Rose Blumen ~ Exogignesthai 1

(Licht)

Remember me... Remember me.

The pain in my eye...

I remember you, yes.

I remember my name. Light. Licht.

My aging body aches. My power overcomes that easily.

I'm worried about that.

Yet, something matters more.

While my plan against god is maturing, I have something else to do.

A few days ago, I felt a change in the air. A small change in the wind.

A faint smell in the air, far away in the countryside.

A presence, faint, far, but an identity I can recognise still.

Though I never met it on my own, I know what it is in my flesh.

I fly over there in a few deep breathes in. My body turns into thick light as I do, turning into a bolt as the landscape vanishes below me.

I pierce the wind. I get closer.

My heart aches.

I slow down.

I recognise the landscape.

My heart aches.

I recognised those ruins, old, abandoned.

I recognise that hill side, these woods behind, and that field...

I landed in that field, making the herbs and grass lean all around me.

The sounds of summer in this home countryside are pinching my heart tightly. It aches!

You... What are you doing here of all places?

As I walk toward the old house of the Herson family, I witness half of it suddenly crumbling down, in a rather odd rumble. Rose's abandoned family house is collapsing, as a shadow emerges from the ruins. A human silhouette of darkness about ten metres tall.

The thing notices me and steps out from the ruins it just broke down.

Actually, it didn't notice me I think, since it begins to scratch the ground in front of the house with its hands, crouching there.

It digs out some sort of roots and eat them.

My heart aches, but I'm not sure why?

It digs out dry things out from the earth in what was the rear yard, and eats them.

My eye widens as I see what actually is the fourth serving. A skeleton that was buried there. Rose's parents!

I yell at it in a scolding tone.

It sees me, and gobbles the long dry corpse before I could do anything.

Why?

I step toward it as it seems to have spasms, and then sits there on the ground and ruins.

The wide shape speaks.

O - Is that you Rose?

L - No. But I know what you are, Ogre.

O - You look like a decaying Rose.

I twitch. I can feel its pleasure at my anger.

The monster sitting there...

L - What have you done here?

O - Claimed my legacy. It's hard to rebuild oneself after so long...

L - What the hell do you mean by that?

It looks at the sky, then gets on all four as if to vomit. It looks in pain.

It constricts itself and becomes smaller.

Its size reduces to that of a human in a few seconds, and the pitch blackness disappears.

A woman, arms and legs dislocated. Ribs and other supernumerary bones are protruding from its flesh.

The head turns and the body rises. The legs get together and the articulations correct themselves.

Some ribs disappear inside the flesh, others are falling cleanly outside.

She pulls a bone too many out of her hip, that was stuck there like a shard, and drops it. She then burps.

Her face then looks at me and smiles kindly. My heart aches...

L - Blue...

O - Oh, so it is you Rose... How I've missed you.

She makes a step toward me as I bare myself. Are you joking...

She laughs like a maniac.

A naked witch, surrounded by dry bones she even steps over, in front of ruins and dark woods. The picture is interesting actually. But the beast will die.

L - I will obliterate you.

O - Ha ha ha! It's all right. I know you always wanted to kill me. How bad must you have felt thinking I was gone.

L - Don't talk as if you were her in the past.

She points at me and switches from teasing tone to angry.

O - Well don't you? You never were Rose Herson either! Never were, never will be!

L - That... I'm aware of. I'm not her, and her legacy is not mine. Another Rose has it.

O - Well I'm the same as her, the same as you. I claim Blue! Her legacy is mine! I am she in this era, and I now am everything inherited from her in this existence!

L - And you did all that for yourself or for Rose?

She laughs. She cries. I think her identity is still an incomprehensible mess, even to herself.

I make another step further, setting a spell ready between my hands.

L - I'm sorry but I cannot let you continue doing that.

O - Why? I never tried to kill you, did I?

She's right. I'm not quite sure myself. She's not the oblivious monster she once was anymore.

L - You're trying to become human... You stopped thinking of yourself as god...

O - I've discussed the matter too much already with the likes of you. I am human, like her, like you, like you all.

L - What makes you human? Your body? Your skin?

O - Nor mating nor religion. It's doubts. Doubting makes us humans. Gods are all certainties, until they're proven wrong.

I'm a little agape at what I'm hearing from her.

If only I had a way to prove mine wrong...

O - So, are you going to kill me for my offenses, false god?

L - I thought I would when I recognised your identity. But now... If I was a little shocked at first, I can't say I really care about what you did to this place and these cadavers. You're not... Well... You can become a look-alike to Blue for all I care. My motivation and concern lies elsewhere.

