Nolan

Runaway The first time Elira saw the horizon catch fire, she thought the sky itself was breaking. The sun bled gold and crimson, spilling over the edges of the mountains, and she felt a pulse inside her chest as if it were calling her by name. She had always felt different in the little town pressed against the fjord. The others laughed easily, worked hard, and carried their days like baskets full of stones. But Elira carried a restlessness she could never explain. At night she dreamed of forests she had never walked, oceans she had never seen, and a warmth she had never known. Every morning she woke with the same ache: I am not meant to stay. One gray afternoon, she slipped barefoot into the forest, the moss damp beneath her feet. She told no one—only the wind, which seemed to lean close to listen. As she wandered, she began to hum a tune that rose unbidden from her chest, as though the trees themselves were pressing the notes into her lungs. The melody was lonely but radiant, a song that seemed to lead her forward. Days blurred into nights. She crossed rivers by moonlight, slept beneath pines, and learned to read the world the way others read books. A crow once circled above her and then darted west—so west she went. When she stumbled, flowers bloomed where her tears fell. When she laughed, the air shimmered. And always, the horizon burned with that same golden fire, pulling her farther, urging her on. At last, one evening, she crested a hill and saw it: a vast sea stretched out before her, breathing silver under the twilight. The air smelled of salt and possibility. For the first time, she did not feel small. She did not feel lost. She always saw a man though….he made her happy…happier than the ocean…happier than the cold moss and the tree vines…