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The people of the village of Porto dell'Alba - at least those who were not currently at sea - looked out of their homes one warm dordian morning to witness something unexpected: there was a girl, running down the single dirt road that passed through one end of their tiny settlement and out the other. A couple made comments and went back to their routines, for people are nothing if not beholden to their norms. 

Had they looked closer, they might've noticed that she was not human, like every single one of them, but eeaiko. Her long dark hair, half-gathered in a ponytail, bounced and flicked behind her as she ran in that slightly awkward way that her people did. Perhaps, they might've wondered why she was in such a hurry and where she might've been going but, if they did, they said nothing and merely remarked on the queerness of it.

Kaureerah wasn't sure why she had decided to run today. She brought with her no lute. She left no message for her friends. The bare earth fell away from her feet in the language of footsteps. The clean, crisp air filled her lungs. The sun warmed her skin and sweat beaded on her forehead She ran past the little fishing village until she came to a low promontory that she had been to a handful of times before. There, she stopped, chest heaving, hair pasted in wet bands to the sides of her face and back of her neck. There she stopped: one small woman away from the sight of all but the gods. In the grassy field around her, butterflies flickered from flower to flower, fragile and beautiful amid the shifting sea of green. In the vast sky above, puffy white clouds drifted languidly in the breeze, impossibly huge and yet gentle amid the serene blue. In the churning sea at her feet, waves rose and crashed upon the rocks, cool and refreshing and welcoming her into their cerulean world.

The people of Porto dell'Alba did not see the girl dive into the water. She swam and darted and caught the fish with her bare hands as she had done in her distant home: a place that she hated, a place that she missed. Soon, she would return to her new home, and she reflected that it was so very different from the original but, in some ways, just the same. She didn't have to go back yet.