449. Music of Earth, 7

(Rose)

Because the flesh on my back and my chest has already healed a lot, it was harder for Blume to crawl back inside of me. The sensations are peculiar, but I’m okay with her.

She’s the only parasite I’m eager to have. To avoid hurting my healing process, she’s taking her time to slide her cells between my own. So she’s far more voluminous than usual around me currently.

For the while being, she’s clutching on my back mostly, the wings being at rest. It’s like a rosebush is stuck all over my back.

Usually, I just have to lower my head to speak to her. Now she’s behind my shoulders all the time.

B - It’ll take a few weeks to get back to normal.

R - What about having your own body?

B - Oh don’t worry, I can do both.

R - Is that a new trick or are you planning on duplicating yourself?

B - We can’t reproduce ourselves in our essential form in T.I. So it won’t be a duplicate of me. It will be a trick.

R - What’s the trick?

B - I’ll keep an invisible link between the two bodies. My mind will watch over my own while the rosebush will be placed under the control of your brain and organism. Parts of my intelligence will be able to swap between the bodies if required, but it will be like stretching myself, not cutting myself.

R - And if the link is severed somehow?

B - The flowers will remain under your care, and me in my body, when it’s ready.

R - Sounds good then. Where would you grow your body? It’s probably not easy.

B - That’s the only thing left to decide. Between your past bodies and mine, I now have enough experience and memories of that domain. It shouldn’t be too hard. It will take a while though. At least a few months.

R - Should we start looking for a nice place around here then? Let’s not postpone this any longer.

B - I didn’t expect you to be so eager to fall under my charms as a human looking body.

R - Who says you wouldn’t be the one seduced by my dreadful look?

I’m holding myself up with a stick like a cane, so I don’t really look like a gravure model. Not even a valiant beauty. More like a sick crone.

B - That’s too easy a tease. I’m better than this.

R - Smug one.

I move my stick I’m holding myself with. A cane or a crutch. I’m leaving the apartment that acted as my hospital room for the past while.

~

A few stories below, I reach the square and empty streets outside.

In the distance, the volcanic clouds still cover the horizon with a dark blanket.

The city we’re in is barely outside the dead zone the magenta god has made. So despite their suffering from the ashes, there are still a few trees and plants around. Blume chose the first town she found with food and water clearly visible from the sky.

Fields of abandoned crops and a river going through the city.

R - A building next to the river I guess?

B - Water is a powerful solvent. It’s useful.

R - That means yes I guess.

~

I ended up finding a nice place that probably was a museum in a different era. It has a large area still standing above the river and wide gardens.

Inside the building with modern architecture, meaning lots of glass walls, we find a crevice that leads to the ground below, and mud from the river. A nice place.

B - Will you need the wings again, or can I salvage them?

R - You can salvage as much as you want. I don’t fancy wings currently.

I’m good simply walking.

Blume then leaves my back. The part of her already inside of me will regrow, through my chest from there.

Her old body, everything grown from before, including the two pairs of wings, will be used to create her new humanoid body.

I see the rosebush with four wings flapping them around to fly like a very odd bird. The unusual monster sets itself in the earth of the flowerbed near the fissure in the ground.

The roots dig themselves their holes and the rosebush is rapidly set like a normal plant almost. It still has large wings protruding as if they were ornaments for some kind of artistic sculpture involving her flowers, nested in the middle.

B - How large will you grow?

B - If I find enough nutrients around not much. If the water and earth are poor, I’ll need to spread.

R - I’ll see how much food I can bring you as well to help. Anything you would like or wouldn’t like?

B - Try to avoid things that were contaminated with that gold looking mould. Otherwise, everything organic works for me.

R - Do you know where that gold thing came from?

B - Oh, you didn’t realise it? It was from the magenta god. It used that a long time ago as a weapon I think.

I didn’t notice that gold back then, but I trust Blume if she says these things were related. I nod and I leave her to her plant business. I’ll look around the city for a while longer.

~

Over the following days, we simply camped there together.

Blume grew a mouth that I used as a bin to throw everything I wouldn’t eat myself, and every kind of waste I had to offer. Blume built a stomach below to dissolve and use everything I gave, to grow her bulb.

During the day, I began scavenging through the city. During the night, I slept next to her.

I often woke up when a magenta star grew inside of the night sky in my dreams.

I often thought back to the time when it had just awoken, launching its terrifying rain around the entire land.

The Earth shook at its wrath.

During the day, I can see the volcanic pillar of smoke in the distance, surrounded by mountains of rocks that didn’t exist a few weeks ago.

I’ll venture on one of these new mountains one of these days, to have a better view of the volcano behind.

~

A few years ago, in Egypt, I discovered a volcano that looked like it just came out of nowhere.

When they die, some beings-like-her can leave an artefact behind. And others, they become like some dying stars. Or simply like stars. They explode like enormous and exotic nuclear bombs.

This means that despite humanity’s disappearance, the Earth will keep being shaken by such explosions once in a while, for eons to come.

Volcanoes keep being active and erupting occasionally to this day. Some kinds of lifeforms bring something similar now into nature.

Time will pass.

Flowers will bloom.

And some gods will explode when they die, creating new mountains or volcanoes.

But mostly, new flowers will bloom, and cover it all...

~