#abudgrows

[99rosesandabellflower]

I can’t stay still.

I feel like something keeps settling in the corner of the room when I do. Just out of sight. But there. Always there. Always watching.

I hate feeling like this.

Maybe I should go anywhere else. Just for now.

[99rosesandabellflower]

This is mostly a dream sequence. While it has unsettling vibes, there is nothing graphic. -Star

The sunlight filters dimly in through the windows, casting faint yellow patterns on the floor. Plumes of dust rise and fall, stirred by her footsteps.

Where am I?

A corridor stretches out, infinitely and impossibly long. Braziers flicker, but the fire does nothing to illuminate it any more than the sun does. The stones that comprise the walls are cracked, and foliage spills in through those holes, despite it taking them further from the light.

Her boots send dull echoes down the hall, far too loud in this empty space. But she is alone, so there is nothing to fear.

The corridor gets darker as she continues to walk. The braziers are further apart and the curtains are drawn tightly over the windows. She’s certain she’s inhaling more dust than she is air by now.

At the end of the corridor is a staircase, spiraling downwards. Since there is nowhere else to go, she descends. Further and further, where the light of the braziers doesn’t reach. Her fingers brush against the wall, trying to keep her anchored.

There’s another corridor at the bottom of the stairs, darker and colder than the one above. She navigates it like she’s been there before, steps never faltering.

She finally reaches a room, glowing silver. The light emits from a tree, stretching endlessly upwards towards a cathedral-like ceiling. Its light is comforting and soft, but there is a sudden, terrible feeling that something is wrong that strikes her.

She reaches out, hesitantly, and touches the tree. The bark beneath her fingers recedes, folding and folding and folding away from her, like curtains or sheets. A hollow space reveals itself within the tree. She is compelled to enter it, so she does.

The tree is massive, and the hollow is also. The light is much dimmer within the tree’s body, but if she squints she can still see… herself. Dangling from her hands, branches holding tightly onto her wrists.

But that’s not me. I’m me, and I’m here.

‘She’ is pale, and skeletal. ‘She’ is unmoving.

‘She’ opens her eyes, revealing-

The quiet hum of medical equipment sounds around Rosemary. Her eyes struggle to adjust to the fluorescent lights. When she moves to sit up, she feels the IV drip attached to her arm.

She looks around. There’s a clock and calendar on the wall.

It’s been a month since she opened her eyes.

[99rosesandabellflower]

Fuck I had to pull over to the side of the road.

Quarter’s with Quinn now. I hope that means it’ll be fine for now.

Fuck. Maybe if I had more information on the king. Maybe if I could’ve given more information to D3rlord. Maybe then…

My head hurts again. I swear I hear someone laughing at me

I should get home.

[99rosesandabellflower]

I’ve been putting it off, but I think I need to find the tree again.

I’m scared of going there-

What if she can’t hear me-

Even if Cyclamens isn’t awake, I want to talk to her.

I’ll probably go after work.

[99rosesandabellflower]

hey! im quinn! i dont think we've met yet tho lmao. would you mind swinging by my house to take quarter and i back to its apartment?

i would but its hard to drive with my cast on :-(

— @takeaquillpill

Hi. No, I don’t believe we have met yet, so nice to meet (or, hear from) you!

I should be able to do that on my lunch break, from ◼️◼️ to ◼️◼️, if that works with you.

[99rosesandabellflower]

Roach has left. It said it needs to find something.

I wish I could help, but my boss is already mad at me for taking a lot of sick days when Cyclamens was here.

I hope it’ll contact me if it does need help though.

[99rosesandabellflower]

Minecraft: encounters with a crab

Star: This is part of the dream sequence.

Green - Rosemary / @99rosesandabellflower Orange - Clara / @crababella

Rosemary sighs, looking at the ramshackle shelter before her. “Well,” she mutters to herself. “It works.” The pile of wood, cobblestone, and dirt before her isn’t pretty, but a hastily made shelter is a shelter nonetheless.

“Let’s see,” she ponders. “Other important things in this game include getting consistent food and mining ores. I suppose harvesting seeds or gathering animals would be easier?”

She moves her blocky limbs around, still unused to the motions, and begins punching at the grass. It feels oddly… cathartic? She felt this before, when gathering wood. Maybe it’s everything that happened, the being trapped in a tree and having branches grow from her, but right now, Rosemary’s never felt more frustration towards nature.

Some blocks away, Clara wanders the forest, mostly looking for flowers and seeds. Occasionally they (break? Cut down? She's not sure) a tree or two. After punching another weed, she hears something. Another person? They look in the direction of the sound, seeing the edges of an... interesting structure through the trees. "Huh." She starts walking towards it.

