The night guards no longer tried to stop him when he asked to leave the village. They just opened the gate and let him out. Once he passed underneath Veliaf’s wall, Balear took off at a jog to warm up. It felt good to work his body. As his muscles adjusted to the motion, he sped up until he was sprinting as fast as he could. He then slowed to a more manageable pace and held it for an hour, running east from Veliaf. By the time he reached his destination, the first peaks of sun had appeared on the horizon. They cheered him. The past three days had been dreary with a maddening drizzle that couldn’t be called rain yet had soaked Balear more than a thunderstorm. As he had every day for the past month, Balear started with a long round of stretches. He’d performed these motions thousands of times during his tenure in the Castle Guard, yet each one felt different now. He unconsciously leaned to his right as a counter to the change in his center of weight. Several times he swayed like a raw recruit, and twice in a particularly deep stretch he lost his balance and fell.
