(Rose)
Heading north. Entering the ruins of another city. A small one. Older. Just as ruined as the others though. I can tell it’s older at the remnants of architecture. Stones and bricks were replaced over ti by concrete, which was replaced by glass and steel, then glass stronger than steel.
I’ve seen walls in shambles where the steel lted, the building collapsed, but the glass walls remained intact, facing the street, still looking clean.
Blu says it’s a kind of ceramic, but it looks nothing like it.
She’s blooming all over joyously. I already have a scarf of flowers, flying in the wind, turning into a cape or mantle at will. She’s radiant.
We explore the old city at day and camp through the night. I’m feeling very good lately and so does she.
She speaks with her flowery voice again.
Now she often holds my hand as we go. She wraps herself around it in a very sweet flowery glove.
I rember when my left hand was damaged... (I still have a little bone in my bag as a nto from the other ti I lost bones.)
She’s sweet. Sweet to and my senses. She likes to pretend kissing to wish a good day and a good night. She only brushes my lips then, but I enjoy it too... In more ways than one...
Everything is complex.
Life here. This town has so building upside down, literally, and crumbling away. What happened?
The street is destroyed as if bombs exploded, and so buildings are lying with their architecture upside down, on both side of the street. Why? How?
Another new one did this? All seems quiet.
I enter the building that looks in better shape. I wouldn’t want to be buried alive again. When did I experienced it the first ti? I can’t quite recall. Sotis I have these doubtful mories passing by. Well, it doesn’t matter.
Inside, I walk on ceilings covered with fallen and rotting furniture. Nothing interesting.
Ah. Skeletons. I take a closer look at them. A family, sitting together against a bed. They’ve been there for years. I crouch in front of them, observing them carefully.
Two adults. Two children. All reduced to bones and mummified tissues, mixed with clothing. Sitting together, trying to sleep together in the ruins...
I tilt my head back to normal and stand up.
R - It’s the first ti we find remains that seem to date from the end of ti... Why?
B - I don’t know. They seem to have simply sat there to sleep. And their bones didn’t decompose like they usually do now.
R - Where did everyone else go? If everyone died, how co this is the almost first ti we find bones?
B - I honestly have no idea. You generally don’t leave bones for long anymore.
R - It’s a little sad that even our bodies vanished, but the city probably would have looked like hell if they all had remained.
B - ...
R - What is it?
B - I wonder what might happen to make most of the bodies disappear entirely. However... This island might have been mostly deserted already.
R - Great Britain, deserted?
It sounded ludicrous to .
But again, I wasn’t there. And who remained didn’t necessarily spoke English. So perhaps, she’s right.
I climb the slide the reversed stairway is in this building.
On the next floor, amongst broken furniture, I find so clothing. I grab a few underwears that look still good.
I then find a comfortable mattress and a heavy blanket. Even though it’s the middle of the day behind the broken window, I roll onto the pulverised bed and take a dusty nap.
I quickly fall asleep because it’s the softest bed I had in months.
I’m thinking that I’m no longer human.
I’ve evolved into soone very different from what I pictured...
I’m able to sleep peacefully in a house full of corpses, in the middle of the day, because the bed is very soft.
And I’m enjoying when the odd flowery blanket and living thing she is, is cuddling and caressing my skin.
A part of , a little one, is still nauseous. Another one is proud.
When all morality beca pointless, I guess pragmatism prevailed. I’m still a little idealistic at heart though.
I still have my morals, my ethic and my doubts. And I won’t burry those bodies downstairs, because to they’re already at rest where they belong.
~
Blu is playing with as I wake up. She’s tickling , brushing , pressing my skin on different spots with her flowers. It’s the equivalent of kisses for her.
I kiss so flower back. She’s very happy.
We go outside again after a mont of such play. I wander through the streets. I spot so lizards running away from us. It’s still rather cold outside though.
I see another shooting star falling through the sky in the distance, even though I can still see the sun.
The streets are randomly destroyed. So look fine, so look like they’ve been mowed down.
I find the stockpile of a market building, with remaining crates of cans. So don’t spoil fast, but they’re obviously getting rarer over ti.
So fruits in juices. They’re good. I take what I can carry, mark the place on my map and leave the rest where it was.
We go further. Night falls. I make camp in a house at random. In this block, all doors have rotten and fallen into mush.
There’s an opening in a ceiling, to an attic. Blu expands herself, stretches our combined body. She pulls us up toward this opening far above my head.
I land in a weird place full of colours. There’s a couch, and piles of those colourful discs, rotting or lting on the shelves. So screens cover the wall. A television or computer I've learned. Never saw one working yet though.
I sleep there. I hear the rain falling slowly outside. Blu is resting right next to .
It’s peaceful.
~
I wake up with my good morning kiss and greeting.
I smile happily. I stretch longly. Blu helps doing a few minutes of exercise. We will walk a lot today.
First, leaving this attic. Blu stretches into the flowery ribbons all over and slowly lifts down through the opening. I can feel her roots attached to all of my bones playing the role of a harness inside my body. I land safe and sound. She then returns to and wrap herself around my clothes.
I begin to leave the city. I go through suburbs that have been blown away by a titanic explosion a little further. I see a deserted land spreading. Only a few trees are growing there, among dead stumps.
It’s wide. Kilotres wide.
R - What is that?
B - This looks like a nuclear explosion site, but I don’t detect the radiating activity I would have expected.
R - Nuclear?
B - Ah... It’s like... An explosive like the sun uses. It’s a force of nature beyond chemistry, it’s the strength of stars.
R - A power beyond electricity and oil?
B - Far beyond. Think of it as a touch of the sun, and that’s only the start.
R - I can’t really picture that...
I walk inside a desert unlike any I’ve seen in books. It’s very flat. There are chunks of lted materials here and there, and that’s about it.
Nothing else to see but a few trees, and buildings foundations. Everything above ground is gone.
Blu tries to teach the essentials of physics, to understand what probably happened there. But she seems distracted by the absence of sothing. She too is a little puzzled by the difference of what she knows in theory, and what she observes in reality. So things are odd.
We cross the path of a railroad. I see how it lted and warped, blown away in a twisted sculpture in the area of the explosion. It looks like half a very distasteful arch. Now it’s frozen tal, rusted deep through.
I open my bag. I pick up a few of my tallic flower seeds and drop them around.
In a few years, this might be interesting to see.
~
The town is behind us. The countryside is normal ahead. We walk all day. She rings like little bells now and then, as if smiling to the scenery as we walk.
Everything is at peace because it’s empty. There is little wildlife. And there are little remaining buildings still looking good. It takes work to keep a house or a church standing.
My friend I should visit again soon enough sure is courageous...
~
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