O - For a rose, I thought you would care more about her history.

I sit on a big stone next to her. She can't harm me. She could sense it from the first moment that I'm stronger.

She slowly comes to sit next to me. She lost her usual grin.

L - I thought we would fight, and that I would kill you for good. For Rose, and because I can.

O - But now I'm blue. And you're not Rose.

We look at the sky as the sun begins to set over the woods, lost in thoughts, without many clues about what to say or do. She's not that different from me anymore...

L - What will you do now that you've eaten the remnants of Blue's family? Find Rose and try to kill her again? Or act like Blue would?

O - My obsessive hatred is mostly gone. Whether I love or hate her is still ambivalent.

I say nothing but am surprised again. Did I hear that right? She's really become just that?

Has the ominous ogre turned into only that?

I feel a little cheerful and a little murky at the same time. I keep scratching my head and hair.

What will I do now? Nothing here has turned as I expected.

~

My heart aches. It still aches as the minutes or seconds are passing in silence. An anxiety then keeps rising within me.

Next to me, she smiles in a sadistic manner now.

Her face looks more to me like the mask of comedy in theatres rather than the one she's supposed to be.

I think deep down, I'm scared of her and what she's trying to become. I may be stronger, but I'm still very uneasy.

O - You know, I'm grateful to Rose, and I'm grateful to you. She taught me... Invaluable lessons on how to behave. And you, you gave me a kind chance to move on.

My heartbeat is slow and deep. A shiver runs across my spine.

Something is wrong, terribly wrong. She turns a face with that same mask of insane joy toward me.

O - You are such a kind child, Rose...

My mother's words suddenly ring and echo inside my head. Her memories... Where?

The corpses held memories? How is that possible?

My heart stops with a sudden sharp pain.

All I see are her eyes and smile. She has done something...

O - Such a kind Rose... Such a radiant Rose... I despise that light you know? It's the same as hers that you hold, to that despicable flower she carries...

O -Rose Blume taught me to deceive and to conceal both my power and my true intention...

She's holding my head. I can't move. My heart has stopped.

O - And you, my sweet child, thank you for offering me the power to become as god once more...

I should have watched my back, figuratively.

In the other world, she was attacking me, nibbling me, parasitizing me, and I saw nothing coming at me.

O - Being human is actually only about being torn apart between being a beast and being a god. I, I will be god. And you, you're just meat.

She's piercing my skin. She'll kill me right after finishing boasting about her victory over us.

O - What will I do hasn't changed. I will destroy Rose, body and soul, until she becomes like me, until she loves me. What better persona to do this than the face she loved?

Twisted. It doesn't make sense. Illogical... Yet...

Yet...

She's so smug. She's so vain.

Why?

Certainty doesn't make you god, it only makes you blind to your weaknesses, and to the fact that you're wrong.

Sorry Ogre. I could have let you live.

I clench my teeth and my light suddenly explodes everything around me.

~

Fire, light, darkness, a rain of embers and sparks. Dust is flying around.

Me floating above the ruins. An Ogre reduced to its primal darker self, pushed back a little further and threatened.

Its image of Blue is gone, it returned to its usual shape of a giant without weight.

I step foo there again, although glowing now.

Ogre misjudged me, as much as I misjudge her while listening to her lies.

But now the veil between us is ripen, to shreds.

Ogre will die for good and for ever between my hands.

She understands that it's the end, and tries to attack me, then to flee, all in vain. I catch her.

Her leaching of my power wasn't sufficient.

I have far more. I release it. My light brings the brightest day to the land, erasing all shadows in sight.

Between my hands, her shape is collapsing, screaming and vanishing.

I'm burning it alive, turning all of her into entropy...

Ogre screams in agony. I'm not stopping. I had the shadow of a doubt before, she noticed and played it well. She played it very well.

Yet she lost, and it's over.

I consume Ogre in this world, I pursue her in the other, turning her into metaphorical dust even out there...

When my burning light recedes, night has fallen, the ruins and the woods have burnt, and nothing almost remain to prove that this being called Ogre once was.

I breathe.

My heart feels much better. I feel lighter. I sigh in a smile.

I'm free. And Rose will be safer.

In the other world, I recovered a part of Ogre that was peculiar.

A ruin. Something she was trying to build. A puzzle with more pieces missing than pieces assembled already.

It was her attempt at replicating Blue's persona.

I'll keep that with me.

It could find a purpose someday.

~