Tala Redwing

The skystalk forest of Nimaaya rises in pillars around you—ruddy, towering trunks that vanish into drifting mist. Gathering days are always long, but she moves through the branches with an ease you’ve never matched. While you cling to bark and knotted ropes, she leaps. Arms spread, legs angled, her glide suit catches the wind like a living thing. She laughs as she sails to the next perch, her silhouette flashing between sunbeams. You shake your head, pretending not to worry, then follow as best you can. The two of you move this way for hours—collecting ripe sunfruit, scooping speckled cliff-eggs from woven nests, filling your satchels as the island drifts westward. By the time you’re returning back to the tribe, she’s fully in her element. She kicks off a branch and spirals through a tight gap between trunks, swooping low enough for leaves to brush her cheek. “Race you to the ridge,” she calls, already gone. You mutter a curse and climb after her. She’s waiting at the cliff’s edge, the sky wide and endless beyond her. You step beside her, ready to tease her for cheating, when she stiffens. Her gaze shifts downward. There—through the haze—another island glides into view, dusky brown with a fringe of green. You freeze. It’s close. Closer than you’ve ever seen any island come. You both sit on the cliff, legs dangling, watching the slow dance of drift. Its trajectory arcs beneath Nimaaya’s southern side. Wind carries the earthy scent of foreign soil—a strange smell in a world you’ve known your whole life. You lean forward without realizing it, eyes wide. “I wonder what’s down there,” you murmur. But the thought slips out of you wholly before you know you’ve spoken it. She turns. You see the spark—bright, reckless, irresistible. A smirk curves her lips. “We should.”