You know, it's strange? Normally, from somewhere high up, you… Words aren't the right medium, right? She doesn't want to say "feel powerful," because that's not actually the feeling. Awestruck is close, but… Observant, maybe? Observant, asterisk? Like you can see the whole picture, take it in piecemeal. Render the whole of the human experience, of all the intricacies of market and home down to ants on a playing board, that can be followed by an interested observer a thousand feet above. She dangles off a spar, midway up one of the background orbital elevators, and wonders what she's doing here. Well, you know, beyond the obvious of indulging a whim felt while touching down of "I wanna climb that?" Feeling a pleasant tightness of muscle in the core and arms? Feeling a bit cold and thin of breath, maybe, up in what is still technically atmosphere? The borrowed phone chirps in her pocket, and she sighs. Right. She pulls it out, and marvels again at it. So small, but holding so much. And so, so fragile--capable of being destroyed if anyone, anywhere decides that it's too much. And survive it has, here, for two hundred years. Survived, in a world where, according to the residents of the Terraced Lake, the… burrowers? Old people? Had left behind demons, geists, spirits of the old world. Spirits that-- See, it's not that they don't [i]know[/i] about ELFs, right? They understand the curse of Zeus, laid against the old kind of computer intelligences, laid against the people until they can become-- She dangles by her tail, arms above her head, contemplating the upside-down world above her. She could live here, you know. Couldn't she? Here, alone in the cosmos, are the right kind of people, which as any revolutionary knows are much harder to find than the right kind of government. … Is [i]she[/i] the right kind of people? Is she the kind of person who could… Who could leave well enough alone? Who could… The words "tuck her head in the sand" taste like acid in her throat. Could she just… abandon the crusade, feels like appropriate phrasing? Find a place that makes [i]her[/i] happy, and say "this is enough for me?" It's burned inside her for so long--pushing her forward and on and through every obstacle, regardless of who gets hurt as a result, and stopping before the job is done feels-- Well, it feels hollow. Like the fire has burned her empty, and left her alone in the hole of unfulfilled purpose. She's said so long that she's doing this to help others, right? If she stopped, she'd… What had it all been for, if she stops now? Her phone--well, not her phone, but the phone she's using--chirps again, and she fumbles to check the text without gravity snatching it up and away from her. Small meeting of friends, by the lake. Hmm. She dangles still, for a few moments, considering. It's not the same purpose. Not really. But it's… It's a warmth, if that makes sense. Something to swim towards and wrap herself around. She unwraps herself from the spar, and drops towards the lake below. She won't know until she sits in it for a while, but… It might be enough, after all.