399. Observing flora, 9

(Zeslinry)

We met the snow, the first snow, before we knew it.

We rapidly found ourselves walking in the muffled landscapes of central Europe. Myls heads on, following the faint but peculiar scent she picked up a while ago.

It feels like a cloud that would have spread, going thinner and thinner as It kept spreading.

Something like the perfume of roses.

Not of usual roses. Roses.

Given how long we lived with many of them, she can tell the difference.

They carry a peculiar scent.

Something familiar mixed with something odd.

We walk across darker woods. Snow falling is getting caught in the trees canopy above us. It's a little surreal already.

And when we camp, we're wondering about the kind we will find next.

Myls' nose is twitching.

M - The smell isn't really a trail where she would have travelled, but a perfume spread evenly around. So it's not clear where she was when that scent exploded. But it's clear something unusual happened, in that direction still.

Z - Is it another god?

M - I don't think so...

She takes a last whiff at her gun to check the last sample of air before sleep. She then buries herself inside her sleeping bag.

I take another look at the frozen landscape, wondering.

I soon follow.

~

Even if I can't smell it, something in the air does remind me of her lately.

Something I can't quite figure out.

I'd be happy to see her again.

She's really odd, but I would consider her a good friend nonetheless.

Not that she had even done much for me, aside losing what I give her.

But for me she's an inspiration, in that she brings considerations I would never have on my own. Her folly brings perspective.

I play it safe. She's adventurous. So she helped me doubt my perspective, and to look at my environment differently.

Anyway... No matter what she could look like nowadays, I'd be happy to see her again.

~

We reach an abandoned city in ruins, alongside a river.

It keeps snowing softly.

The air feels heavier, as the snow muffles everything.

There's no wind.

My lovely brat makes a sign with her arm, telling me I can come closer.

I walk down a street, limping slightly, but able to work without a cane.

I hear the sound of the river nearby getting stronger.

It's also getting dark already, the days are short.

Myls keeps me in an abandoned shop to set up camp, while she goes to inspect a few imposing buildings on the other side of a metallic bridge still standing.

Banks or museums perhaps. They still stand, imposing the power they once had.

I begin to set our camping gear in the dark rooms upstairs above the shop.

The windows are so dirty, there's only the glow from daylight you can really see, and not much else indoor.

I let only a thin opening of cleaner light and fresh air enter through the edge of a window, allowing me a cleaner sight outside while remaining hidden.

It reminds me of what an old lady my family knew a long time ago was doing, when I was still a child. Observing the streets below from the shades of her curtains.

I looked at her back then, in this umber tones and warmth of a different place, thinking she was crazy. That ageing changed people into something else.

Everything is blue and grey and cold here, but I'm a little more of the same now.

I end up opening the window truly, letting some of the accumulated dust fall over below. I saw Myls coming back in the distance.

She smiles proudly at me as she notices me looking over that street.

Myls looks weird when she enters the room. I can tell her heartbeat is still more than twice the usual. She has this weird twisted excitement about her she sometimes gets.

Z - Did you find her?

M - I...

She can't finish her sentence. She stays like that, mouth half open, agape, her gaze lost very far away.

M - I don't know. But it's too late now. We will maybe find her tomorrow.

I don't know? Now I'm really puzzled.

Z - What have you found?

M - ... I don't know...

She can't explain it. But it's a clue on Rose's whereabouts it would seem.

We don't sleep much, and at the first light of dawn, we're packing.

The sky is pink and orange over the river as we cross the bridge.

We enter a museum or a court house, with columns from another century. It's partially collapsed, but most things are still standing.

Beyond its great hall, the city is a field of ruins, extending for dozens of kilometres, spreading unto the outside fields.

The sun rises over these snow fields ahead of us, and remnants of the city on our sides.

Myls picks up something left inside the building under a layer of dust and ice. A bag.

Some tools and medical supplies are inside.

I pick up a huge blue feather a little further inside.

I notice a few others scattered, as if a bird fought. A very big bird given the size of the feathers.

Z - Where is she?

M - Her scent is gone. There's nothing left but humidity. Although it seems that something went that way, carrying something, it's where the other smell goes.

Most rocks are leaning toward the outside, around a broken doorway and wall. Something rushed outside?

We head out cautiously on this trail.

We walk for maybe an hour into the barren rocky field, thinly covered by snow. It's tricky to progress over it.

The clear day gives us a good sight around.

There's only one thing standing out in the middle of this cast and empty field. That landmark looks like a weird tree, seen from far away.

As we get closer to it, it clearly is a large sculpture of some sort. A statue of a giant flower bud, tilting under its own weight.

A single giant flowery bud, crawling out of earth and leaning back toward it, too big and heavy for its stem.

A statue... Probably not quite.

Giant brambles are dead and lying frozen below the snow. I notice them like tree roots slithering along the path.

This small but oversized tulip, with little leaves but one giant bulb, is a flower. The immature petals are already pink.

We reach the trunk more than the stem, and that giant bud.

It's not a statue. And the whole thing is lukewarm.

It's mud instead of snow at the roots of it.

We both understand what it is. We don't even need to say it aloud.

We're not really shocked, despite the tombstone standing just there on its side.

Myls carefully digs up something.

A few feet under, the mud gets even warmer.

And below that, she reached a skin. A soft, warm, translucent skin.

A giant soft egg is growing underneath. A pouch of water with aspects of flesh.

The kind we've seen before.

We don't need to unbury it to know who is growing inside.

Another Rose is growing back to life down there.

M - She's immortal...

Z - Not really. But it does seem like each time one dies, another is born.

A close kind from the legendary hydra.

Each time this head rose dies, another grows back and take its place.

She lives in a continuous stream of death and rebirth.

As if she was her own species?

Instead of evolving from generation to generation, through reproduction, she seems to do it all by herself through her cycles of resurrection.

How weird.

One day soon, this odd Rose will rise again.

~