07 ~ July 1921, Artistic day

The summer warmth was getting heavier through the mornings with more ease by that time.

Before the moment when the sun could even blind them, warm air came to them, sliding silently through the nearby fields.

For once, they slept in their own home.

For the first real time, they had slept under the roof of their world. The colder breezes from the night were dancing all along their matrices and blankets while they slept, but they were as quiet as in the morning mists.

Night ghosts were playful, but vanished as soon as the sun began to rise.

Blue opened slowly her eyes, blinded by the first powerful rays of sunlight to reach her. She realised where she was when she felt and smell the mixes of airs and materials, with different temperatures, perfumes and humidity levels.

The smell of a morning bed was reduced by morning coldness. The air warmed by the early sun reaching her was drier and sweeter. It was causing the rise of various other scents from the construction site along with the lush summer outside.

She moved slowly toward the missing window. It was not set yet by the construction crew.

The world was as much outside as it was inside.

It made her wish a little naively they would never need any window at all.

That camping night was one of the nicest experiences she had had lately and if not ever.

A quiet and calmly wonderful one.

Blue smiled happily when some outside wind made her shiver. She realised how much the summer warmth was a subjective feeling at this early hour.

A night away from their kind friends in town.

A time on their own only, as if all of the world was theirs. This feeling of loneliness with only Rose by her side was making her think in melancholic ways.

Rose woke up when Blue was getting back under the blanket for a little more warmth.

That small place was still the more welcoming one of the world, or at least the one she longed for the most if this world was still the real one.

Blue thought that reality only existed when shared with others.

If she was alone, the world would mean nothing. The sight and the feelings from this morning were so kind because she knew she had Rose alongside with her.

They could see a corner of the sky slowly lighting up from their place, lying on their back on a fortune bed, holding the blankets to retain the remaining warmth.

Their body maybe didn’t rest very well in these conditions, but there was an important breath brought to their minds and souls that day. Something very appeasing was feeding them from that oddly shared moment, back at home.

Later on, they would rise, and the work will start again on the house.

For a few more minutes they enjoyed this weird situation in between changing times.

Things went on, and they were living.

But from that day and onward, being alive was meaning a world more for Blue than it did before.

~

Most of the hard groundwork had been completed by the beginning of July.

The core of the worker team specialised in early groundwork, masonry and carpentry had now just left for other sites. Older people came, along with a higher proportion of female, to work on the inside of the house. The tiles were set on the roof. Furniture was being adjusted and varnished on the terrace.

The wooden floorings were getting set inside the rooms and the piling windows in the garden now being set along the walls one after another.

The works on the water, sewage and electricity was done with the digging of new pipes. Some of the furniture for the new lavatories began to arrive.

Rose was still sorting through a ridiculous lot of posts while Blue was working as an impromptu apprentice for a job or another on the site.

Rose was now keeping records of people and customers inquiring about their situation.

She asked them repeatedly to wait before she could properly address their individual concerns. Her list was reaching the hundreds of entries to her bewilderment, making her understand their business ledgers had most probably been lost in the fire.

It was a part of her work she never thought would take so much of her time and energy. She couldn’t understand why so many people would still get in touch with their little shop, but she did her best to keep these connections alive as seriously as she would have done any other duty.

Still little repairs and cleaning had been done to the store in town, but as the damages to it were mild, it was not as important. Keeping the new ledgers and post sorted was however. For some reason the old ones must have been kept in the master office in their home instead of the shop safe.

Amongst the furniture’s and tools she bought and had delivered, Rose first ordered a few fountain pens of good quality to help her write on stacks of papers her personal touches to the draft of letters an elderly woman wrote for her. She allowed herself this touch of luxury in good new pens.

Although there had been some necessity, the ones left in the store or in the decays of the house being either broken or about to. All their writing furniture had been damaged one way or another. They had to make do with what was left and breaking apart and leaking regularly.

To Rose’s understanding of metallurgy, they couldn’t exactly burn and her pen nibs were the same. However she didn’t expect they could be so weakened by temperatures they twisted and break more easily. Almost all the metallic pieces of the house, being bed frame or pipes, they were all shattering into pieces beyond what she would have expected. Most metals had apparently turned to some kind of glass. All of it had been removed along with the rubbles early on.

Her pens had been no different and their nibs broke with ease. Even the ones from the store had that weakness or leaked too easily for some other reason.

For now Rose was focusing on necessities as much as possible, but had allowed herself to buy these slightly more extravagant pens to her liking.

And now that some sense of normality was settling again, she was also considering buying some work of art to refill what the domain had lost. Paintings for the walls, some statues for the corners, and maybe starting with hiring someone to clean the fountain; or even buy another one...

