From below

It’s a sunny day just like any other, and you’re working to provide benefit for your community. You work, eat, sleep, and do all things in between, and thus your life is full. But as the humdrum days roll past like water down a stream, something changes. You smell the scent of fire in the distance occasionally, notice fewer conversations with friends, food becomes scarce, and your home seems to be ebbing. You’re confused, annoyed even, but what can you do? You’re just a small being in a big world, and time has always been on the side of you and your ilk, so you wait. There's more smoke, less food, worse conditions, more absent friends, and a house that's begun to rot around you. You’re fed up! You leave your home and investigate, just to find that your world is gone.

From above

You’ve been flying, stuck between every location a vagrant, and an exhausted one at that. When you were young the world was filled with color and the first thing you smelt every morning was dew dripping from leaves. To you, home was a place of comfort, safety, but just as importantly, family, yet you haven't felt that peace in years. Now, you wake up to the stench of sickly black ichor that drips from rotten leaves as it rains, to the sights of stone monoliths and green-tinted streams. Yet you’ve persisted, despite yourself, and you take flight yet again, the cold gnawing at your sides where feathers once laid, but you know if you fly one more time, a bit further, surely you’ll find the wetlands your mother laid you, just a bit further and you’ll see the cypress you nested at, a bit further and you can meet them again.

From the distance

It’s over, to be fair it's been over for a long time, but now with iron certainty it is…you can't move your leg. You’ve been enduring for weeks, months even, eating what you can and defending what has always been yours. But, against them, you've taken a few steps too far, bit what was theirs, filled your belly against their margins, and you’re learning the consequences for that. You can hear branches snap in the distance, yells from long-lost cousins, the scent of death approaching you as fog rolls over a lake. You growl at your family, your friends, and everything you’ve known, snap at them, and they run with whimpers and cries. You look at your leg, steel snapped upon it, and after a moment of struggle, there's a peace that washes over you, your fight is done.

From the center

It's been a busy yet mostly uneventful year, you’ve had a lot to do and plenty of money to make, and finally your vacation has come up. Your spouse recommended Oakridge, but the beaches of Aventura are amazing this time of year, and your bonus will let you rent the best possible beachside condo, you might even be able to rent a boat for a few days to enjoy some deep-sea fishing! I mean, you deserve it. You had some very tight deadlines and less than ideal conditions, your boss wanted an area prepared for an entire suburb, but he wanted it put right on top of a forest and swamp. How the hell were you supposed to do that! Yet you did, you even got some brownie points with the local farmers by helping with some pests, but all of that's done now, now it's time for a cold beer and a sandy beach.