47th of Fall 510
The sun had descended below the western horizon hours ago, and Keres sat on a small hill near the shoreline staring off into the east, at the sea. The ocean was something Keres couldn't get over. It was beautifully strange in how it seemed to go on forever, like a flat unchanging plane, into the unknown distance. The moon shown down onto the waves and the sand making, which glistened the moonlight back in sparkles and streams as if the moon were dancing with the sea and sand. The feeling of it was invigorating for Keres as he sat watching the show, but he knew that the show would last through the night and be repeated, and he did not want to waste this time he had alone.
Keres stood from where he had been sitting and began to stroll down the beach, away from Sunberth. He walked along for several mints before turning sharply away from the sound of water and the dancing moonlight. In his mind he began reciting the lines over and over as he crouched down nearer to the ground and began to concentrate on moving silently.
Akaija, help guide my foot falls...
Keres paid close attention to the sounds the ground made as he picked up the pace, focusing more on silence than speed. I can be as silent as your nightly embrace. Having now gotten a rhythm to his motions that produced as little sound as he could, he began to concentrate on maintaining that pace while bringing his body nearer to the ground so as to reduce his visible profile. I will be as invisible as your shadowy realm. After a few moments and nearly a hundred feet, he feel himself begin to relax into new rhythm that seemed to balance speed, silence, and a low profile as well as his skills could, but now he was nearing his goal.
He could clearly see his goal as he entered the tree's shadow, very clear and right where he expected it to be. While still at speed, he leapt up with his hands outstretched at the branch and gripped it tightly as the he speed and the weight of his body swung up forward and twisted the branch out of his hands. For a moment, he could feel the delight of being suspended in air; he could see the branches of the canopy above him casting shadows down onto him as he began to drop.
With a loud thud, Keres landed on the ground flat on his back. He law there for several moments trying to regain his ability to breath. There was no pain, he hadn't injured himself, but for some reason, he simply was unable to breath in or out. He rolled over and managed a cough that was quickly followed by gasps before reverting back to his normal breathing over several minutes.
He had certainly seen that going differently. His intention had been to use his momentum to swing himself into the branches of the tree and to do so silently and without disturbing the tree. About the only successful part of what he had managed to do was the fact that he didn't scream when he hit the ground, but he realized that had only been because he had been unable to. Oh well, next time.
For now, he still felt that he should learn about the tree a bit more, so he clumsily attempted to climb it. He reached for a branch and tried to pull himself up, but could not do so. Then he placed a foot on the trunk while trying to pull himself up, and was able to get off the ground with no problem, but when he gripped the next branch it broke as he transferred his weight and he fell back to the ground, landing on his back a second time. Ok, maybe I need to practice falling. I have a felling that I'm going to be doing a lot of that, he thought to himself as he stood back up.
Well, let's try this again. He stood back a ways, then ran at the tree being careful to place his foot on the trunk as if he were going to run up the tree while also leaping and reaching for a branch. He gripped it with both hands, and at length was able to pull himself up and onto the branch where he sat and rested. There, in the lower branches of the tree, he watched the field through the branches, not really concentrating on anything in particular, but letting his mind wander over the events of the past few days.
