This is the long forgotten light at the end of the world
It felt like an age ago, that she had been running the rooftops of Haulani at night. That time, the sky had lit up with consuming flames, and she had returned home in tears, with burned hands and a broken heart.
While her objective for clambering across the city without actually setting foot on the roads was the same, much was different now. The sun was up, for one. Her dragon had grown, so much so that he didn't fit on her shoulder anymore. He was a shadow in the sky right now, coasting on cool sea breezes without a care in the world. There had been odd tensions streaming through the bond ever since the Greatwood, but today it was a distant thing. Umbra cared nothing for her climbing or the kind of people that might see her, and she had no reason to pick at his occasional excursions off towards the sea, for birds or fish or other morsels. They were at peace - no matter that it was tentative, and likely temporary.
As for Seren, she couldn't quite get her heart behind the tasks she set herself. Not even halfway through her route, she had already begun to cheat. The freerunning became more of an obstacle course, where gravity pulses allowed her to leap from rooftop to water cistern, drifting absent minded over streets where not a soul had a thought to look up and wonder what the heck she was doing up there.
She couldn't have answered them even if she wanted to. Eventually, she came to a stop on a particularly tall jumble of buildings. Warehouses, probably, and apartments; clothes lines and rooftop gardens sprawled beneath her in a myriad of colors. People were going to and fro, talking and shouting, utterly absorbed into their own lives.
Seren felt oddly detached from it all.
While her objective for clambering across the city without actually setting foot on the roads was the same, much was different now. The sun was up, for one. Her dragon had grown, so much so that he didn't fit on her shoulder anymore. He was a shadow in the sky right now, coasting on cool sea breezes without a care in the world. There had been odd tensions streaming through the bond ever since the Greatwood, but today it was a distant thing. Umbra cared nothing for her climbing or the kind of people that might see her, and she had no reason to pick at his occasional excursions off towards the sea, for birds or fish or other morsels. They were at peace - no matter that it was tentative, and likely temporary.
As for Seren, she couldn't quite get her heart behind the tasks she set herself. Not even halfway through her route, she had already begun to cheat. The freerunning became more of an obstacle course, where gravity pulses allowed her to leap from rooftop to water cistern, drifting absent minded over streets where not a soul had a thought to look up and wonder what the heck she was doing up there.
She couldn't have answered them even if she wanted to. Eventually, she came to a stop on a particularly tall jumble of buildings. Warehouses, probably, and apartments; clothes lines and rooftop gardens sprawled beneath her in a myriad of colors. People were going to and fro, talking and shouting, utterly absorbed into their own lives.
Seren felt oddly detached from it all.
Seren
