Ankyra Sound we walk like there's nothing wrong.

The day was late, almost enough that the sun had completely disappeared from the sky. The last reaches of twilight found the salt-stained child exploring the far edges of the territory's shoreline. Callantha stopped upon the sand and looked out across the ocean with a solemn and wistful gaze.

Her sisters may have seen the ocean as a great and merciful goddess, but to Callantha, it was just another bar in her prison. It wasn't that she hated the culture she'd grown up a part of, nor did she hate her sisters for following it or for working so hard to keep her on the same path. In her heart, she simply knew that it was not the right path for her. At least, not the way everyone else walked it.

It seemed all of her loved ones were content to walk in a perfectly straight line - never wavering, never even looking to the side. Callantha wanted the freedom to look, to misstep, to venture a little to the left or to the right at will. But every time she tried, they pulled her back in line and set her gaze straight ahead. Cal shut her eyes with a soft sigh before she tilted back her muzzle and looked up towards the sky where the moon had just begun to peek down at her. Somewhere a gull was crying in tune with the waves, and not for the first time did the young ward wish that she could be that bird and just fly away.