Scents and colors

I remember from up there you could see the trees. They were thin and tall, very tall, much taller than my friends and I. The buildings behind them, I knew, were much taller, but it was fun to imagine that from this perspective the big creatures lived in smaller houses than trees.

You could also see the pond and that curious little mound of rocks emerging from it, where the ducks would sometimes spend entire days observing us, and everything around them, as they always do. Ducks always see many more things than we think they do. From there, day after day, we always saw all kinds of creatures, sometimes using those funny two-wheeled things to move; and sometimes in the company of other creatures, very different from themselves but with whom they seemed to get along.

Ever since we received the sun for the first time, the trees have told us what will be our destination. The Fall doesn’t sound that bad, though some of us are terrified of it. It is not the same to land where the snails go than if you do where the creatures pass. I’ve seen some snails going there at times, it rarely ends well. They explained to us that it was necessary for us to Fall if we wanted our home to continue living itself.

However, while we were up there we were extremely useful. I loved when the tiny creatures came by, flying to visit us. The trees said that it was an important part of their job, that they needed to do it in order for Everything to work. Some of us didn’t like it. They thought the flying creatures were too heavy for them; while others felt they took too much from them. The trees told us that Before, there used to be many more of these tiny creatures, but now, with each passing spring, there were fewer and fewer. Therefore, we should’ve welcomed them when they came, even if we didn’t like them. Everything was pleasant and beautiful up there, which is why I tried not to think about the Fall too much, though  sometimes I couldn’t help it. We knew what would happen after. We would just Decay. It was our destiny.

I fell on one of the final days of the third month. It didn’t hurt, no one said anything, not even the trees. I wasn’t expecting them to. I was a bit sad but not scared. I could be part of the trees now, of the soil and the earth. But I would miss my friends regardless. 

The sun was beginning to set the first time I saw it from the ground. I knew I would not see it many more times after that, so I tried to remember as many things as I could. How good it felt on us. How we welcomed it, more than any creature; only as much as water. How its colors changed, from every shade of orange and red to blue. I was glad that day the sun wasn’t as shy as it normally was, hiding behind the clouds. I didn’t exactly know how it would come to be,  my melting with the trees. I didn’t want to know either. I just wanted to feel as much as I could until that moment.

Although I didn’t know what came next, I knew I wasn’t supposed to feel anything soft lifting me from the ground. Before I could process what was happening, I saw that I was almost as high as up there, thanks to one of the creatures that sometimes went past us. They looked at me, as if examining my worth in comparison with  their time. Now I was scared. I hadn't known I would prefer the Fall and waiting on the ground to anything else. While up there, I didn’t think much of the walking creatures. Generally, they didn’t pay attention to us, and when they did they just smelled us and continued on their way. I had heard stories, carried by the tiny creatures, that sometimes they would take us from our homes before we Fell ourselves. They also said that they were to blame for the fact that there were less flying creatures like them now.

I tried to reassure myself that, whatever happened, the Decay would come soon. No creature could really hurt me. When I thought they were going to put me down on the ground again, I was shoved into one of those bags some of them carried. I landed between strange things, big objects with hard fronts and backs, filled with white sheets. They smelled a bit like trees. I wondered if that happened when they Decayed. The creature started to walk, and in that moment I realized I would never see home again. A sudden wave of deep sadness hit me. I assumed I would at least Decay  while getting to look at my friends from below; some of them might even join me eventually, where we would melt together. But now I was being carried to who knows where.

When the creature took me out of the bag I realized we were inside one of the buildings. The creature seemed to have put many things in it to make it look better.The walls were made out of these rather unsightly grey bricks, not as pretty as the rocks near the trees. They lay me down on a flat surface, which seemed to have the same patterns as the trees. I wondered how many things these creatures owed to the trees. I observed them drawing one of the sheets I had seen before, from an object similar to that inside the bag. They started to paint intricate and strange symbols on them. I supposed that was the way they communicated, unnecessarily complicated in my opinion. They should try and understand the rest of the creatures; my friends and I didn’t need drawings for that. When they finished, they grabbed another one of those sheets, but this one was shaped like a bag and they placed the sheet they had been drawing on in it. Then they did the same to me.

After that, they closed that bag of paper, and I could feel they were drawing more onto it. At that point, I had stopped wondering what would come next. I simply didn’t care anymore. I wasn’t sad about my friends, or angry at the creature for taking me away from home. One way or another, I had already Fallen. Whatever came after that was not that important. They lifted the small bag, with me and the sheet of paper inside and I perceived we were now out on the street again. The bag moved along with their arms and  they  walked towards somewhere I could not see. Not long after that, they stopped and, after holding the bag for a few seconds–apparently doing nothing–they dropped it inside something I still wouldn’t know how to define. Even through the thickness of the bag, I could feel that the sun had no way of entering this place. Despite that, I also knew that the bag I was inside of was not the only one, as I hadn’t fallen for that long. I guessed I must have been on top of a mountain of those bags, not dissimilar to the mound of rocks by the pond. I don’t know how much time I spent there, but I could start to feel the Decay already. It wasn’t exactly an unpleasant sensation, only a new one.

Sometime after that, I started to feel all the bags around me move at the same time, including the one I was in. They all slipped towards the same direction and landed in a way in which I was no longer at the peak, but somewhere in the middle, with more bags over and underneath my own. All that happened after that was just confusion. I guessed at that moment that I did what the tiny flying creatures called “travelling”. I was now certain I was very far from home.

Some days after that, when I was almost at the point which I could only describe as the last part of the Decay, when I was losing my colors and my scent, I was still inside the bag when another creature, I knew different from the one who had first taken me, put me in another place. Similar to the one I had been in days before. This time, less time passed before someone lifted my bag again. When they opened it, I could see that they were also one of those creatures, but this one seemed different. Their fingers were bonier, slower. They took a lot of care when opening the bag and in taking out the sheet of paper with the drawings from the other creature. They seemed to examine those drawings for a long time before realizing I was in there too. They took me in their hand and examined me as the other creature had done before, only they were smiling. I had seen that before, I didn’t know why they did it, but I quite liked it.

They put me in the center of another flat surface, made from the same material as their windows, from where I could see other flowers, but they were different from me. In this place everything was different. The sun shone much brighter and people moved more slowly. Their skin was also much more wrinkled, as if they were also approaching their Decay. They even referred to me with different sounds than the people back home. Back there, when they approached us, they used to say “flower”. Here, this creature called me “flor”.
I thought that sounded better.

Even after I had Withered completely, after the last stage of my Decay, when my petals were no longer pink and red but brown and pale, I knew I was still on the same place the old creature had placed me. I guessed then that had always been my real destination. One I couldn’t help but like.