Rosemary, hearing the sound of someone approaching, whirls around, ready to flick over (she’s still not quite sure how inventories work but, dreams will as dreams do) to holding her sword. “Hi,” she calls out, cautiously.

Clara looks past the trees and towards the person in front of her. "Uh... Hi!" She says, waving as best as she can in this body. "I'm Clara, What's your name?"

“I’m…” she pauses for a moment, wondering how real the person before her is. Would it matter what name she gave? But, what name could she give in place of what she’s always known?

“…Rosemary.” Her mind flicks back to The Keeper, to its facade, its fake rendition of herself—

There was a Clara, wasn’t there? Who asked what sea creature The Keeper liked. Rosemary’s eyes linger on this Clara… is this the same one?

"Oh. Uh, nice to meet you." Clara fidgets with her sleeve. There's no way this person is real, right? probably just a figment of their imagination. Makes sense that something from this whole kintsugi thing would show up. Or maybe it's a weird multiplayer dream, in which case this person is probably a complete stranger.

"You wouldn't happen to be on Tumblr, would you?" She asks. Best to double check.

“I… I am on Tumblr, yes,” Rosemary replies. Too many coincidences. So not only is she somehow in a game in her dream, but people that really, actually exist also seem to be?

“You… wouldn’t happen to be from Ness Anne, would you? Or have interacted with an account called 99rosesandabellflower?”

...Alright. "Yup. I am. Glad you got... un-mimicked?" Cool. So this is just happening now, sure. "I'm guessing you're like... real, then. Weird. Been a weird week, I guess."

"Nice house," Clara added. She pointed vaguely southeast, at the forest they walked through. "Mine is somewhere over there if you need anything. Oh- do you know where, like, a river is? I need water."

“Yeah, I’m… real. I’m pretty sure,” Rosemary replies. “It was… a month. A pretty bad month. At least I was unconscious for most of it.”

“Thanks for the offer,” she says, gazing in the direction of where Clara gestured, making a mental note to mark which way to go later. “There’s a river in the… north-ish direction? I need to get some water to plant some crops, so if you give me a moment to grab my buckets, I can show you the way.”

"Alright, sick! I was planning on making one too." Clara says, smiling and looking around the meadow. She notes a patch of cornflowers on a nearby hill, and figures she'll grab a few on the way back. It became a habit to collect flowers in every minecraft world, he's not sure why. When Rosemary returns, she waves.

The walk is very short. Just back through the small patch of oak trees and over the hill dotted with poppies lies the river, winding lazily along the hill’s other side. Rosemary silently picks her way down the hill, before scooping up some water into her bucket. “There’s a lot of salmon gathered down there,” she notes, pointing a little past the hill towards a pooling area, almost a small lake. “If that interests you at all.”

Clara fills her own bucket with water, and looks down towards the lake. "Yeah, probably smart to grab some extra food." They flip over to see their hunger bar and frown. She should really stop running everywhere.

"Well, I guess I'll see you around." She says, looking back at Rosemary. "Oh, also, do you want one of these flowers?" She glances at her inventory. "I have way too many."

Rosemary hesitates, looking back at the poppies on the hill behind her, before nodding. “Sure, I’ll take some flowers. I… hope I’ll see you around, Clara.”

[99rosesandabellflower]

Minecraft: on poppies

Star: This, once again, a dream sequence. While nothing I write is graphic, there are mentions of verbal and physical abuse towards children. Please take care if you proceed.

This doesn’t feel like sleeping, nor does it feel like being awake. And if it’s a dream, it’s the strangest dream Rosemary’s ever had.

Minecraft isn’t something Rosemary personally knows. She’s seen the videos that led to the creation of her Tumblr, and she’s memorized everything her sibling has told her before, but she’s never sat in front of the screen and played on her own. But here she is, in a blocky body that moves in a mimicry of a human’s.

“This doesn’t feel like a dream,” she thinks. “Not like one I’ve ever had. The background doesn’t blur out into the distance, the colors don’t swirl into each other, and everything feels solid. But…” She turns, surveying the forest she spawned in. “It has to be a dream, because I don’t hear them.” The whispers, of rot and decay and something terrible writhing within the core of the world, are silent. After days of being driven practically insane by the nonstop noise, it’s… oddly quiet now.

How had Andromeda described this game? A sandbox, right. One without a story, or true linear progression. A game built on creating, and surviving, and having few limits. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to learn this game as I go,” Rosemary whispers to herself. “First is… the basis of survival. Create a shelter and a stable food source. From there, all other things can begin.”

