First Meeting - How Long Things Hold

Eîra had been climbing the tree every morning for eleven hundred and seventy-five years. She would come out before dawn, when the air still held the cool weight of night, and make her way through the overgrown streets to the intersection. The tree was hers, or perhaps she was its. She knew which branches would hold her weight and which angle of her spine against the bark allowed her to sit for hours without shifting. 

Once, she had remained in the tree for fifty years. She could not recall why she had stayed, or why she had finally climbed down. The years blurred together when there was no one to mark them with; still, she could recall the first time she climbed the tree. The exact date, the temperature, the angle of light; Papa looking up at her from below. His voice came back to her memory, the words exactly as he had spoken them. 

Balance achieved on first attempt... Well done, my dear!

This morning was no different. She found her branch, the one that extended over what had been a street, now split by root systems and volunteer saplings. Foliage screened her from below. She sat with her legs angled to either side, her hands resting on her thighs. 

She looked the way she always did, waiting for nothing in particular, or perhaps waiting for anything, any small change in the pattern of days that had stretched into centuries. She watched as the light shifted through the leaves, the way small creatures moved through the undergrowth. The street curved between collapsed structures, their facades had given way to ivy and the slow rot of centuries. 

Everything was the same as it had always been.

Then, she heard footsteps.

------- 📘 The first part of Chapter One of my story, How Long Things Hold

✅ Updated every Saturday, Chapter Two will be up at midnight EST!

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