Note: Mental stretch. Some muscles have atrophied. You'd think it's been a year, or something.

i. upon the precise point of letting go the arrow

Smellerbee always wears shoes in the Tree House, they all do. Splinters.

One night, though, they were on watch by the river, five minutes before the rising sun, when she toed off her shoes and let her feet sink into the slick mud on the bank. He marveled at each tiny nail on her toes. Somewhere between long boy-strides and the large knives, it's easy to forget that Smellerbee is so little.

She sighed, smiled, happy in a way he hadn't seen before.

Her hands gestured to her feet. "I think this is what freedom feels like," she says, resolute.

And then the sun rose.

He's never really been able to pin it down, been able to say exactly where it all started, but if he ever pointed and said, "here" – well, he doesn't think he'd too be too off his mark.