He was running as fast as his twelve-year-old legs could carry him. Racing along the slate and porcelain encrusted tiles that led away from the construction sight, comprising the half finished structure that would someday serve as the new academy, and led to the marble, slate, and limestone bridge which traversed the dry moat separating the new academy and the massive stables for the various animals, from the family compound proper.
Normally, he covered the distance in about five minutes. That of course was under a more sedate walking speed. There was nothing stately or dignified about his current pace, at that very moment he was sprinting full out, striving to cover as much ground as humanly possible, as he needed to achieve the midpoint of the bridge if his shouted warning was going to have any chance of reaching the ears of his intended audience. He could feel the sleeves of his tunic billowing out like sails & his sand colored shawl flowing out behind him like the lapping waters of a stream, but there was no time to relish in the experience. No time to savor the sheer pleasure of running. No time to bask in the caress of the wind against his skin. There was simply no time. He reached the bridge in under a minute, and nearly screamed at the smell that slapped his nostrils. He didn't halt; he didn't even slow, but simply plowed on. He didn't even let out a grown, as his body was too concerned with sucking in as much air as his lungs could hold. If Athazara's bellows were living things, then he could empathize with them, when the venerable blacksmith told youthful Elheme to "lean on'em lad." He continued on his mad dash across the connection that stretched crossways the intervening space, where shapes trudged along despite the spikes that would have barred any corporeal form.
Now don't you cry you lovely buck when the wolf's jaws come down,
and you're all out of luck
It was a beautiful bridge he reflected, perceiving it in his dreams in a manner denied him in the waking world. He could have felt the stones through his fingertips & stroked it's surfaces with chords of air; could have counted it's numerous cracks through near constant bombardments of sound; could have incorporated the distinctive scents of stone, and water, and weather into a whole that would have told him far more than the naked eye ever could; but he would have never enjoyed it's distinctness the way he was now. His uncle had complemented on its design, when at the tender eight of seven he had brought the plans, along with the sketches before him; that was back when the compound was being extended to well beyond where it had been when he had been born. He was outside himself, watching his progression underneath the first archway, split down the middle by a white marble pillar in the shape of a waxing moon, the base of which was worked into the floor tiles of the bridge in the indistinct pattern of the moon's form as seen on the bottom of a riverbed. The limestone, along with twice heated and pressed porcelain in varying shapes and sizes completed that riverbed, and shelstone, single heated and only once pressed, along with soap stone and marble served as the water that made up the bridges walls. There were even small bits of foam at the top. An observant and critical would notice that the wave-like aspect to the walls was in fact arrow slits that would allow archers to fire down anyone in the moat unharmed. There was supposed to be thick nets of chains at either end of the archways that would allow the house guards to seal off the bridge, but after all this time only one had been added, and that one at the end he had already past beneath, furthest away from the barracks. Even if he was able to rouse sufficient members of the guards, it was unlikely they'd be able to get the thing down in time to keep the other walking dead, those of a more physical character, from flooding the bridge.
