453. Blooming flowers, 1

(Rose)

The climb of that mountain was easier from the previous time.

I know Blume’s consciousness doesn’t reside in them, but I’m relieved to see her buds sprouting again frim the small rosebush growing off my chest.

The sky is as cloudy with smoke as ever, but I see more light and more clearly. I’m probably simply more awake.

I reach the summit, close to where I saw Priest. Nothing has changed. The pillar of dark smokes beyond the ruptured valley still flows as quietly as before toward the sky.

There will be a colder winter due to the volcanic ashes said Blume. There have always been volcanoes on Earth so I don’t understand why this one would make anything different about winter. We didn’t discuss it much.

What matters today is my last wish on the stone I carry inside my backpack.

First, I head down inside the outer caldera, in the valley of washed rocks below.

Over the days, ashes snowing have paled up in a thick layer of sooty dirt.

My whole clothes turned this dark greys faster than I could guess. It’s one of these earths that sticks to you and never quite let you go. You merge with it, dive in it.

I don’t know what kind of trees can grow on such soil. What grows first on volcanic islands and slopes?

Anything will do. I don’t have anything especially in mind.

I brought what seeds, fruits and bits of plants I could find in the city below. I made a melting pot of every plant I could find basically.

And I will give it the energy to grow and replicate as much as it can.

It will still be a competition between all the vegetal lifeforms I’ve gathered. I expect the seeds to start more easily than the bits of bark and leaves from other species.

And what is the most adapted to this land will hold longer.

I wish I had a seed of that alpine plant that covered the land like a blanket of bushes that was a single network kind of individual.

The rust flowers of southern England could maybe have a similar kind working with soot? That would be lovely.

I would be happy to see colourless flowers grow from this blanket of quiet dishes.

That is actually quite likely, that the dominant species coming out of the pot I made isn’t quite looking like anything I’ve known before.

A new kind of flowers may bloom, if I lend it a hand.

I’m confident the spores of beings-like-her have already returned like pollen after winter.

I can see them, slightly.

They’re more hungry to be alive than any older species.

I walk along a very unlikely road of boulders, ruptured and crushed one against another into a very porous land. I jump above holes of this giant sponge of a forsaken land. How deep does this go?

After a monsoon, would this area become a lake?

It doesn’t matter for what I’m about to do.

However I should try to return to this land in a few years, to see what kind of evolution will occur.

I reach a thick blanket of black snow, like a hill.

I will do it here.

~

I crushed the glowing stone in my hand, and let the sand it became slide between my fingers and into the pile of lifeforms I gathered there. I’ve dug a nest in the ashes, laid the bits and bobs of floral nature there, and sprinkled them now with fairy dust.

Grow little ones. I command you.

Go forth and multiply.

Wait. I said I didn’t want to be like that. I grin, amused by my own funny thoughts. I won’t let it go to my head.

Really it’s just a whim. There’s no intended design nor will behind.

I cover the drying art composition I’ve made there with more sooty ashes.

What kind of plant would grow without water here? Cactuses?

I’ve infused my will into the herbal mix there. There’s nothing else for me to do. I step back to a more comfortable spot, I sit, and I begin to watch, patiently.

I wonder what will come out.

~

Bleue...

You would have been proud.

I tear up a little as I think of you, though I can smile.

You would have been so proud...

I see waves of various flowers rolling over the ashes, pouring onto the land like a fountain, carrying colours too bright for this place and consuming the ashes on their way. They are a series of waves washing over the ashy shores in rising tides.

Leaves grow in a matter of seconds as they crystallise over falling snowflakes, turning darkness into greenery.

It’s exceeding my expectations by very far. It’s an eruption of an infinite bouquet.

It’s that horn, which name’s I forgot. Though instead of food, it’s giving a profusion of flowers and leaves.

They roll over the fields, like colourful uneven fire over cellulosic sheets. It just goes like a shimmery flood.

A kind of monstrous tree emerges from the epicentre of that flood. A deformed body or skeleton of nonsensical chimera. It’s not alive, just a side effect of the flow taking birth there.

My feet are completely entangled in the plants that rushed over me.

Like a wave splashing you, they climbed over me in the momentum, but fell aside of me and continued on their way.

They had no malevolent intent against me, I was just like another rock to go around of for them.

They ate all the soot covering my clothes however.

The flow gradually became slower, after a few prolific minutes. The high tide is set. There’s a cloud of petals and leaves flying around this dreamlike field.

As the growth comes to its end, it didn’t reach any of the mountain ranges, aside the one right behind me. It didn’t fill this land. Yet.

But a wide roughly circular area was covered with bountiful and various flowers.

A splatter of colours in this otherwise achromatic landscape. And probably something that will try to keep its inherent objectives as a lifeform. Meaning they will probably not all fade and whither by tomorrow.

I would be surprised.

If your winged back was standing there by my side, I think you would be laughing with joy.

I kind of am, though without you.

This land and these lives enjoyed my wish as much as I did.

~