AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He was right. Many people said he helped cut the economic downturn short by several years. And when the profits began to come in, the public supported his company above all others.
“He was a great man,” Me’ell said. “Some shoes are just too big. Dyrel never achieved the same heights his father did. He didn’t even try.”
I never looked at Dyrel the same way after that. The idea of him losing his father so young, and when he was such a great man, must have been very hard to bear. Especially when he still had so much to learn.
I guessed that was why he turned to alcohol and partying. He’d never really got over his father’s death. All those expectations pressed on him from an early age.
That was why I felt so keenly the failure of learning those damn dance moves.
He’d been failed by so many people around him for many years.
I refused to be one of them.
That was why I had to run away last night.
The shuttlecraft shuddered as we banked and Dyrel brought the shuttlecraft in to land.
“We’re here,” he said.
I yawned, stretched, and then moved through the small space to the passenger seat.
“Wow,” I said.
The scene took my breath away. It was the countryside, only unlike any form of nature I’d seen on Earth. Purple leaves hung in thick bunches on orange branches. Birds fluttered amongst the leaves, their plumage bright yellow, blue, and rainbow-colored. Dyrel brought us down on a rolling hill of rich red grass.
I felt like I was in a painting.
“Forget it,” I said. “I’ve changed my mind. Take me back to your apartment. I’ll learn how to dance there.”
How on Earth—or whatever planet I was on—did he think learning in this environment was a good idea?
We were three hundred feet above the ground in the upper branches of a giant tree. I clung to its trunk, refusing to let go.
The branches were thick around the base and wound out to thin spindly twigs at the very end. They bent and curved and weaved, twisting and turning on one another.
Dyrel hopped from one branch to another, unconcerned with falling his death.
“Are you crazy?” I said, clenching my eyes shut. “What makes you think learning to dance here is a good idea?”
“Because this is where I learned to dance,” he said.
“Here? Really?”
“There’s no better teacher than nature.”
He reached up and plucked a flower from the tree. He brought it over to me and weaved it in my hair.
“Didn’t I mention I have an intense fear of heights?” I said.
“No. You said you have a fear of flying.”
“It’s the same thing!”
“Not necessarily. You could fly close to the ground.”
I growled at him.
“I can’t learn to dance up here,” I said. “Not when I could fall to my death at any second. Maybe Titans can do this. But humans can’t. Not the sane ones, anyway.”
