Rose Blumen ~ Exogignesthai

588. Histoire rose, 5

(Rose)I put both my feet on the ground.

My regrown one has translucent colours still, but it all seems to work fine. My toes move. Nails roots begin to appear.

I leave the cane I’ve been using beside and start walking, in a slightly uneven manner.

Nokaranlık looks happy seeing me walking. She laughs at me.

Her friend Nue mimics her gestures through its puppet of flesh and bones.

The corpse-looking body is actually something more akin to my new leg than the one I lost, it’s fleshier now than when we first encountered it.

Nokarlık fed it and Nue reworks it when she’s gone. The body has now more flesh to stand and move.

More subtle and more complex engineering is done. Nok has been teaching it and Nue to move fingers accurately.

Nu, despite being a kind of slug, managed to learn and use the concept of hands and fingers with good results.

Her puppet looks a little more like an artificial human now.

Though the skull is still mostly hollow, and where Nue hides.

As evening comes, time for bed returns. And Nokarlık developed a new habit since I was convalescent.

Lying next to me and listening to my voice until she falls asleep.

Meanwhile, Nue in her marionette walks away to her own home to rest, repair details and improve her work.

I’m unsecure still, about telling bed time stories to my child. But that’s the easiest of fears to overcome with a smile.

R – I’m trying to think back about the tale of where it all began...

~

Where, when it all began. Running back even further along the thread of time I live upon.

Far, far back in time. The oldest tale, before even the Ottoman doll.

Bleue thought of that time, when the ribbon changed hands from West and East, and sparked something new. After one man fell in the dirt or sand, and another one picked it up.

So it could have been, even further back, how that ribbon was made? It’s really just poetry at this level, not history of course.

But this is another fantasy over where it would all have started.

~

Long before the empire. Where... Let’s say France. In the rich southern regions of France. One man would soon set way over his last and longest journey, towards the oriental kingdoms, and their struggles.

I don’t think it was their beginning.

No, it was more toward the end. At the time of the great Vizier so, whom would soon rule over Egypt and Syria.

That man beginning his journey would lose his life out there, but what happened before makes me wonder.

A fair woman praying for his sake gave him that ribbon he carried.

He owned an old sword but no jewels.

What he believed in, and what he wished to accomplish are lost to time.

But I manage to envision the worry over his wife’s face.

Journey’s back then did not last months but years. And love was slithering through different challenges to survive. Love was a very different thing back then.

Faith and pragmatism ruled over the minds and bodies far more than they later could for the simple people.

In a time of uncertainty over their future together, she could not abandon him. Although something, a wounded leg perhaps, made it impossible for her to join him in pilgrimage.

She could not follow, but she could not let go of her love just yet.

And without anything left to offer that would linger longer than a kiss, what she gave him was that piece of cloth.

Better tongues than hers would think of poetry, or romantic and chivalrous stories to go along, but she wasn’t gifted in such a way, not at all.

She couldn’t find the right words to accompany her sincere gesture.

She tied her cut piece of clothing like a ribbon around his wrist without a word, and let him go into the unknown.

It was her glimmer of light by the sea, all she could afford, to give him a little chance to return safely to her someday.

Had he been leaving the town by sea, she would have gone to the shore on every morning to see him hopefully return, for all her remaining days.

But their town was closer to the mountains, with a long road through the fields to get in. She saw him disappear behind the most distant trees of the landscape.

And then she lived alone for all the years to come.

While her ribbon became something she could never be.

Hard to put into words as well.

~

My improvised tale without clear aim faded away, soon after my daughter found her sleep next to me.

I caress her sleeping head gently, a little touched by her attitude, cutely childish and affectionate.

Sleep tight my beloved. I’m here.

The evanescent dream of the lady I managed to envision fades away from my mind. Her nostalgia lingers a little longer though.

I stay there by your side a while longer, enjoying this quiet bliss.

My sweet Nokarlık slowly grows. Although not visibly physically.

She can speak a few chosen words now.

Good thing Blume and I often chat together to help its learning.

She calls me Ros. I kind of like it. It sounds red.

And she calls Blume as Blu... Which kinda’ prickles my heart here and there.

She completely holds my heart and doesn’t even know it yet.

But after all these years, and because Nok is there with her smile, I’m enjoying it too.

Everything is warmer with you, even the past you remind me off sometimes.

The present day, moments such as now where you fall asleep listening to my soften voice are even better.

I look forward to tomorrow with you.

~