457. Wonders of alcohol, 8

(Rose)

B - When did you lose your teeth?

R - One broke a week ago? The other yesterday as I was in the hospital I think?

The vines are touching very delicately my skin. She’s inspecting my body. My fallen arm is naught but bones and dry crust. It looks like it was excavated from an Egyptian tomb.

I’m lying down, trying to breathe and collect my thoughts as she’s looking after me.

B - I can heal you...

R - What’s wrong?

B - It will be difficult, I mean, painful. It’s not just a cold you have. The infection is still there, everywhere. You have poisoned your fluids and blood, you’re all damaged inside. Your kidneys are tired. There are also viruses I don’t recognise spreading around.

R - Now I’m a little scared...

So the arm falling was actually the least worrisome aspect of my health... I like the irony.

I do feel fuzzy all over, but not like I’m in immediate danger. Blume stretches her brambles all around me.

She wouldn’t have enough time to build an egg, a womb, inside which she could heal and care for me more easily. So she’ll go for the surgical route.

R - Surgery?

B - I’d rather not use my body egg on you. You’re too contagious.

R - I could infect you?

B - The human body, yes. The plant-like fleshes are too different for what currently ails you, so...

R - anything I should bite on as you operate on me?

B - I could offer you something better.

One of the brambles brings me some medicines and a bottle of liquor.

R - To get drunk?

B - A little. But with the medicine along, their synergy will shut down some parts of your brain for a few hours and slow it down even further. It should be fine.

R - It sounds like an idea I would have had, given how bad it sounds.

I grab the pills and swallow them along a burning chug of spirits. I completely trust her.

B - Sweet dreams Rose. Hopefully.

I’m feeling myself passing out faster than I thought possible.

~

I can still feel parts of what’s happening to me.

Other parts are probably just me having paranoid nightmares.

My entire muscle mass is corrupted. I hear Blume’s thoughts.

Blume skins me entirely, and makes every muscle melt into the ground. It feels weird.

I’m left as a skeleton and a pile of veins covering glossy organs, now exposed to the air as I feared before.

She rummages her numerous tentacles and leaves all around me, sliding between my bones and inner organs to reach the leftovers of contaminated flesh below.

Regularly, I can feel she’s pouring more alcohol down my throat, and shuts my blind eyes.

B - Keep sleeping my sweet Rose...

Now is not the time to wake up.

I feel the air around my heart that has slowed down. Where’s my blood and heart gone? I twitch in a sudden burst of anxiety. My bowels twitch. My eyes. I can’t feel my tongue anymore.

The numerous signals and tremors I feel all over me are actually Blume at work, not me.

Finally, she gets my organism to a state where she can operate without keeping me drugged.

She enters my brain and hijacks it. I feel her embrace for a moment. I truly fall asleep then at last.

~

I’m in a dream. I’m aware of it.

I look at my two hands and myself. I’m on a hill, under a warm twilight. It’s a dream version of my homeland countryside.

R - Blume?

I see flowers large as planets in space, filling the outer sky, as if the Earth was surrounded by a galactic bouquet. Beyond the sky, these flowery shapes in the landscape of my mind, it’s her.

B - It will be easier for you in there. There’s really a lot of damage.

R - How long?

B - A month maybe. You’re in really bad shape.

I feel pain in my mouth. I can feel that she just implanted a new tooth where I had lost one.

R - Can you... Join me in here and keep me company as well? Or would you risk losing focus?

B - As long as you don’t require too much attention and quick replies, I should be able to do that.

A flower falls from space and grows wings as it shrinks and flies to me.

We sit on a side of the hill. Well, I sit and she’s there.

R - You don’t want to show me z face?

B - ... I’ll keep the surprise for outside.

She slowly tells me about our friends she met back in Türkiye.

R - I’m glad. They all are doing well.

B - Myls really wants to follow you in your footsteps.

R - As a rash person?

B - As a traveling adventurer I would say.

I hear myself burping, somehow. What?

B - I’m giving you what’s left of the drink.

R - I don’t recall being drunk in a dream before.

B - I love you.

R - Ooh... You’re not fair...

B - I just don’t need you anymore.

R - Oh... Meanie.

B - But I still love you. You can be grim, but you’re quite fun.

Fun... To a demon, I guess I am?

I feel the warmth in my face. I know it’s a dream. But I can still chuckle merrily as she teases me. I look at the insane sky with delight.

R - I recall you telling me I was making your life interesting. But fun, I don’t remember you using that word... Did you?

I wanted to say something more. I wanted to call her my old friend.

Did I have any friends before?

I don’t remember.

I have a down time, feeling a little gloomy about my lonely past.

As a child, all my love was focused on my family, and especially my youngest sister. But after they all died, I became free to have new stories, new friendships, and new loves.

I see Bleue appear in front of me like an hallucination.

She’s a vivid memory.

Her telling me to free myself from my blue rose...

I have a smile and sigh. I drink another sip, imaginary or real.

I have. Though, I still have a rose by my side, it’s not a blue one. I giggle. I’m amused by my own silly romanticism.

R - Blume...

B - Yes?

R - Thank you for being by my side, and making my life interesting.

B - We’re a good team Rose.

I can hear the ghosts of my various pasts laughing or giggling. I’m brushing my hair with my left hand with insistence, as I’m aware that when I wake up, it probably won’t be there anymore.

R - How old am I again?

B - Essentially, your being is thirty-five.

My father died at 48. My mother... 41.

I still have a few years to go before age makes me feel really old.

R - What will you do... After I die?

B - I’ll live.

I end up laughing. I expected no less.

R - I think... Whenever it will happen, there’s something I’d like you to do.

B - Yes?

R - Please carry on using our names, as yours. Just yours.

B - You’re giving me your name?

A few beings-like-her... Saw us as only one single being. I can’t remember how it started. Maybe with Licht Trägerin, but probably even longer before that.

R - Rose Blume is our name together, but it was also my name sometimes even without you. I would be happy if you carried it on...

Blume thinks too much about it.

B - I will...

I hear her thoughts clearly. I’m inside her thoughts as much as she’s inside mine, even if I’m hosting this dream.

I can hear her thought that it’s only relevant if I’m the one dying first. She’s surprisingly conscious of her own mortality for a being-like-her.

I smile kindly. I love her.

R - Blume. It’s not just because of our relation that I’m asking you that. It’s also because you deserve a human name.

B - ...

R - Blume... Whatever it truly means to be human today, you are. By all means, you are. You have everything that is good about being human. Your dream... your oldest dream, is reality.

~