I have a tendency to wear my mind on my sleeve

Koa

I'm the king, and you're the queen
and we will stumble through heaven

It isn't just criminals who have made use of the tangled root system. Children, too, scramble through the dangerous anti-canopy, searching for secret passages and hidden coves to claim as clubhouse or hideaway, challenging each other to go a little deeper, terror and exhilaration equal in their young hearts.

Or so it had been for Koa and Noe, not so long ago. These days it's rare to find the Dragoon in the tangled system,  but at one point he'd basically lived here. In the months after their mother died, when the world had surged into the sky and their father had fallen into despair, it was here the children made their refuge.

So of course it here he returns when he needs to heal.

He's not alone. Pipsqueak is with him, only permitted to explore the places where they painstakingly put in floor.  And their mother is here, too, or the ghost of her at least, present in the scarves that drape the makeshift walls, in the pictures hung from trailing vines, in the long-forgotten stuffed dragon that Koa now holds before him, a sigh on his lips. He's grown too tall for the hideout, has to curl and duck to fit, but there's something comforting in this precious space that blocks out the rest of the world.

"Life's a bitch," Koa tells the dragon, while Pipsqueak tries to chew on its worn out tail. "Adulthood sucks. How'd you make it look so easy, Ma?" Sighing heavily, he leans back into the trees and fabric, fingers running over Pipsqueak, bloodshot eyes drifting shut.

If there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes
I know you wanna go to heaven, but you're human tonight

{/code}