Submission (#6681) Approved

Eyre was deep within miasma season now. King stood on one of the sky bridges high within the trees of Ealei and peered down at the docks below. When he first arrived, ships were leaving and arriving in large numbers every day, scrambling to finish their deliveries and travels before miasma season came. Now that time had passed, many ships sat at the docks with no plans to move any time soon. He watched as some elnin were still hard at work on the docks, using this time to repair the docks or the ships before they could be used again.

King wasn’t used to the silence that now fell around Ealei. Not only were many elnin forced to stay within the same area, most deciding to curl up in their homes, but everyone’s pomu had gone into hibernation. Calla, King’s pomu, was no exception.

King closed his eyes to remember the scene. He wasn’t awake when his pomu officially went into a state of hibernation. When he went to bed one night Calla flopped on his pillow next to his head. The next morning, Calla had shifted into their dormant form. King awoke to a hunk of anima crystal that was a bright red shade, matching the color of his own anima. He remembered gently touching the shard, hoping that a simple nudge would push Calla out of their hibernation, but all he managed to do was almost knock the anima shard off his pillow.

The kittom had spent the rest of the morning putting together a lantern for his pomu. He remembered Nova talking excitedly about what she was going to do for her own pomu’s lantern and decided to copy the idea. He had taken several strips of fabric that were red, white, gold, and black, and with some wood and string crafted a pomu lantern. King wasn’t really crafty but it’d be good enough for this year. He had made a silent promise to himself that he’d make a better one next year, or commission someone to make a lantern for Calla-

The sound of something hitting the sky bridge next to his feet brought King back to reality. His eyes snapped open as his body flinched, quickly looking around to see what happened. Sitting next to his feet was a single manaberry that had fallen from a branch high above him. It was so silent around him that a single small berry carried enough sound to startle him. There wasn’t anyone around him, but just in case someone was watching him out their treehouse window nearby, the kittom pretended that he definitely didn’t get startled by anything and casually leaned down to pick the manaberry up.

To be honest, he was surprised there were still wild manaberries. With the harvest season King was sure that all of them had been picked to store away for the coming months or shipped off all around Eyre. He wasn’t familiar with Ealei, so maybe manaberries grew all year round? Or maybe there were a few very high branches that everyone managed to miss?

One way to find out. King turned his head to look behind him. Tied to his tail was the lantern he had crafted, Calla’s anima shard tucked safely inside. He wasn’t sure if Calla could hear him, but in case they could King said “Hey, Calla, want to do some flying?”. There was no movement from Calla’s anima shard aside from the occasional bob that came from a soft gust of wind or King’s tail moving, but the kittom took the silence as a ‘yes’. After all, flying around was one of Calla’s favorite activities ( even if ‘flying around’ meant clinging to King as he soared through the sky, instead of doing the actual flying on their own ).

After tucking the stray manaberry he picked up into his pocket King took off into the sky. The lantern that houses Calla’s anima shard managed to stay in one piece as the kittom flew higher than higher, though King was mindful to not fly as fast as he normally did. Before long both he and the pomu lantern were above the very top of the trees that made up Ealei. From up here he could see everything - the docks, the sky bridges ( that weren’t hidden under branches and leaves ), all the tree houses that were either built into the trees themselves or built on the thicker branches of the trees, the crystal blue waters that surrounded Ealei, the mangroves and tree roots that dipped in and out of the ocean water, and, of course, Ealei’s eldertree. Yggdrasil was quite a sight to behold, and King wasn’t able to appreciate the eldertree’s beauty until he could get a good distance away to take the whole eldertree in.

King wished Calla was here to see this. Well, the pomu was here with him - but not in a way where they could appreciate the sight with him. King stayed in the air for a long time, memorizing where every single thing was in his line of sight. He wanted to remember everything so he could tell Calla all about it when they came out of hibernation. Then, when Calla was ready, they could come back and take in all of Ealei’s beauty at once.

When he saw a nearby branch with manaberries still hanging off of it, King remembered the main reason why he flew up here in the first place. With a grin the kittom flew down towards the branch to look at all the manaberries that hadn’t been picked. For the rest of the day King spent his time looking at manaberries, picking a few, and idly talking to Calla’s anima shard, ready for their hibernation to be over already.