She passes homes, works of art, workshops, alleys, stretches of empty street, river bends, and a great open space that might have been a training yard or a... something. She passes guards, artisans, families, outcasts, officials, salesmen, and a beaten down dog Servitor who stands out almost as much as she does. She passes the smells of fresh plaster, ancient stones, molted scales, wondrously mixed perfumes, ammonia, dust, and so many foods it's impossible to tell if they are mixing by accident or by intent of some genius chef. She passes piles of shattered glass, polished white marble, blackened smoke pits, and a temple so awash with colors that it must be a place where djinn are shattered and broken into service, because what else could they be doing there that looked so beautiful as she crossed beyond its reach?

She passes them in an instant. She passes everything so quickly it barely has time to flirt with all her senses before it disappears into the haze of Behind. She passes beyond the pull of normal gravity and into some strange dreamscape she could never have envisioned if she'd been so lucky to get to live her entire life in the Imperial Palace. And for all of the beauty and life around her, none of it registers as anything other than a fragment of some memory she'll torment herself with in her sleep or drive herself insane trying to call to the surface before the insufferably smug face of Prion Paula comes floating up from the depths to fight it off forever. [i]Chanbarra chan![/i] None of this matters. It's blasphemy to admire the serpent flicking its tongue across the universe in search of Tellus, anyway. What's important is that she passes by these things. What's important is that she is moving. She is running somewhere real to do something that matters.

And she's never done anything like that before. Not under her own power.

Desperation moves her feet faster than she knew they could. The Auspex lights a path of golden footsteps in front of her, and it's the only thing she sees that feels real. It carries her carefully past all of this slow, dreamlike life, her path never once crossing an Azurite or trampling on a creation of the Endless Azure Skies. She's a ghost to them like they are to her, a passing bolt of pure power and nothing more. Faster, faster! You're going to miss it, you dumbass! Haven't you ever run before? Would an Olympian be this slow? Why even [i]have[/i] a father if you can't outrun his stupid drunken playboy ass? Why'd they tell you all the stories and dangle all the records over your head if you weren't supposed to beat him, here and now? Fuck! Move!!

Her mind is empty, except for running. She does not concern herself with plans or weigh her body down worrying about what she's supposed to do [s]if[/s] when she catches up with the [i]Anemoi[/i]. Her muscles sing a song of power and beauty and her body is alive with the feeling of crackling energy pumping through her heart into her muscles, with the fluttering of her abused and lopsided hair against her neck, of sweat wicking out of her fur before it can mat it and mar her more than this journey has already, of the tassels and frills of her beaded dress drumming against her breasts and stomach and thighs. 

She is motion. She is purpose. She is all alone and sprinting out of danger and into greater danger. There is no corner of her mind or her shattered heart optimistic enough to think that a hero's welcome will be waiting for her on [s]her[/s] ship. Likely she will die the second she reaches the end of her path and stops being Motion and starts being XIII again. Or, worse, they'll force the old name back around her neck so it can drag her under the ground and crush her into dust to be drained into some ugly ringed coin. Or maybe this would turn out to be nothing, and she'd simply disappear again. 

Every possibility opening up before her on the golden path sends shivers down her spine. Her feet scream pain as her soles pound against a medley of uneven surfaces and smooth, hard stone roads that twist her about like a helix. Her lungs sting with the effort of being more lightning than girl, and only seem to exist to remind her that she's got to go back to the second from the first sooner rather than later. She passes by a million works of art, determination, and majesty of a civilization too glorious for her to dismiss. She passes them all by. She is going somewhere.

And this might be the happiest she's ever felt.