458. Blooming flowers, 2

(Rose)

Following the dream further, I fell in a deep and peaceful slumber.

I can sometimes hear Blume humming a lullaby to me.

She’s caring for me gently. As much as she could take over all there is of me, she’s trustworthy.

Sometimes I can feel muscles twitch as she tests the fibres and the nervous connection.

I’m growing anew, purged from the deadly infection.

At some point, I wake up. I don’t know how long it took.

It’s still dark outside, night.

I can barely move, but with great efforts, I can, a little.

I feel like shrubs have grown all over my body once more, preventing most movements.

I’m not sure if my left arm is there or not. I can feel that I have a tongue, and my teeth. That’s a good start.

An inhuman shape towers above me and leans toward me.

B - Hello Rose. It’s a little early for the sun, but rise and shine my dear.

R - Hello Blume... I guess I would have died without you?

B - Maybe not. The main infections were dormant when I found you. You might have survived.

R - Your human body will wake up before mine I guess?

B - Probably not. You’re healing fast and it’s easier to feed and accelerate a well set metabolism than to accurately create and tune a new one.

R - So you just force-feed me while you’re being careful and patient with yourself.

B - I wouldn’t have presented it better myself. Now grow fat, meat bag.

We laugh.

Tubes, veins, plunge inside my tummy like a renewed umbilical cord. She’s feeding me from there so far. But if I woke up, it means I’ll be able to resume normal feeding very soon.

For now, I just rest. I can’t leave the bed yet. Blume tells me more about our friends. It’s easier than in dreams.

B - They’re on their way. We’ll both be up by the time they arrive I estimate.

R - We’ll try to find a nice place to have our reunion and a party.

B - A place with woods nearby would be nice. I think it will be useful.

R - Oh? Alright. Let’s look for that when we can stand together then.

We chat peacefully, as if we were both lying in the same bed at home, in a room, the curtains still shut.

In the absence of light, nothing seems unusual outside our voices.

As the sun rises, our bodies reveal their unsettling realities.

She’s a monstrous swarm of intelligent plants, vines, brambles and gross flowery looking organs.

I’m a skeletal body, still missing an arm, and with blood vessel protruding on many places.

R - Can I stand?

B - Take your time, your head won’t like the movement. You’ll regrow better eating by yourself from now on, go ahead. I’ll just grow aside a good supplement in the form of a fruit for you to eat daily.

I see a kind of yellow plum growing on a side fruit tree that is a part of her as well. My outer blood vessels are shrinking and drying as the fluids gather in me.

As I slowly move, the dry network crumbles, brittle.

My body is weak, but so light that it isn’t too hard to move myself around.

B - Your digestive system hasn’t shrunk. Your body looks like you were starving but it’s really not. Don’t be afraid to eat a lot.

The flowers on my chest have the metallic wind chime sound of the old days.

I sit around and then move away from the shrubs. The greenhouse is effective, I feel warm enough.

Feeling warmer would be nicer though. I head for my clothes and a fire.

I swallow everything edible I can find until my tummy looks like I’m heavily pregnant.

Right now it feels nice to feel so full I might burst I think as I burp.

I finally notice that new flowers have grown around me in that indoor garden.

R - You’ve added some colourful variety to the decorum I notice.

B - I was doing some experiments. What I read in the brains you saved for me gave me some ideas.

R - I had forgotten about that. So this yellow flower I see all over there is a new creation?

B - Almost. It’s a corner of rosa xanthine. Fitting, isn’t it?

R - Rosa? It doesn’t look like a rose.

B - It’s a wilder rosa to the species you’re used to in Europe.

R - That’s funny. I don’t really know many flowers aside the easy to recognises roses you know.

B - I know a few more now. That person still had many valuable memories about flower species. The dog as well.

R - That’s unexpected, and a little odd.

B - The deep blue ones under the light are gentian verna. Aren’t they cute? I like their colour.

I smile, amused at her new whim.

She has grown a small garden out of nowhere, some corners smelling syrupy even now. A flower looks like the tree variant of a lily of the valley to me. I ask about some of these new angiosperms I never encountered before.

B - Pieris formosa, pieris flamingo. I don’t know the third one.

R - Where have you found all these seeds?

B - In the ground, in the earth around, on the shelves of a vault below, and in the air... There’s an odd amount of spores in the airs lately for some reason? I can smell what you’ve done out there, in the mountains...

R - Oh yes, you should see.

B - I can smell it from here... You’ve been having fun, haven’t you?

R - Quite, yes.

B - You’re a bad flower Rose.

R - The worst of them all.

We laugh. I take a digestive nap warmly set by my blankets as my intestine work all the food.

I sleep most of the day, warmly under the sun.

~

R - Would you be able to keep helping flowers bloom everywhere we went?

B - Possibly. You would like for where you went to have grass and more flowers to grow steadily?

R - The land around here is a little dull... I like that idea yes.

B - As long as there is T.I. in the air, we can focus some of it to make things grow more easily. It wouldn’t be instantaneous like what you’ve done out there with an artefact, which was crazy. But akin to what I’ve done here, we could surely.

R - I think I’m in love with you.

We joke at each other.

I eat, a lot. I don’t even excrete much waste. With the fruit she gives me, I digest and turn almost everything I eat into muscle and flesh.

R - Will my left arm regrow?

B - Not yet. I didn’t work on that part. It will eventually with my help. It would be more simple and efficient to grow it anew slowly, although we could try attaching the bones you brought and growing the starting tissues over it. That wouldn’t be much easier though.

Slow and easy or maybe faster and more efforts. I don’t really care for urgency right now.

R - I can work with one arm.

B - Alright then. Slow and steady.

The pale flowers on my chest emit the sound again. It’s a thank you note.

I walk outside slowly. I go for a small walk.

The sky is cloudy, and the wind still carries some petals along with ashes.

Oh boy. Something in the air tells me the eruption of flowers I created up there will also have lingering consequences for a while longer. Even the air smells somewhat fruity.

It’s nice.

It will be nice.

I’m smiling more greatly.

~