Broken Chains

Walking.

Walking was something so normal that most creatures didn’t even register it as its own activity anymore. Of course, if you went on a walk together with others it was a great way to spend time, and if you went jogging, running, or even hunting, you could do truly tremendous sports. But normal walking? That was often seen as only a means to an end.

That had at least been Puck's subconscious opinion all the time. Now, though, his opinion had changed. When Scarlet had explained a part of his training program to him, Puck had been very skeptical at first. How could he ever tire of normal walking? Well, that was quite easy, actually.

With the difficult terrain, the stupidly heavy backpack, and the fast pace set by Scarlet, Puck had sat in a corner gasping for air only ten minutes after starting the first time around. By now, it wasn’t that bad anymore at least. Having trained for an entire month, Puck had not only gotten stronger, but Scarlet also had started to show him tricks on how to breathe better and how to walk without wasting unnecessary energy.

Each day, Puck learned something new about the simple art of walking, of traveling without spending himself so much that he might die to any random glacier fox after a long day, as Scarlet would often say. But even though the walking in itself was a great task and Puck never felt good enough at it, that was far from everything Scarlet tried to stuff into his head on their daily trips.

Having started to last ever longer, the daily trips took about three hours each day by now, and each time they visited new areas where Puck had never been before. Every day he saw new plants, mushrooms, and animals that inhabited the eternal ice. Seemingly an inexhaustible wellspring of information, Scarlet never stopped telling him new things about the expected behavior and uses of the plants and animals.

Apart from all the animals and plants, Scarlet also taught Puck about the eternal ice they were living in itself. Puck had never questioned what eternal ice was. After all, he had never seen anything else. The whole concept of completely different geological areas that Scarlet told him about mostly went by, over his head.

Integrated into all those lessons about animals, plants and the area though, was something else. By all rights and purposes, Scarlet was a hunter, going out and killing animals in the tunnels nearly every day she didn’t train Puck directly. But even though Scarlet never took Puck to one of her hunts until now, as she told him he wasn’t ready yet, she still felt the need to teach Puck about the relationship between her, him, Gremlins, other enlightened races, plants, animals, and the whole of existence.

Before going on a hunt, Scarlet sat down on the ground for nearly half an hour every time and simply told the world, and her soon-to-be prey, why it was that she would go out and hunt. Never would she kill an animal simply for the sake of it. Never would she trample a plant without having a reason to do so. As per her own words, Scarlet lived by the creed of Mother Nature herself, and even though nature often was ruthless, it was also in an everlasting harmony of giving and taking.

This creed, as Puck had found out the hard way, was not something to joke about.

Today, as Puck walked after Scarlet through the dark tunnels, they left the area Puck knew by now pretty soon, and at the start, Puck often found himself staring at this or that. Never too long, though, as Puck had learned by now that Scarlet would never stop without reason.

By the time they had walked nearly a whole hour, Puck had stopped staring at anything but Scarlet's back as the walk was taking its toll. The tunnels they walked in today went ever upwards, and Puck couldn’t do anything but focus on not falling over and getting enough air.

The leather straps of Puck's bag stung ever harder in his shoulders, and together with his bodily and spiritual exhaustion, it was no wonder that Puck simply let himself fall over when Scarlet called out the divine word:

“Break.”

Knowing that he had only a little time to rest before being expected to give Scarlet his attention again, Puck lay there with closed eyes, taking one deep breath after another, his legs shaking from the strain.

After a while, Puck felt like he was able to focus again, and as such, he opened his eyes and sat up while using his bag as a backrest.

Turning himself a little to look around where they had ended up, Puck found a large cavern with a small river running through the middle and many big ice shards hanging from the ceiling and lying on the ground. Scarlet sat a few feet away from him on a small ice boulder, having put her own bag to the side too. Seeing that Scarlet had learned her head back to look up at the ceiling, Puck followed her gaze to find what she was looking at.

The places they took a break in never were chosen randomly, and Scarlet had something new to show him every time. Upon a closer inspection, the roof of the cavern had many small and big caverns carved into it. Squinting his eyes, Puck thought he could see dark shapes in a few of the caverns.

Questioningly turning his gaze back to Scarlet, he didn’t need to wait long.

“What you see up there are the dens of a hive of ice bats. Normally, bats come from completely different areas, living in places much warmer and without ice. They… They come from the surface…”

Stuttering a little at the end, Scarlet went silent for a moment, and Puck, too, didn’t say anything. Every time Scarlet mentioned the surface, it seemed like she still longed for it with all she had but was restrained to staying here for some unknown reason. As Puck had found out the hard way, it was better to let her be in those moments.

Finding her words again, Scarlet explained more about the bats and how they lived here. Listening to her words attentively, Puck tried to soak up as much knowledge as possible.

While lying there and looking at the ceiling, though, something entirely different crossed his thoughts. These bats were only the second species he learned about that could fly. How did it feel to fly? To be free, unbound by the ground?

And more importantly, how great would it feel if there was no ceiling that limited the height you could rise to?