[Awakening] Roof running
Sep. 17th, 2011 09:01 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
hemotropism.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
writing_shadowsLiving in hotels has its up side, especially when you pick your stays according to the rooftop facilities...
In the grey murkiness of the just-about-pre-dawn Tax jogs lightly up the several flights of stairs to the top of the hotel. It’s too early for anyone to be about and she has on her best running and jumping shoes. They’re too soft to make much of a noise and she takes care to place her feet down gently, gladly putting extra energy into cushioning the fall of each foot. Room service and cleaning aren’t up and about yet but there might be an early-rising businessman somewhere who might wonder why somebody is running up the stairs so early.
By the time she’s at the top she’s buzzing nicely and fully awake. There’s a trap door to the roof that says “no access”, when in fact it means no access to anyone without a ladder. Tax bypasses the ladder by taking a running jump to grab the handle, pull it down, then swing herself up through the hatch by it. She lands with her legs planted firmly on either side of the trap door and reaches down to close it promptly behind her.
That would have caused a bit of noise but it was only brief. By the time anyone might care to look out into the corridor everything will be completely normal and not many people would think a trap door so high up on the ceiling would be the culprit of the sound. Physical improbability is on her side. There aren’t many people that could or would have done what she just did, certainly not without a grunt or a clatter at least. And now she has the playground she came for.
She walks briskly to edge of the building, not slowing her pace until her toes are smack against the line between concrete and a sharp fall. She goes up onto her tiptoes and stretches her arms out to the side, chin lifting up with a deep yawn that arches her back, eyes dropping shut for a moment. The stretch and knowledge of the height she’s at create a hum in her head that numbs everything for a while. She could be falling for all she knows, but of course she isn’t. Tax drops back onto her heels and bends over forwards to touch her toes easily. She makes sure to look the height face on, acknowledging it like a friendly rival.
Then she runs.
Just around the edge of the building at first and only a jog. On the second lap she speeds up and throws in an experimental cartwheel every once in a while. When she’s warmed up she stops on a corner and drops right off the edge, catching herself by her fingertips, the balls of her feet gripping into the side of the building. She hops along the length of one entire side of the hotel like this, turning at one point so she’s clinging on with her back to the building, arms straight behind her to support her weight. When she finally flips up from this she’s looking down the middle of the building with its little outcrops and ledges, a satellite dish, those generators or whatever they are. She dashes straight at them and vaults them all one at a time, sometimes all in one leap, sometimes with a roll or a spring off a nearby obstacle.
It’s a breezy morning and the trees are gossiping to each other eagerly; fantastic conditions for running, especially when you’re going with the wind. The whip of it on Tax’s face makes her feel like she’s going all the faster and it spurs her mind on, ticking over in overdrive to assess how she’s going to tackle the next thing that comes up. The next building over is a fair distance away but she’s feeling good and she isn’t afraid to fall. In fact, she feels almost like she could fly.
She knows exactly when she reaches the point of no return and the adrenaline fires like a shock of electricity through her body. For the sake of knowing she’s tried skidding to a halt from full sprint before and she knows from experience there’s no way she can pull that off now. It’s time to hop over to the next building or go downstairs the short and brutal way.
In her mind she goes to the car park near her second foster home. She used to sneak out at night and draw chalk lines on the ground, jumping further and further every time she ran at it. Back then it didn’t matter if she missed. Concrete was still concrete weather it was pretending to be a steep drop or not. Now that she’d graduated to the real thing, though, sometimes she still pretended it was flat – another distance to be made, just another jump, just so she could realise how high she was half way up and across. That’s the best feeling.
Tax lands just within the edge of the other building, her toes springing her forward into a roll to catch her momentum. The floor digs and knocks into her shoulder and back but she rolls through it, thinking that some people pay for stronger massages than this. Any tension that remains in her body is squeezed away by the impact with the building and she comes up on her feet, just as fast as ever, barrelling on like some kind of urban jungle cat chasing its prey, the horizon.
In the grey murkiness of the just-about-pre-dawn Tax jogs lightly up the several flights of stairs to the top of the hotel. It’s too early for anyone to be about and she has on her best running and jumping shoes. They’re too soft to make much of a noise and she takes care to place her feet down gently, gladly putting extra energy into cushioning the fall of each foot. Room service and cleaning aren’t up and about yet but there might be an early-rising businessman somewhere who might wonder why somebody is running up the stairs so early.
By the time she’s at the top she’s buzzing nicely and fully awake. There’s a trap door to the roof that says “no access”, when in fact it means no access to anyone without a ladder. Tax bypasses the ladder by taking a running jump to grab the handle, pull it down, then swing herself up through the hatch by it. She lands with her legs planted firmly on either side of the trap door and reaches down to close it promptly behind her.
That would have caused a bit of noise but it was only brief. By the time anyone might care to look out into the corridor everything will be completely normal and not many people would think a trap door so high up on the ceiling would be the culprit of the sound. Physical improbability is on her side. There aren’t many people that could or would have done what she just did, certainly not without a grunt or a clatter at least. And now she has the playground she came for.
She walks briskly to edge of the building, not slowing her pace until her toes are smack against the line between concrete and a sharp fall. She goes up onto her tiptoes and stretches her arms out to the side, chin lifting up with a deep yawn that arches her back, eyes dropping shut for a moment. The stretch and knowledge of the height she’s at create a hum in her head that numbs everything for a while. She could be falling for all she knows, but of course she isn’t. Tax drops back onto her heels and bends over forwards to touch her toes easily. She makes sure to look the height face on, acknowledging it like a friendly rival.
Then she runs.
Just around the edge of the building at first and only a jog. On the second lap she speeds up and throws in an experimental cartwheel every once in a while. When she’s warmed up she stops on a corner and drops right off the edge, catching herself by her fingertips, the balls of her feet gripping into the side of the building. She hops along the length of one entire side of the hotel like this, turning at one point so she’s clinging on with her back to the building, arms straight behind her to support her weight. When she finally flips up from this she’s looking down the middle of the building with its little outcrops and ledges, a satellite dish, those generators or whatever they are. She dashes straight at them and vaults them all one at a time, sometimes all in one leap, sometimes with a roll or a spring off a nearby obstacle.
It’s a breezy morning and the trees are gossiping to each other eagerly; fantastic conditions for running, especially when you’re going with the wind. The whip of it on Tax’s face makes her feel like she’s going all the faster and it spurs her mind on, ticking over in overdrive to assess how she’s going to tackle the next thing that comes up. The next building over is a fair distance away but she’s feeling good and she isn’t afraid to fall. In fact, she feels almost like she could fly.
She knows exactly when she reaches the point of no return and the adrenaline fires like a shock of electricity through her body. For the sake of knowing she’s tried skidding to a halt from full sprint before and she knows from experience there’s no way she can pull that off now. It’s time to hop over to the next building or go downstairs the short and brutal way.
In her mind she goes to the car park near her second foster home. She used to sneak out at night and draw chalk lines on the ground, jumping further and further every time she ran at it. Back then it didn’t matter if she missed. Concrete was still concrete weather it was pretending to be a steep drop or not. Now that she’d graduated to the real thing, though, sometimes she still pretended it was flat – another distance to be made, just another jump, just so she could realise how high she was half way up and across. That’s the best feeling.
Tax lands just within the edge of the other building, her toes springing her forward into a roll to catch her momentum. The floor digs and knocks into her shoulder and back but she rolls through it, thinking that some people pay for stronger massages than this. Any tension that remains in her body is squeezed away by the impact with the building and she comes up on her feet, just as fast as ever, barrelling on like some kind of urban jungle cat chasing its prey, the horizon.
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