Ruins-Remnants
I wandered through the overgrown village carefully, watching every corner and darting between shadows. After I was sure that I was alone, I began to properly explore. The village’s houses almost seemed to come second to the thick vines that wrapped around them, as if they were simply built as obstacles for the greenery to climb.
It didn’t take me long to forget about the hallucination completely, writing it off as just that, an illusion which was probably caused by growing paranoia. I walked towards a nearby fountain, noticing a small pedestal with a book rested onto it at an odd angle. I looked around again, making sure that I was alone before flipping it open.
III
Sometimes I wish that I was reborn when they were, this entire community of Icari. It gets so lonely here, it’s just me, the lizard monsters in the Savannah, and the harsh desert wind howling at me, laughing at me for being so unfortunate, but at least I have their books. The Icari believed that flowering azalea trees had unique roots, roots which used to feed off of death in the age of eclipse, when the sun had vanished from the horizon. In order to survive, the trees would cradle the dead with their roots, using corpses to create flowers. In exchange, Icari believed that the deceased would be at peace, becoming one with the tree. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been growing more of them, slowly but surely, so that they cover the entire village. It’s the least I can do for their help, their books are a guide to survival as an Icari, so I owe my life to them. I hope that I can find whichever book tells me what could’ve happened here, and quickly. I doubt that whatever killed them let many escape, anyways, because azaleas never seem to run out of flowers here.