Rose Blumen ~

(Aïsshean)

We eat. What we could find. We digest it less and less.

Ahhie vomited most of his meal back, not long after losing an arm to gangrene. Poor Ahhie.

Our cute brother is but a lonely shade of his former self now. He's growing smaller and weaker every day.

We averted our gazes from the lost limb that just fell along the way, and we kept walking, away from the sights of apocalypse all over the city.

We stumbled repeatedly as our feet were insecure, but made it out of the urban landscape. The sights of biological anomalies were then replaced with more meteorological or physical anomalies.

Under harsher sun as the air finally felt lighter. We left the warm basin of our town and headed north west, before the cloud would pass over us.

Away from the city warmth, all felt sharper, a little more raw, more painful and bright.

In the wakes of our fleeting destiny approaching, I could feel its omens scattering by.

I could hear echoes of our mother's words carried inside.

Wherever she is now, some of her will continues to shine.

We could see faces changing in the sky, hearing ourselves promising to support each other over and over again.

We could hear our inner voices echoing our fears and dreams between each other's heads.

We felt the growing turmoil and uncertainty between us, loosely balanced by our inherited confidence.

I still pulled them onward, feeling that spilling light coursing through my mind.

What flowed from that source of a kind, was intoxicating to my intelligence.

Calling me like a cry for help, an illusion born from the songs of winds and changes it carried.

The sensation flooding the land and coursing through us as if we were hollow or absent, it fell from that shell up there like music, vibrating through everything, mirroring and repeating our thoughts and sorrow.

I wasn't certain of the nature of the thing we were after, confused with its emanations and repetitions.

But something changing was shining out there, and like a prism before the sun, changing the light reaching everything.

The light changing anomaly slowly drifted toward us as I tried to make us adjust our walk to match its pace.

I wanted to reach that. The reason, the repetition of time, as it continued to irradiate badly my head from even inside.

We were drawn, and it felt agonising to see it fly over our heads.

As we struggled to keep pace, the thing flew over us, eclipsing momentarily the sun. It felt agonising.

We couldn't catch that bird nor fly to heavens after it, no matter how much and high we raised our hands or tried to jump. It wouldn't do to reach it.

Our bodies continued to twist painfully under these stresses.

And as the pain of failing to reach this castle became true to us, we opened ourselves to the painful next chapter.

There wouldn't be satisfaction nor relief now that we had witnessed the end and its floating corpse.

We didn't catch it. And now we were struggling to breathe in a hostile desert.

It flew toward holier lands as if nothing before and below mattered.

Our bodies suffered, far beyond the normal challenges of human growth and real life before.

It was a chance lost, now that the odd stalactites of rocks were going blurrier and away from us.

With all our poor expectancies to live on much further, we missed it.

And all that lied ahead onward was an even sharper trial for the four of us. An endless road, along the inhospitable desert, and ruins of older lands that had fallen, now stretching for ever.

~

They still believed in my foresight's rightfulness.

That within that invading and spilling omen, lied the origin of our situation and our changes faced.

It felt too similar a wind passing through all materials and tissues while shining bright, too similar to the event that changed more than our lives, not to be correlated.

It's at least a clue...

But I believe up there lies the whole reason even.

As - Hic sunt dracones...

We see animals that look like lions on a hunt in the distance.

Big apes fleeing their predators are being pursued and sometimes mauled.

We push forward in a group clinging to one another. Around us we now notice the presence of lions and dragons, and they spook us whether they are real or not.

The monsters are mostly oozing stains, decomposing and liquefying at faster rates than us. But other systems seem to be possible. As we continue to move on and witness more, it becomes increasingly evident.

Some other people survived, far better than us even. And some others... They transformed into beasts far worse than us.

At - It's painful... To control...

We have an odd fate, we're reasonably aware of it, and now we're on our own and out of breath, in the wilder lands of the world. Our parents are no longer around to safely guide us.

Not that at this point they would have been much more adjusted than us.

We're feeling besides ourselves, walking by the rubbles of our dead world, and it's painful to be walking for kilometres in a cemetery that knows no end.

There is a growing sadness raining figuratively in the wake of the flying castle. We are washed in it and growing over it. The majestic illusion also draws many more of us behind, from every kind.

We didn't realise before we hit the road, how many more than us simply also felt drawn by this.

Humans still looking fine.

Monsters now merely decaying beasts on the pry, of all colours and shapes but clearly poor health and constitution overall.

The stronger beasts could rupture a rock or a car in horrific sights, before collapsing into an absurd pool of themselves in the ensuing exhaustion or next fall.

Everything else also struggled to keep balance. Every step and violent impulse was gambling with survival.

We walked along a road not as deserted as we first saw. But clearly as wild and hostile as we feared.

And between the few events of these random hunts or encounters, more beings like us to witness.

People losing grasp of their spirits, dropping willingly or not what made them human prior.

Like spreading diseases, we saw some of them transform. Like a colourful motion picture of artistic interpretation of transformation.

We saw in terror limbs torn off in the distance, and mushrooms growing over other fallen perpetrators.

We also passed by a car with children survivors who began screaming in horror at the sight of us.

We dodged bullets from their father and others, forcing us at times to flee like animals from the people we terrified.

Ah - We're not monsters!

We pulled our innocent brother back under cover before another shot hit the rock. We kept ourselves together, trembling. It's painful to feel so much rejection, but there's nothing we can do.

We're now less human than most, no matter how we feel about it.

Noticing as nightfall drew closer, we even saw many more like us now coming out from their various holes or covers to begin their time travelling as well. It's a new instinctive pilgrimage we're on.

All drawn by the light and the wish to live on. Drawn by the curiosity or animalism. Carried by the streams like fishes or dirt, after this gigantic whale now evading our grasp.

Along natural streams and reactions, there was more to behold and other upcoming encounters. It's a new movement.

We all have the same natural instincts, in this now slightly less natural world.

~