Rose Blumen ~

(Aïsshean)

Aïssheat returned during the night. We welcomed her immediately, as none of us could find sleep anyway.

I was too busy keeping my body together like a crowd of rowdy prisoners noticing their overseers' fatigue.

Azzie & Ahhie were still too traumatised by what they went through across the city to really stand up from the couch or leave each other's hand free.

We all began showing symptoms one way or another. There was probably no other way. Still, her return spooked us.

She looked severely wounded, parts of her head, chest and limbs gnawed off or crushed clearly.

But she wasn't bleeding, and some of her deadly wound had even been taken care for.

The part of her that still could smile rejoiced at finding us there as she had hoped.

We embraced her no matter the look, and we surely didn't look that much better.

It was incredible she said, and repeated it a few times, nearly weirdly.

It was incredible...

Not just reuniting with us with the luck of still being all together to live for another day.

It also was about what was happening outside. Horrendous was my word. Violent too.

But fascinating and incredible were hers.

Even now, looking as if she should have died from multiple wounds, my younger sister is more fascinated by the underlying complexity and shifting parameters of blood, than scared by what their spills imply.

I hug her. She holds me back with her good arm.

I know how much we're kindred spirits Attie and I. Behind her odd looking behaviour is no malice nor sadistic lean, on the contrary. She wants to understand and help. She wants to see the greater causes of organisms' failures to figure out better and earlier the solutions.

She will be a great medical doctor someday. I thought so once more just the other day.

Now I'm just glad we're all alive.

Tomorrow...

I can see inside her eye we will feel the same way. Something ever so weird happened outside.

We begin wanting to figure out what that was before we pass. We will seek to understand why.

And we will look for the cure if there is one.

Together for ever... Until we bring some good and find our remaining days worthwhile.

But for now we all collapsed on the couch and finally were allowed to let some time slip by.

~

Even for Aïssheat, realizing the extent and implications of what was happening to us was a challenge. The riddle was complex.

Our instinct to return to each other had prevailed, and now we relaxed. We melted partially in that soothing satisfaction.

More than a day or a few passed in our daze, before any of us managed to really wake up and refocus on our immediate survival. The struggle was immense.

Aïssheat stood first, moved, and checked on us and our vitals, as well as herself. We were all somewhat zombified, numb in most aspects, but refusing to die. What vital signs she found, they were not normal.

Someone's phone finally received a message, before the damaged communication network fully fell offline.

It read that mom and dad would never manage to return.

Our mother had lost him, and then her mind apparently.

She just said she believed in us, and then fell into an incomprehensible prayer that didn't yet made sense for any of us. She's not going to make it home alive. That much we all admitted silently.

Although as time would pass and our minds continue to change, as our experiencing of the new world would evolve, some of her last words would grow more meaningful.

She believed in us, like our grandmother before. They reminded us again to stick together like a bundle of arrows, and to work together for the greater good...

As if even now, as she gave up on sanity or returning, as the world and humanity were going awry and fast, as our bodies decayed faster than our minds; she still believed in our success...

It all made us smile, as we sat there, losing droplets of liquefied skin into the couch, where we lazed and forgot to feed for days on end.

Mother still believes we will live long enough to bring some good onward.

That is a little amusing today, as we're almost letting ourselves slip into a lull that knows only one likely end.

Aïssheat brings us some water to rehydrate us, and herself. It uses her entire strength to water us.

Then Aïssheas manages to leave the couch stained with her own blood and epidermis, beyond the shape of her bosom. Her trousers and skirt have fused with her flesh now.

It's odd, but I don't feel that worried about morbidity anymore. Our individual health parameters are getting foggy and too foreign ideas. It's drifting.

I open my mouth to the sludge Aïssheas managed to cook for us. I feel the broth sliding down my twitching throat. I rediscover the sensation of the heat then radiating and diffusing away from my stomach. I almost forgot that.

We're helping each other staying alive, and taking turn helping each other. I took the next shift to help us keep together and sustain ourselves. Unlike them I could no longer talk however.

My words leave me, but my emotions and ideas still reach them slightly.

Aïssheat mostly hears me and nods. The younger two are following a little less from their personal volition, but they still mean well also.

It takes us countless days of daydream and daze, to wait for the end of the downfall outside and survival inside.

We continued to help each other while one was feeling a little better and the others had a part slipping down. We kept gathering ourselves back.

Preventing our liquefaction in all sorts of ways, mostly improvised.

And still keeping some of our mind on the prospects of our family promise, and to live long enough to learn about the world again. That dream is distant but still bright for me and them.

We've let the outside world burn and cool down, or rot, fairly unable to prevent any of it anyway.

We've watched through our windows and growing cracks in the walls how a few monstrous creatures chased down the few remaining survivors before dying themselves, in apparent structural collapses. Unfit spontaneous machines. Animated purposes without sustainable organisations... Golems more than animals perhaps.

We waited in that palliative situation for we couldn't muster much more yet anyway. But as we successfully survived together, alleviating the worst symptoms of our loss of humanity from each other, the world kept on burning.

The collapse in town had been sharp. The ashes were already cooling down along with the slimmest news from the last telecommunications still available to probe the rest of the world.

As we had begun to surmise, it appeared far more than localised to our continental peninsula. Every hint and clue was pointing at something sudden and wide, and not reversible in such little time.

Something very possibly global and not exactly biological in root.

Our thoughts were beginning to permeate one another when we kept our heads in contact long enough. Tiny nerves grew between our foreheads almost instantly through the sweat, connecting them.

Things continued to change. Biology continued to test the new waters opened apparently on that sad day.

We kept floating, trying to pry, survive and maybe just slightly, to adapt and adjust to our new reality.

And it worked.

Slowly, albeit our bodies grew more deformed and unsteady, we gradually built back enough stability in our organisms to consider leaving this couch together. So before either of us eventually died on it.

And then, this was around that day, that we saw something odd in the sky.

The reminder that even if it had been the end of times, that didn't mean the heat death of the universe had arrived.

There must have been far, far less witnesses to that quiet sight, than they were to the white day. But perhaps the white day had been foreboding through this new dawn this specific floating sight.

~