Chapter Text
Dear Sun,
Everyone always urged me to stop running, to stop pushing myself too far. They thought I’d break, and I believed them. But I learned that to achieve greatness, to soar like an eagle, I couldn’t be drowned by their expectations.
I was comforted by the word ‘expectation’, it implied a certain controlled prediction. I’d let my thoughts take flight and think of my expectations. I had experienced enough to know success wasn’t just a distant sunrise. It was something I could hunt, wings outstretched. It was mine. The sky became my playground. The wind raised me higher.
And with me, my expectations.
I poured myself into my studies, knowledge flooded my mind, discipline forged my body, ambition moved me when my legs wouldn’t. I worked until my intelligence, fitness, and character were unparalleled.
I was the eagle, a tenacious predator. Powerful, precise, preeminent. The sky bent beneath me as I was its master. The wind parted around me and it lifted me higher as if I belonged to the sky.
My wings would cut through the air with rigor and defiance. Rebelling against the weight of the earth like Atlas before me. The sun incandescent against my back, gilding me in gold. It anointed me, recognised me. And the sea below was nothing more than the reflection of my triumph. I was achieving the extraordinary. Man had never dreamed of my conquests. I was above them, flying high in the clouds of success.
But as I flew higher, the world shrunk to a patchwork of earthly colours and soft edges, the ocean transformed, and reflected only darkness. Was that my future?
Even eagles had to return to earth.
But I refused to.
I had reached the pinnacle of all I had ever envisioned. Yet I was only surviving. Maybe I wasn’t flying. Maybe I was just running aimlessly.