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character
She scrambled up rock and over loose soil, here, still low down, where the ground wasn't
quite ground, just scree and rock and loose dirt. There was such a slight, but continuous
incline that after no more than fifteen or twenty minutes she found she could turn and see
the ground below spread out below her. Nocht grinned to herself and kept moving up, getting
to where it became more uneven and rockier. Here there were suddenly larger rocks, which
appeared to have come out of nowhere. Small plants and mosses were beginning to grow on
them, taking hold in the nooks and crannies, but if she peered up Nocht could see where
there had obviously been a rockslide recently enough; some of the cliff face had just
crumbled right away. However, it was still quite far away and it posed no danger to her. On
the contrary, she was enjoying scrambling over the rocks and small boulders, finding paths
and jumping from one to the other. She wiped her hand on her thighs, brushing the dirt onto
her grey coat and swiped a hand under her nose. She took a moment out to deal with a
particularly annoying itch in her nostril, avoiding her septum piercing as much as
possible, before setting off again.
By now the incline had become sharper, but Nocht almost didn't notice, concentrating more
on the childish pleasure from jumping from rock to rock than the landscape set out behind
her. It caught her attention when she slipped on a loose pebble and looked backwards in
irritation after she caught herself. She quickly forget her mishap when she noticed the
patchwork map of land beneath her, space she had already crossed. She stood and turned to
behold it in all its glory. It almost didn't look real, more like the maps she had seen in
books than anything else. She took a deep breath and let it out, sighing and feeling a
smile settle over her features. For just a moment Nocht felt at peace, but she quickly
forgot this when she turned to continue ascending the side of the mountain. She idly
wondered how far up she was already and how far she planned on going. Spying a ledge
further up, she decided on pausing there and then re-assessing. Suddenly a russet furred
pup appeared near her ledge, hopping onto a boulder and surveying the land below her.
Without thinking Nocht yelled "Oi!" in a bid to get her fellow climbers attention, smiling
friendly-like and waving slightly.