She begins to walk, rather aimlessly, through the woods. Oak trees stretch on around her, and she brushes through the grass and occasional dandelions. Eventually, the trees give way to some hills, which she ascends to overlook a river and another patch of woods beyond. She wades across the water, not really sure what she’s looking for.

Story of her life, really.

The hill across the water is littered with red flowers. Poppies, if she recalls correctly. There’s no pattern, it’s just… a lot of them.

Remembrance. Death. Sleep. Peace. What was that one poem? In Flanders Fields?

She pauses. The poppies are bright. No one would look at them and expect to find graves underfoot. She grimaces at the thought, and keeps walking.

She can’t walk far. She’s not sure if the dream itself is refusing to let her move, anchoring her to the flowers, or if she is hesitating. Maybe that’s just how she is— unable to move on.

Rosemary decides to stake claim to small clearing in the woods, just a few rows of trees away from the poppies and the river. She turns away from the poppies, gathering wood from the other direction. “Best not to thin the treeline,” she thinks.

Slowly, she gathers more materials. Wood, dirt, some cobblestone and bits of coal and iron, all piling up in her inventory and scattered chests. She begins stacking blocks, in the semblance of a house. “It can be changed later. It’s my first time in this game. It doesn’t need to be perfect, or even good.” The thoughts loop in her head, a repeated chant. She’s not sure who she’s trying to convince.

—————————

** (Rosemary has an interaction here. It is a separate post, so read that before moving on if you want a linear timeline of her dream) **

—————————

This dream feels like it’s been lasting too long.

Rosemary lives through the repetitive cycle of the days in Minecraft, gathering more materials and expanding her shelter. It doesn’t feel that different from regular life. Just days passing by as she does the same thing over and over again. Not tiring, but not invigorating. She’s alive but… is this what living is?

It’s so quiet. Maybe she should try and find people.

People wouldn’t want her around though. Why would they?

The animals outside are the only noise she hears regularly. They wander their pens, blissfully unaware of anything.

“They flee when you hit them. How cruel, though realistic.”

She never fled. Not even during the worst of it. She stayed, and became a lightning rod for Mother’s anger. Every word that hit her, hurting worse than any belt or hand could. Her skin remained free from welts and bruises, but…

“These animals wouldn’t care if Mother had said those words to them,” Rosemary thinks, watching them wander their pens. “They wouldn’t even know she said them. I wish I hadn’t.” She sighs.

“Being jealous of lines of code in a dream, Xiaomeng?” she mutters to herself. “What new lows can you achieve?” She looks at the pens again. They seem cramped. She should expand them. Even if it doesn’t do anything for creatures that aren’t real.

She keeps working. The shelter looks like a house now, a few rectangles of wood and stone mashed together with a sloping roof and balcony. She can see past the trees. The poppies stand out amongst the green grasses.

Things aren’t entirely… smooth. She runs out of coal frequently, from obsessively lighting more and more torches. The windows are fences for the longest time before she figures out glass requires sand. Some chickens escape, but she lets them run away. She’s not sure why. She keeps moving on.

She doesn’t like seeing the poppies.

She can’t stand the thought of plucking them.

Sometimes, she thinks she sees them. Mother, the Gardeners, The Keeper, they all exist in the shadows cast by the trees. She clears more of them, then feels bad about the empty space. She expands her crop fields to fill it.

“Why am I dreaming about a game I’ve never played?” she wonders, on more than one occasion. “And why are there other people as well?” She looks over in the direction of where Clara indicated she was. “Is there even a purpose to this dream, or this just another sign of how messed up our town is?”

She finds herself by the poppies again. In the real world, the wind would rustle the poppies and the grass would brush against her boots.

Maybe there would be larks singing.

She stands still. She feels tired, having no way to tell how many days have passed in the dream-game.

“I miss you, Cyclamens,” she admits. The words start spilling out, faster than she can contain them. “You were one of the first people I called a friend. Which is probably sad. I don’t know. You called me a friend, so it felt right to call you the same. I don’t have many people I’m close to. You know that. Mother didn’t think anyone was good enough to be my friend. If I wasn’t her daughter, she probably wouldn’t think I was good enough to be her child’s friend.”

“I’m just… I’m so tired. I hate that I feel this way, you know? It feels selfish. I haven’t… done anything, and yet I’m tired. Am I allowed to be?” She groans. The poppies don’t reply.

They really tick her off now.

On a whim, she plucks one. It’s just a poppy.

The name of the item in her inventory is ‘Sleep’.

Rosemary wakes to voices again. They whisper of rotting, corrosion, mold and mildew. It eats away at them, it hurts.

“Yeah,” she whispers, voice raspy and throat dry. “I know. It hurts me too.”