The restless one has returned. Taryn laughs with her cousin’s former apprentices, swings her kit-bag to one shoulder, greets one and all as she walks down the Heart-Ring corridor with the swagger-and-sway, the bouncing steps, of someone who’s used to shifting between different levels of gravity. Her body experiments: how far will one push from hip to ball of foot launch her center of mass?

She reaches the doorway of her quarters, swings the kit-bag inside, palms the door closed and then continues to Maia’s family quarters by hand-holds, swinging and flexing from one ceiling-handle to another. Like all low-gravity crew, she’s vigilant to keep up her strength, grabs every opportunity to make her muscles and bones work against resistance.

It’s a habit, unconscious, as much ingrained as dancers’ constant stretching, even at rest.

I’ve watched that one, as I’ve watched all of them, grow from infancy. Just short of half a century she’s been with me, so seems still a child.

***

The narrator is Naime the Shipwright. From character interviews for the Ship’s Heart universe.

Weekend Writing Warriors offers a selection of eight-sentence excerpts from many different writers. For the full selection, see here.