Sea of Flowers

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I…

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I am…

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Awake.

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There is nothing around me. There is nothing. Nothing to feel. There is nothing to experience.

How do I know I exist?

I suppose I’m thinking. That’s a start.

Not much but I’ll take what I can get. Not like my senses can tell me much anyways.

I can’t see. Everything is black. Or white. Or… nothing. Perhaps~

I can’t open my eyes.

I’m not even sure if I have eyes.

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I have ears.

I can hear…

..Music.

Humming.

It’s…

Nice. Almost… echoey. Like singing in a void, nowhere for the sound to go, yet everywhere for it to travel. Going nowhere fast, in a place where nothing is everywhere and everything is nothing.

I listen.

And I can hear–

I stand in a sea of small, white flowers.

They cover the ground like bone-white snowwww~

It’s coming closer, and the concept of distance becomes evident. It is approaching.

They sway in the wind, like white-wash foam.

How they came to be, only I may knowwww~

The sensation of touch, then of motion, becomes clear. I have a body, and on my shoulder, I can feel a tap. Two.

Come, little one. This is no place to fall asleep.

I jolt awake, body filled with a vigor I had never know, yet somehow could always have mustered, sitting upright abruptly from previously laying on my back. My back is not stiff, but my lungs are constricted, my heart pumping blood through my surging veins as my breathing kicks into overdrive, overloading my systems.

Calm down, you. Let me…

A touch.

A blow.

I am lying back on the floor.

And I can remember.

“GAH!” I scream as I scramble to my feet, falling over my heels and face-planting into a bed of soft, cushy material. I clutch at my head as thoughts rush through it, alien yet natural to me. These are, unmistakably, mine. And they were…

A memory of barking an order.

A memory of shooting under heavy fire.

A memory of a map.

A memory of a cliff, a raging battle.

A memory.

A memory.

A–

Calm. Do not be–

“THE WAR!” I scream, hands jittery, eyes hyperfocusing on…

The voice keeps whistling. I stand in a sea of bright, white flowers.

Each one I plant has a story to tellll~

I look around, but there is nobody else standing in the field. All that keeps me company is the gentle breeze, and the endless glow of petals beneath a white, featureless sky.

“Where… where…” I stammer, looking around frantically.

You are safe.

“Where have you taken me?! ARE YOU–”

I am not. You have no more enemies now.

“What–”

You have… moved on.

“I… Moved…”

I gasp, clutching at my head. My hands tear into the skin on my forehead, but no wound develops.

“There’s no way…”

It was peaceful, I will have you know. It was not because of the war, general.

“I…” Looking around, I cannot see anybody. “What of the war?”

Inconsequential.

“It was not–”

Perhaps not to you. But it was inconsequential. You need not worry about it anymore.

“I’m the GENERAL!” I roared in frustration. My heart had no calmed, despite the voice having told me to do so. “I am the GREAT GENERAL ISAZ! The LEADER of the GREAT NORTHERN FRONT!”

It is of no importance to me, and now, no longer to you.

“IT IS MY LEGACY!”

It is what you have shed as you left that behind.

“I DID NOT CHOOSE TO LEAVE IT BEHIND!”

But you are here. And you cannot go back.

“WHY NOT?”

Because.

“BECAUSE WHAT?”

Because.

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…My breath calms.

My fervor evaporates.

I am… calm. There is no use arguing. It will not get me what I want. It will do me no good.

The flowers all beckon to me from the horizon.

Each little sway is a wave to say helloooo~

I look around to the sea. “I… What will become of me?”

I do not know. I am only here to welcome, not to guide.

“Who are you?”

Here.

“What does–”

That is for you to decide. You are here, and I am talking to you. That is all you need to know.

I look around at the ocean of white. There is, after all, nothing to it.

I wouldn’t say that.

“Could you stop being so CONTRADICTING?!” I moaned, clutching at my forehead with a hand. My feet shift around the flowers, but miraculously none of them are crushed, even below my weight.

All that I say is true.

“Who decides that?!”

The truth.

“The TRUTH you speak of is saying that my accomplishments, my efforts, my blood are all worthless!”

They are. There was no point to the war.

“THERE WAS!”

Was there?

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That’s what I thought. In the end, it was just kill after slaughter, massacre for the pain. There was nothing to be gained, and everything to be lost.

“We were saving lives?”

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I took my opportunity. The voice had never been silent. I pressed on. “We were HEROES! The southern traitors were trying to take our land, our territory, all for their twisted, evil schemes! We fought back, and even drove deep into their own home–”

Do you have remorse?

“I–What?”

For the lives that you lost? Any sympathy?

Any regret?

“Of course, what leader would I be if I didn’t? I was willing to lay down my life for the cause, and so was each of my men!”

They laid down their lives. What came of it but snuffed-out stories that could never be told?

“We were fighting for the future!”

You were killing the present, and forgoing the past.

“How would you–”

Look around you.

I did.

See the flowers.

I DID.

Know what they mean.

…What?

Each one is a story to tell. Each one has a secret. Each one had a life to live.

Each one is here for a reason. Each one talked with me before.

None of them are northern, none of them were southern. They are all together, white. Alone. Forever.

And all of them are… here… because of…

My breath grows short. The void grows. The flowers turn towards me, on me. The sky is bone-white. The snow has eyes, and the petals stare at me.

The endless abyss has no end. The nothingness goes on forever. There are too many flowers.

There are too many flowers.

THERE ARE TOO MANY FLOWERS.

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I stand in a sea of bone-white flowers.

Together they join, hiding the dirt beneath.

They stand together, intertwined forever.

Who could have planted them all?