459. Blooming flowers, 3

(Rose)

Blume’s human body is almost ready.

And so are we to travel further east. While we wait for her blossoming, we went together to the caldera, the old way, with her consciousness over my chest flowers.

B - The horn you think about is the cornucopiae. So you grew one?

R - Well, a kind of dead tree with twisted shape grew in the middle of the sudden flood. It was as if it was pouring them over. It reminded me of that picture.

It’s a little harder to balance myself with an arm missing, but I adapt myself rapidly.

I don’t carry the sword of Licht as I wouldn’t be able to handle it if I was attacked.

There’s my knife attached to my right leg just in case, for very last resort.

I don’t need to use it.

We reach the summit.

The sight is overall the same as before, except for that large patch of colours like a glistening lake.

R - They’ve spread a little further. I feared they would all be dead by now.

B - From what I see from up here, it’s a single species covering that land.

R - Really?

B - I need to look at it more closely. It’s a weird thing you created...

R - Thank you!

I’m actually quite amused by what is sort of a compliment. If I can make beings-like-her feel bewildered, it is a nice accomplishment.

Not the first time I manage it, but it’s probably the prettiest manner so far that I’ve succeeded with.

We slowly reach the flowery field. The scent is already a heavy pot-pourri right before I set foot inside.

At the edge, we can see the various kinds of flowery plants growing by eating the layer of ashes as if it was pure earth and fertiliser. They like it. It likes it so.

I touch them carefully. I can recognise a few species but not many. Irises, tulips, even roses, dandelions, and a few shrubs I’ve seen before. The easiest ones to recognise really.

Blume now names others as if they were just as obvious.

Primula, Epimedium, Trillium and Lathyrus. I will never remember their names.

R - In a way, I guess it makes sense for you to have some botanical knowledge. You know, outside a kitchen, I wouldn’t even recognise rosemary if I crossed some.

B - Well, there’s none here.

R - So is it really only one species? It obviously looks like many to me.

B - It is one being-like-me you gave birth to here. All the different flora you see here are parts of its body... Like some species of bacteria make yours. This being uses all these plants as parts of itself.

R - They’re assimilated? They’re imitations?

B - No, they kept their own genes, expressions and memes. It’s more like a symbiosis but at an invisible level as well. The being makes them able to survive in this odd environment, and their bodies support its material presence as a whole. They really work like a wider organism, though keeping their individual characteristics.

R - I see... How intelligent is it?

B - Average I’d say, but not conscious. We won’t be able to discuss about anything.

R - And anything we should worry about?

B - Not that I can see nor think of. It’s a new Pflanzenteufel, or Blumenteufel rather, but with the reasonable ambition of any flower field. More flowers will grow over time and replace the dying ones as well. I think that’s all there is to say.

R - Good then... And for the cornucopiae?

B - It’s just a husk. I don’t see anything there.

I thought there would be a little more than meets the eye about that odd dead tree. It was just a scrapped by-product of that invisible being’s birth. Like a lost umbilical cord, or milk teeth. Or an egg shell...

Blume and I return slowly to our temporary home. We discuss other topics related to flowers on our way.

She brings up another story I never heard before.

B - It’s called die Tausendjähriger Rosenstock. I’m surprised you never heard of it from your father. He could have made a few tales out of it.

R - I like that you’re able to say such a thing, for more than one reason. So what is the story of this thousand years rosebush?

B - That all there is to it. There’s this place in Germany where that bush has been alive and growing for more than a thousand years.

R - And here I thought roses hardly lived beyond a century. A thousand years? That’s possible?

B - Garden roses are generally more frail. Some wild roses like that rosae caninae are able to thrive for longer times.

R - Is it still alive today?

B - Good question. Unless the city has been obliterated in a war in the past, my guess would be yes. Given that man knew about it, my guess is it still was there at the time we appeared. The white day mostly didn’t wipe out floral life forms also, it’s most likely still there. The oldest Rose in the world.

R - I bet it has spread over the land like another cornucopiae by now...

My father and Bleue would have written so many tales about a thing like that.

I wish I could as well... But that’s all I could imagine, its spread.

Blume smiles at me.

R - Thank you for telling me about it. It’s insignificant and somewhat meaningful as well. I never would have guessed such a thing had been possible...

Somewhere out there, a rosebush has turned into a millenary tree.

It’s incredible...

Moreover in my time and before the end of history.

It’s like they were already there.

Always have been on Earth... Only asleep, or without consciousness and self-awareness yet.

R - If it has evolved like you in the new world... I bet this Rose can walk by herself now?

Blume is slightly confused, but imagines the picture of a walking being, made entirely with roses, roughly shaping a humanoid being. A walking thing made of roses. She finds the idea funny.

B - It wouldn’t be the weirdest of the Roses to have ever walked this Earth.

R - Silly you...

Silly flowers on my chest.

~

If there’s another demon made out of flowers on this Earth, I would love to meet it.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll keep having fun with my own.

~

Blume brought me to the vault.

Shelves with boxes filled with plastic bags, layered with aluminium foils.

Blume’s roots pierced through the ceiling of this underground shelter, and helped themselves in what was a essentially a buffet for her. It was a vault of seeds, for all the gardens of the city probably.

Blume guides me in this dark underground warehouse. Her roots ate most of what wasn’t rotten already, and some of it as well. The fissures and cracks around the building let some water from the river sip in and slowly spoil some of the previously dry goods.

In a corner.

In the middle of a shelf, Blume’s roots found something of a different kind.

A seed of a being-like-her, turned into an artefact matrix. An empty clay in blume’s words. It was hers to fill it slowly, letting excess T.I. crystallise gradually inside.

It’s shaped like a drop. It glows with a prismatic effect on light, like a jewel.

R - So you grew an artefact for me.

B - Just in case yes.

R - In case I want to bloom more flowers along the way?

B - !

I laugh. And then I thank her. Since the drop has a tiny hole, I use a thread to make a pendant out of it.

It’s unusual for me to wear jewellery. But I like this bead born from a flower seed.

~