When she asked Blue for advices regarding what to buy for the house, her opinions were rather plain or expected. Blue did not mind either way seeing the house returned to a copy as before or becoming entirely different.

Rose had to think over every choice for herself therefore, and each colour in the house was carefully chosen.

If Rose was making the choice to change the house, it meant something important regarding her family. Keeping the balance between memory and life beyond was a delicate process for her.

Looking at Blue one day, strolling a little further, Rose thought it was certainly different for her with her memory being what it was; although she could not be sure it made it easier for Blue.

Blue could barely remember what their father’s face was, nor even quite their mother’s.

It was queer to realise how different their perspectives around the same realities were, even though they shared the same life for most of it.

Between and along Rose’s wonderings, the work on the house was moving on and progressing rapidly.

It was looking like a real house now, seen from outside.

Inside, the smells of wood being varnished and paints were filling the air all day long.

It was peaceful days.

~

What was so important in these days, that made both sisters wish for this time to lost a little longer?

They weren’t sad anymore, and the rewarding feeling from the sight of their home rising again was satisfying, but there was something else too. Something coming from Blue’s new health.

As much as she could remember her from before, Rose was facing quite a different person. The sorrow was gone, but it was more than that. Far more. Blue’s personality was lost between memory losses and melancholia before. She grew with a translucent personality and often inaptitude to communicate. Something a little cold and tasteless was replacing her mind on whims, before.

That thing, that nameless illness Rose could still touch when they reached their hometown, it was now vanishing, drying out in the sunlight. Blue could still be forgetful, but it was nowhere in scale and scope as before.

Her beloved Blue was revealing herself as a full being, after years of being a little lifeless.

That blooming, that mental reconstruction occurring within Blue, it made this time the happiest of both their lives.

Blue was enjoying herself venturing her new built home, carrying whatever had to be or cleaning tools in the fountain outside. She kept the easier tasks for herself and kept herself helpful much to her enjoyment and satisfaction.

More than the fact she was working steadily now somehow, it was the colours and feelings coming from outside that were fulfilling. Every day was as if she had been colour blind, or almost plain blind all her sweeter years.

Every sensation from her body, being ache or wind on her forehead, it seemed new and pleasant. This state of bliss where everything felt fresh and wonderful, this peaceful euphoria would not last forever.

They both were aware of it, and therefore enjoyed it thoroughly as long as it could last, while wishing it could last a little longer.

Blue was smiling and laughing like never before.

~

Blue didn’t seem to think much about Esther anymore. She wasn’t talking about it lately.

Rose still had some wonders about her, about her being, from time to time.

One moment when she was a little too absent minded, instead of writing a proper customer name in her ledger, she wrote the name of Esther. It was the first time she wrote that first name. Was it a rare one? It meant now something strong to do so and made her think deeper.

She was acknowledging her existence in a way by writing her name.

Although she was not at her place in the list for foreign books customers, but she was now there.

While thinking about it, Rose realised maybe it was not a mistake to have her in that list rather than any other one.

She didn’t want to scribble another name over this mention of Esther since her records were spotless so far, so she thought about what her middle name and last name should be.

At least her middle name should be Gülnihal.

Rose wrote it carefully, remembering her parents both whispering that name on occasions. Their sweet voices were still close to her heart.

Rose wrote her own address next to the missing name. And after a blank, she added the mention deceased next to it, as she did for a few others. Some of her post were about mentions of people related to her family having passed away. So had Esther in a way. Rose took a breath to look around.

The sky was clear, it was a beautiful day. The wind couldn’t reach her desk in the garden, but the sunbeams did. The foliage in her sight was bright.

A weird excitation puzzled her, when she added a small question mark after the work deceased.

Was she?

Her faith in the legend that she would become alive someday had shrunk over the years, but the other belief she had about it was now stronger than ever.

Esther may have been dead as a doll, but as her Blue rose she was more alive than ever, now that Blue could smile so heartfully to her.

In these smiles she could receive all day long, there was a dream come true, and a loving promised fulfilled.

What made Rose’s life worthy to be lived in her eyes was now hers.

And that satisfaction made life worthwhile. It made Gülnihal’s role as a good charm the brightest of successes.

From now on, and until tragedy would tear them apart.

Some bad times would obviously come later, but not during this summer of their starting life together.

Although deep in their hearts, she and Blue both wished they could live as happily as these days for ever after...

As the rebuilding was quickly moving forward, so the summer would pass, and then years; and before the next century, so they would too. With sad and happy times succeeding to each other as in most human life’s.

Thinking so far ahead was a little nihilistic or meaningless when her present life was already so busy, with a body easily recalling her she had to eat before daydreaming.

She was feeling hungry, and a small growl from within woke her up from her river of melancholic thoughts. She was still easily being carried away herself; but at least the river was quite enjoyable now. The weather had become far nicer around their life.

