Rose Blumen ~ Exogignesthai 1

(Rose)

The engine is working. The small boat can move.

We loaded everything we could, and sailed away.

In the small ruckus from the boat engine, we're leaving the island.

Just like that, Bleue is looking at the coast of her homeland, slowly receding behind the water of this small sea.

Small sea seen from space certainly. But from here, it's just sea until the horizons.

The boat is not automated at all. So there's a compass stuck to the wheel. Well, it's not a wheel but a set of four levers on the control panel, but it does the same thing.

I pilot the ship as best I can, while Bleue is on the deck, gazing at her vanishing motherland.

Home, maybe not. Country or land where she was born and existed so far, at least.

She's lost in thoughts. She surely ponders about, like I did, our previous life.

They left home. They looked happy on these old pictures.

They grew older together for more than fifty years.

I just realise why Licht looked familiar to me when we met. She looked a lot like me when I was in my fifties or sixties. The previous me grew old, so old.

Will I?

The boat is at sea.

I have no idea how long we will last in this life and world.

Who knows what's to come.

When the land behind us is almost gone, Bleue comes next to me without a word, nor smile. She's feeling weird too. I hold her shoulder. I reassure her. A smile begins to rise anew.

~

Winter caught us of guard suddenly. It got so cold that the droplets of water splashing against the hull freeze against it.

We're freezing inside after just a few hours of sailing.

It feels as if we reached the northern end of the world, where temperature drops. That we hit the arctic circle while sailing south west of England for a while...

I don't think we're that awful at geography, so it must be something else...

The boat is having more and more troubles to move forward toward the coast of France. Because the sea is turning thick like honey, without ice banks yet, but close to it. Scales of ice are appearing.

B - Why is it so cold?

R - S... Pockets of oddities are usually the doing of a being-like-her of some kind...

B - A world covered with daiûas, of all kinds and colours. They spread over the Earth like wildflowers. So what kind of snow mermaid would be vacuuming all heat from the sea around here?

R - It could be anything we wouldn't expect it to be... Be on your guards.

The fingers frozen and painful, Bleue went to get her weapon ready just in case.

Meanwhile, I push the engine of the boat, trying to have us reach the coastline ahead we now can clearly see.

But every metre done gets the air colder, and the water weirder.

I don't see that much ice, but the water is becoming like glue or jelly. It's been a while since I saw any ripple at all on its slithering and glossy surface.

And finally, we get immobilised. The engine only mixes the water it manages to heat, and is unable to push the boat any further over this cold syrup.

We're shivering, and we're stuck. The land is not that far, we can see it in the distance.

But we will suffer to reach it. However it's obvious that waiting for the night is very unlikely to improve our situation; we must go now.

My shoe doesn't go through the surface as I try to stand on it. Good. It's soft and bouncy like an endless mattress, and we can walk on it. I have no idea what can turn water into this.

Bleue pierces it with the edge of an arrow. It still is water. Actually, It's like these sands that can swallow you in a way. If something heavy stands still long enough, it will sink slowly through.

And this weird liquid is cold below the normal freezing temperature of water, so you don't want to sink it it.

Moving fast enough, we can walk on it as if it was solid. So we should hurry.

B - This means... We wouldn't be able to rest even for a minute until we reach the coast on the horizon. If our feet get stuck... We may not be able to escape at all.

R - It may be just ten kilometres away. We have to do it.

We build quickly a large carriage for us to pull therefore allowing us to carry more of our goods. We chose carefully but we mostly try not to lose too much time.

And so we leave the ship stuck in frozen pudding, and begin walking over the almost solidified water.

The icy wind is killing us, for real, but we do our best since we have no other choice but to move forward now.

~

We feel our feet being sucked for their warmth by the ground, at each step we take as we walk.

B - We'll end up... losing toes like those alpinists...

R - If that's just toes... I guess it's alright.

I can't really feel her hand I'm holding anymore. We didn't expect such cold as spring comes.

Hours go by. We just walk in this cold, steadily and silent, enduring the pain and numbness.

The land at the horizon line is closer, but still rather far away.

And then, as we reach slowly and exhausted the land, we encounter something strange.

~

Some darker patch on the side, growing in the distance. Maybe moving?

As if a mouth of water was opening itself slowly.

Our bones hurt and we can't feel our feet nor hands any longer. We're not looking at that. We're too focused on reaching the land before we die, frozen one way or another.

A cold wind is blowing against us, being engulfed in this mouth of a frozen hell.

But Hell was looking at us.

It was hard to breath.

I slipped. I got caught.

Before I could realise what had happened, I was being dragged forcefully inside the frozen water powders, eaten by some parts of the ide, the ocean and avalanche of ice.

I'm being pulled inside frozen bowels and caves.

I might only have time to scream for a second before everything was already dark.

Deep below, about to lose consciousness, in dark caves of this frozen coast.

I fell in a crevice of ice, so deep it led to hell, disappearing in an instant.

Help...

~