<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #004040"><span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-size: 130%; line-height: 116%;">Roan Heights</span></span></span></div><br/><br/>Roan flew through the city faster, and faster, until the streets ran together like so many dirty brown rivers. Her toes clenched within the thick, grippy boots favored by hover boarders, and with each turn, her viola case thumped against her back. Tears, pulled from her eyes from the wind, clung to her cheeks only moments before drying, and long redish-brown hair streamed behind the girl like a banner.  All was fluid, smooth, flexible.<br/><br/>Today was Brave Day.<br/><br/>All through her music lesson, that was the only thought on her mind. Roan had not played so poorly in years, or rather since last year, on Brave Day. She and her brother were both eligible, again; her for the third time, him for the eighth. They were uncommonly lucky, Roan knew, but the extra years together would not make loosing the one person in the world she loved any less difficult, if it happened. If it happened. And so, she was racing home at speeds very few boarders could ever hope to achieve. Just another blur below the Wortherance line, hoping to get home in time to be with her family.<br/><br/>She almost missed the small building that held their smaller apartment, and she yanked the board to an abrupt stop, the force of which pressed out all the air from her lungs. She gulped in a couple breaths and, holding the long board in one hand, heaved herself over the fence with the other. James was already home; his beat up old bike was leaning against the side of the crumbling brick facade.<br/><br/>Roan took the stairs up to the top floor two at a time, remembering to take care on the thirty-second step, half of which was missing. She pulled the door open to find James already staring at the old holo-screen. He looked up as she came in.<br/><br/>“So good so far, Pips,” he said, smiling roguishly at her. Pips was an old nick name, short for pipsqueak, and James knew she hated it. For once, Roan did no more than roll her eyes at him. She was too keyed up to argue.<br/><br/>“Dr. B let me out early today,” Roan told him with forced calmness, “Said something along the lines that ‘Brave Day makes for impossible students’ or whatever.” She rolled her eyes again.<br/><br/>James raised an eyebrow at her before turning back to the screen. “One day, your eyes are going to be stuck like that, and then you’ll be good for nothing. Blind as a bat as well as tone deaf.”<br/><br/>“Hey now,” Roan laughed, “Mr. I-Can’t-Hold-A-Pitch! You can’t even—“<br/><br/>“Roan Heights.”<br/><br/>Wait a moment, that was her face flashing across screen. Roan froze, laughter dying on her lips. This hardly seemed real, after all the years they had escaped before… She shut her mouth and swallowed hard, her eyes still fixed to the screen, even though her picture was long gone.<br/><br/>James looked up at her sadly, and after a moment gathered his little sister into a tight hug. Neither cried. They had lived too long under this threat to long cry now. James just couldn’t believe it was her and not him.<br/><br/>“What do you say to some ice cream?” he asked gently, but Roan shook her head tersely.<br/><br/>“Later,” she said and left the apartment, pausing only long enough to grab her board. Roan wouldn’t return until much later that night.