Word Count :: 3+
She had a lot of ground to make up. Weeks of sitting and delving into her inner mind had left her a lot more lacklustre-limbed than she'd have liked. It was only sheer luck she hadn't had to use her muscles to run, since she'd been the aggressor in her only fight this year. Even that she had avoided making physical effort with the use of her throwing knives. Walking had been tiring enough, and the winter beckoned now too. She needed to be much further down the path of muscular development than she was. Walking wasn't quick enough, tiring though it was if maintained for days on end; she felt running would make up more ground than anything else. So Caspa was here in Halifax, meandering through the city streets, using the straight lines of roads and measurable blocks as landmarks for her speed. What the humans had painted white lines for, she didn't know, but she found it easy to lope along them in autopilot, a collection of white lines herself with her long milky fur billowing gently.
She did not look to be moving very fast. Her legs were straight and steady pendulums, but the miles were ticking away at a fair rate. The scent trails were intriguing here. No one presence stood out, but many intersected. She saw birds, nesting presumably in rafters and chimneys or atop telegraph poles. The rats seemed to know she was coming, but now and then she saw a scampering scruff of brown. She wondered at the life that survived here, where there were so few plants. Insect-eaters and scavengers, and their predators, likely. She came to the top of a large main street which sloped down away from her, lined with buildings larger than most. The sky was criss-crossed with cables and wires. She slowed and gazed down at the abandoned metropolis, a craze of rectangles and right angles against a much more fluid cloud-brooding sky. She stood, hypnotised by the complexity of the scene. She would look for a minute, to outlive her bemused disbelief, and then she would run down the centre of the avenue, fast enough to blur the surreal and incomprehensible shapes of the cityscape.
Image courtesy of ®DS @ flickr; Table by the Mentors!
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