#jesus.........

it felt better and better to get away. each year, it seemed, the grounds of the academy closed in further. its walls loomed higher. each year, the strategies she had developed consciously or unconsciously to cope numbered greater, and their efficacy continued to dwindle. it became difficult to keep her mind focused during her morning runs and stretches; she caught it drifting away more and more during drills, classes, study halls, stable duties. work was no longer a comfortable respite, but a heated cage for her troubles, busy hands breeding an even busier mind circling the same paths with no resolution.

so far, she’s found breaking past garreg mach’s borders to be one of the few things that helped, however temporarily. though she suspected that it too would only be so sustainable a solution, for now she took solace wherever she could find it. no mission or errand was too menial — small monster nests, neighboring village repairs, running correspondences? if she could watch those sandy-grey fortifications peel away far beneath her to the drum of belle’s wings and imagine that her thoughts too could become such a miniscule speck shrouded in a panorama of budding greenery, she’d take it.

albeit even in stories, the castle in the sky crumbles eventually.

frowning, she scans the plateaus below and loosens the grip of her thighs as a signal to prepare for landing. “let’s take a break.” the pegasus snorts as though sensing that this isn’t exactly the reason why she wants to stop here, but eases the rhythm of his wingbeats nonetheless. as they descend through the cold mist of the post-dawn air, caeldori catches the movement of something small that’d blended in previously with its surroundings.

someone’s there?

a lone traveler, or a hunter checking his traps in the morning, are her first guesses, but both are dismissed as the colors and pale raiment of the church come more clearly into view. she lands with curiosity, dust swirling about her ankles as she dismounts.

her eyes widen. she’s seen that— face, before; that hair. “... you’re...” they hadn’t belonged to a storybook character? ( it’s harder and harder to be sure now, sometimes, after the recent events. reality is still like a summer storm: too loud and too quickly gone. ) then something moves in his hands, small and dark. “oh, what... is that?”