3. Light

Fifty years ago, Fran looked up in a rare moment with her warders' helm in her hands, her eyes free to take in the environment. The Viera did not always have need of sight, especially hunting and patrolling, as their intuitive sense of the Wood was enough for them. Yet Fran couldn't help but think how foolish the notion was. Were they not also given eyes to observe with, to gaze upon the Wood and its beauty? Was it not also blasphemy to deny themselves and the Wood this intimate exchange?

So she looked up, between the outreaching branches of Her flourishing trees, and her dark eyes turned scarlet from drinking the intoxicating sunlight.

"Sister, where do you look so wistfully?" Mjrn asked from beside her.

"The sun betwixt Her boughs," Fran replied. "The way it shines. It reflects the Wood's beauty, does it not?"

Mjrn looked up with her in response, and they both gazed with admiration. A moment truly spiritual – though not in the sense it would have been for other Viera, in Fran's case. Wasn't there sunlight beyond the Wood, too? she wondered.

As if in reply, a small dark shape flitted across the field of gold light, and Fran and Mjrn's ears twitched subconsciously as they sighted it.

"That, there…" Fran said, slightly stunned.

"It is a bird," Mjrn observed.

"Or perhaps a hume-craft, one of those used to travel the skies."

"No, I do not believe so, sister. Jote has once said we are in the place they call jagd, where their crafts cannot fly."

Fran's ears shifted back to stand straight on her head. "Yes, you are right. I should take care to remember these things."

So she went to back to gazing, in a longing way, at the sunlight above. Was it wrong of her to wonder what it was like beyond the Wood, and to wonder what, perhaps, one of these hume-crafts were like, that had the divine power to ply the skies? These were questions only she could answer, and she knew this.