She stretched a little her arms and moved slowly to stand up, folding a ledger with a few more letters within. She walked slowly, coming out from the tree shades, within the warm sunlight. She waved at Blue somewhere further.

Blue replied in kind, with a sunny smile.

~

The whole neighbourhood town was mostly done rising back from its ashes. The walls were recovering light and cleaner colours.

The odd Herson store was one of the last ones to get a good scrub and cleanse, but since it was known among the few who knew them that some of the owners had passed away, it was not too surprising. The last spots of darkness left in town meant that the tragedy was more important there, and the survivors focus, if there were any, lied elsewhere.

The friends Rose asked for hospitality when they came back in town, they were almost the last persons who personally knew them, being older family friends. They had been acquainted with their mother’s side of the family, before the fall of the house back then. They had been very charitable to the grand daughters of someone from their past. Rose was grateful.

The girls had lived their youth in a quite closed off family, not exactly secluded, but rather uninterested in the outside world to a higher degree than normal.

If Rose was learning and uncovering the reasons why their parents chose to live that way, their children suffered from that choice a little now. Now that they were alone, this immense loneliness they inherited from the way they lived, it was heavier to bear. These epistolary exchanges and connections were of a different nature than what a normal city life or even rural life should have been.

As a child, Rose felt nothing special about the outside world, the country, or the town. She had a happy family caring for her.

Things became bittersweet when she had to work after her father’s disappearance. Then a little more bitter when all four sisters began to separate from each other at home and outside, for different reasons.

They needed to leave the nest, and their situation made it a little harder on them.

But the loneliness, the lack of touch with reality, it could only reveal itself in its almighty and frightful glory after the tragedy.

Blue lived through the hard times her own peculiar way; but Rose faced it all... She was so frail then; and yet survived it.

She was still frail, body and heart. She was still overly anxious because of the social loneliness her parents left them with, amongst other things.

Knowing better now why they chose to live this way was easing the feeling somewhat, but the main light and warmth, conforming and reassuring for her, it was still Blue.

They were on their way, so far away, to live a little secluded like their parents before. It didn’t mean they would not be happy, but it was still a little short-sighted and lonely.

The work and ridiculous amount of posts exchanged with foreigners could not change that.

However, it could help them a lot it they planned to travel someday. Keeping good relations outside of their homeland was a great resource to have.

The seemingly absolute trust both Georges and Arlweyn managed to inspire to all these people around the world was now redirected to them kindly.

If Rose had no use for it so far, she knew she did well taking good care of these relations, no matter how futile or absurd they might look.

Something however puzzling Rose as an adopted child, was in reading that many of her parents friends did the same here and there. They tended to adopt children before if ever having some of their own. For these people, adoption clearly meant something important, however she couldn’t find more writings on this.

The most recent letter she read regarding that subject was unfortunately already four years old. It dated from February 1917. That other family was informing Georges, a distant cousin apparently, they were leaving their home land to eventually settle in Scotland. There they planned to rebuild a home along with their adoptive daughter. Georges wasn’t there anymore to reply at the time, and his wife seemingly didn’t. Or more likely and unlike her husband, she didn’t keep the draft of her replies not tended to write them onto the letters directly.

Rose didn’t recall the visit of such a family for the last five years or so. That link, that relation was probably lost now. She could not read their name anyway and were not the only ones sharing similar events.

Being adopted was a source of endless and various feelings, changing overtime. She couldn’t help but feel something for the others who lived that too, a way or another.

Putting all things together, the fact was easy to get; she missed now having some other friends to speak to at times. Some of these epistolary links with the outside world were helping to fill the melancholia that could otherwise seem endless.

And now that her core relation was fulfilled with Blue at her side, looking in the same direction; it was worth trying to aim a little further, along with her.

First was first, and the house was the priority, but the world was still there and open to them.

When they would have a good home to fall back to, maybe it would be nice to cross the gates and discover a little more for themselves what was beyond these stacks of posts and books.

Now that the basic requirements physically and emotionally were assured, they could live freely and consider travelling an option someday soon.

Rose was still frail a trembling, now Blue on her way to become stronger than her; but she was filled with warm hopes coming up, rising every morning with them and the sun.

R - How was your day Blue?

She did not reply, simply harbouring a growing smile. There was an unexpected glint somewhere on her face. She was like a child enjoying a day at its fullest.

Somehow, it felt true. Blue started to live really, fully aware, only recently. This summer was like a second childhood, and in a way, her true one.

R - I’m... Really glad you can feel that way...

She was so glad she could cry, witnessing an unrealistic wish somehow come true. And Blue could only reply the weirdest and sweetest of all the possible replies.

B - Thanks to our blue rose Esther.

~