371. Hunting, 6

(Bleue)

I was walking through the cold woods at dawn. Ana was somewhere in the sky, watching over me and spotting possible preys.

I have a wide coat over my wings to protect them, making an odd beastly shape out of me.

Mushio left the other day. He will be travelling elsewhere for a while. For his experiments, he requires highly radioactive materials. Unfortunately for him, there were none to be found around his home. So he left his pupil behind and went to look for his toxic treasure elsewhere.

I'm doing something similar in these woods.

We've consumed the whole of the last artefact I found for our purpose. We need more.

So I'm sent in the wild, looking for another kind of toxic treasure with high energy potential. Something with a huge power to release as we will it.

Rose is assembling our future ship at home. It doesn't quite feel like a true home, but it works well as such.

Our empty city...

Rose is also training herself at sailing with a normal boat we found. She's sailing alone over the sea, learning to use the wind that way.

I wanted to join her obviously. But she denied it and said my eyes were more useful around here, following the faint trail of an old demon.

I'm moving slowly over this damp earth, following an old and cold smell of something that went through there a long time ago, and probably died. It's not far from where I stand.

I can sort of see stains over its now invisible footsteps. Something still linger, in a world or the other.

I need that unicorn's ivory.

I need the power of the legendary but dead being lying at the end of this trail.

I need it to transmute more rice soup into alcohol, and more of the same soup into solvents and varnishes for wood lacquers.

I need this philosopher's stone.

Who cares about turning lead into gold. I want my wishes to become true. One more.

One more...

So that my Rose can fly without wings of her own.

So that we can see and enjoy more of the world...

I'm feeling a little down right now. My tummy aches a little. It still is very small, but my child has a heartbeat. It's slow, but I can hear it sometimes.

Your child to raise Rose... That will be so nice when it comes.

I would probably suggest to name her Alizarin, if she would think Scarlett is a little too painful or wrong.

If it's a boy, then Gregory, if she would think Georges is also difficult to bear...

It's an interesting new chapter ahead of us, motherhood. Rose will be radiant. For ever and ever.

I climb a small cliff between some trees while I'm thinking that I'm looking forward to it.

~

I reach an area with lakes and swamps, surrounded by hills in the distance. The trail I followed for so long appears lost in the mud here.

Where did it go?

Some wild beasts are moving inside the swamps ahead of me, but they're definitely not the unicorn I'm after.

I don't even know what the prey I track looks like, so it's hard to guess where it chose to go some years ago.

My guess is about the hills behind these swamps.

So I'm looking for the easiest way across.

I can't see Ana in the sky. She probably dove to catch and eat an animal somewhere.

I remember that demon claiming it was her right to eat humans as we ate chickens. We argued, and Rose was laughing. I don't understand how she can consider that thing a friend... but I'm kind of glad she does.

I myself hold onto my copper ring with an odd friend trapped inside.

Rose has changed so much. She has grown so much.

I love her so much.

I cross the swamp on a floating tree stump, using a pole to make it float across very slowly.

It lasts for hours of slow travel.

Things in the water are gawking at me. Some of them might have been humans in a different time.

~

Nothing attacks me thankfully. But I caught a lot of attentions.

I reach the hills. I look for the trail around. I'm in luck and find it again. I resume my hunt.

I follow the cold trail to a railroad and over a collapsed bridge. Then, it heads into a tunnel just beyond the bridge.

It took me at least another two hours just to climb down on one side of the chasm and back up on the other side, whereas the bridge would have taken minutes to cross if it was still standing.

Night is falling as I reach the entrance of the tunnel. It smells like a crypt. Nothing but bones inside that caves surely.

Still, I learnt tunnels tend to attract beings-like-her as their shelters or lairs.

I unsheathe my sword and lit my torch.

I'm not that scared because my eyes can see there's nothing alive there. It's just precaution.

All I see is the artefact glowing in the distance.

I enter a tunnel that now looks like a cave or crypt. It seems to have been built in the middle ages.

I don't find any bones. But under a pile of dust and mud, I found the horn of my unicorn.

A random looking stone. It looks like any other, but it holds a lot more energy locked inside its atoms.

I wrap it under cloth and tin foil. I make it as less visible as can be to eyes like mine.

I'll camp there for the night and make my way back home tomorrow.

As I sit there in front of a small fire, I'm thinking about this lost story.

Some years ago, something queer came in here and died, where I am.

And now, I can't even tell what it looked like.

That's how life ends nowadays.

~