknown blurring the predictability...

Talking about this with her, being able to discuss this, warmed my heart more than I expected.

What if, and what happens next, my cursed words translated into a raw idea she understands very well, under a different name. The chaos of life she calls it. Our words are different, but the ideas and feeling meet very well.

That chatter we spend the day on, I loved it so much, it was worth another cup of blood as a parting gift.

~