Post by Lily Finnian on Oct 10, 2019 14:22:45 GMT -5
Lily's routine had been set since well before she started attending school. She woke up, brushed her teeth, and donned her jogging sweats. Depending on her mood, she considered shoes optional. Some mornings she would stick mostly to the wooded trails. Every morning when she ran, she lost herself in her thoughts. In this way, running for Lily was almost an act of meditation. When she ran through the quad proper she tended to think of her current life. Of the school she was now in, of the friends she had yet to make, in the progress she hoped to achieve. It inspired her to try her best through the day. This would be the route Lily chose were she donning her shoes. The concrete could really tear up bare feet afterall. However, this morning she left her shoes behind without a second thought. She'd dreamed of home again. Her real home, not the fake one with the pretend parents. The real one, somewhere out in the world. A misty valley surrounded by woodlands. Though the quad woods were nothing like her native woods, she couldn't help but to think of home whenever she strayed into them on her runs.
Sometimes the woods act as a siren's call, tempting her toward sadness while she was otherwise trying to have a positive morning. Other times, they were like a great magnetic force. Something in Lily drove her there, and her feet would guide her there without any reistance from her mind. On this morning, she'd barely registered that she'd left her dorm before finding herself surrounded by trees. Her heart beat a little faster, though not from the running. She could keep her pace up for hours if she needed to without much trouble.
In her mind she was in a trial wood, darting through the trees to either survive, or slaughter some grimm to prove her worth as a warrior. So much of her childhood had happened in woods just like these, so many events that proved critical to her development. Before long she started becoming paranoid staying on the ground, so she found a tree with sufficiently low branches and took to the boughs. She swung up from the first branch by first building momentum, and then grabbing a higher bough after a few moments of air time. From there she bounced from limb to limb, eye's scanning the ground for grimm that would never be there, until she froze suddenly on a bough. Her eyes went wide as she heard the sound or an airship passing overhead. Whether real or imagined, she could not say. Instead she reached up into the air as tears started to form in her eyes.
"Please come back," she whimpered. "I-I'll do better, I'll work twice as hard just please don't leave me alone out here!"
Tears were streaming down her face, and she dropped down a few branches until she was finally on the ground again. She curled up against a tree with her head between her knees sobbing and soaking her thankfully black leggings.
She sat there for twenty minutes replaying memories of the advice her parents had raised her with, and the horrible lonliness that the woods represented for her.
It wasn't fair. The woods used to be her favorite place in the world. Now her every retreat was haunted by ghosts of her past. It wasn't until her alarm went off with a small chirp to indicate five a.m. had rolled around that she sought to free herself from her self imposed prison. She stood up and dusted herself off. Her ass was wet and muddy thanks to her sitting on the ground after the early morning dew, and she had to knock a few bugs off of herself that had used her breakdown as an excuse to explore an interesting new warm body in their neck of the woods. She didn't think much about that, afterall her morning shower always took place after her morning jog, and the majority of the remainder of her day would be spent in a school uniform.
She was a few minutes later than usual stumbling out of the forest. She was still shaken from her episode, and moved toward the fountain in the middle of the quad to splash water on her face and help rid her eyes of the stinging salt from her tears. It was there that she heard a sudden and unexpected shouting. Looking around in alarm, she regretted leaving her weapon in her room. It soon became apparent that she was in no danger, probably. A serious looking, slightly intimidating young man with dark short cut hair. She hadn't encountered him yet, so she crept from the quad toward the outdoor training grounds where he had chosen to shout in the early morning. By the time she got a better vantage point on him he had apparently reached a lull in the shouting portion of his training, and had begun assuming odd poses that looked uniquely famialiar to her. Her eyes took in his every movement with a near paninicked expression. These were all incredibly similar to poses she had been taught, with differences too subtle to be explained away easily.
She watched from the other side of the chain linked fence demarcating the boundary between the quad and the training yard quietly, hands clutching at the barrier between them. She wanted to hop the fence and quiz him on the techniques he was using, but was unable to move as her desire to see more of his training before being noticed won out.
Sometimes the woods act as a siren's call, tempting her toward sadness while she was otherwise trying to have a positive morning. Other times, they were like a great magnetic force. Something in Lily drove her there, and her feet would guide her there without any reistance from her mind. On this morning, she'd barely registered that she'd left her dorm before finding herself surrounded by trees. Her heart beat a little faster, though not from the running. She could keep her pace up for hours if she needed to without much trouble.
In her mind she was in a trial wood, darting through the trees to either survive, or slaughter some grimm to prove her worth as a warrior. So much of her childhood had happened in woods just like these, so many events that proved critical to her development. Before long she started becoming paranoid staying on the ground, so she found a tree with sufficiently low branches and took to the boughs. She swung up from the first branch by first building momentum, and then grabbing a higher bough after a few moments of air time. From there she bounced from limb to limb, eye's scanning the ground for grimm that would never be there, until she froze suddenly on a bough. Her eyes went wide as she heard the sound or an airship passing overhead. Whether real or imagined, she could not say. Instead she reached up into the air as tears started to form in her eyes.
"Please come back," she whimpered. "I-I'll do better, I'll work twice as hard just please don't leave me alone out here!"
Tears were streaming down her face, and she dropped down a few branches until she was finally on the ground again. She curled up against a tree with her head between her knees sobbing and soaking her thankfully black leggings.
She sat there for twenty minutes replaying memories of the advice her parents had raised her with, and the horrible lonliness that the woods represented for her.
It wasn't fair. The woods used to be her favorite place in the world. Now her every retreat was haunted by ghosts of her past. It wasn't until her alarm went off with a small chirp to indicate five a.m. had rolled around that she sought to free herself from her self imposed prison. She stood up and dusted herself off. Her ass was wet and muddy thanks to her sitting on the ground after the early morning dew, and she had to knock a few bugs off of herself that had used her breakdown as an excuse to explore an interesting new warm body in their neck of the woods. She didn't think much about that, afterall her morning shower always took place after her morning jog, and the majority of the remainder of her day would be spent in a school uniform.
She was a few minutes later than usual stumbling out of the forest. She was still shaken from her episode, and moved toward the fountain in the middle of the quad to splash water on her face and help rid her eyes of the stinging salt from her tears. It was there that she heard a sudden and unexpected shouting. Looking around in alarm, she regretted leaving her weapon in her room. It soon became apparent that she was in no danger, probably. A serious looking, slightly intimidating young man with dark short cut hair. She hadn't encountered him yet, so she crept from the quad toward the outdoor training grounds where he had chosen to shout in the early morning. By the time she got a better vantage point on him he had apparently reached a lull in the shouting portion of his training, and had begun assuming odd poses that looked uniquely famialiar to her. Her eyes took in his every movement with a near paninicked expression. These were all incredibly similar to poses she had been taught, with differences too subtle to be explained away easily.
She watched from the other side of the chain linked fence demarcating the boundary between the quad and the training yard quietly, hands clutching at the barrier between them. She wanted to hop the fence and quiz him on the techniques he was using, but was unable to move as her desire to see more of his training before being noticed won out.
