Oahu. [[Locked to Pris, etc.]]
After the events of the past few months, with her trip to the Amazon with Majestic, Zealot's felt a need to return to nature, and a more acute need for some meditative solitude. For the last two weeks she's taken up residence on Oahu, renting a small vacation house on the Eastern shore. She'd contacted Spartan and Kenesha to let them know of her whereabouts, in case a sudden emergency manifests.
She'd spent a day hiking the Koolau Ridge, taking the Kuliouou Ridge Trail all the way, enjoying the steep ascent, watching the vegetation change with the altitude. It's still vaguely surprising for her to see pine trees in a tropical ecosystem, a small reminder of how inept humans can be at stewarding the Earth when they carelessly bring the seeds of one ecology to another, whether by accident or design. But she's long accustomed to such things, of course, and had picked a spot near the top to watch the Pacific Ocean for an hour, thinking of the past and the future.
Today she'd gotten up at 4:00 AM and hiked the Kahana Stream to one of the many swimming holes, luxuriating in the isolation of the morning hour while she swam, listening to the quiet sounds of birds coming awake. She'd gotten unavoidably muddy on the way back, necessitating a long shower, and so now she sits on the porch of her small abode with drying hair and glass of cold mango juice, watching birds flit around the large papaya tree nearby. To her keen senses, the air is full of frangipani, guava blossoms, and those ripening papaya fruits.
Were Zealot prone to such things, she would say that she'd missed living in Hawaii.
She'd spent a day hiking the Koolau Ridge, taking the Kuliouou Ridge Trail all the way, enjoying the steep ascent, watching the vegetation change with the altitude. It's still vaguely surprising for her to see pine trees in a tropical ecosystem, a small reminder of how inept humans can be at stewarding the Earth when they carelessly bring the seeds of one ecology to another, whether by accident or design. But she's long accustomed to such things, of course, and had picked a spot near the top to watch the Pacific Ocean for an hour, thinking of the past and the future.
Today she'd gotten up at 4:00 AM and hiked the Kahana Stream to one of the many swimming holes, luxuriating in the isolation of the morning hour while she swam, listening to the quiet sounds of birds coming awake. She'd gotten unavoidably muddy on the way back, necessitating a long shower, and so now she sits on the porch of her small abode with drying hair and glass of cold mango juice, watching birds flit around the large papaya tree nearby. To her keen senses, the air is full of frangipani, guava blossoms, and those ripening papaya fruits.
Were Zealot prone to such things, she would say that she'd missed living in Hawaii.