<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 returned home tired and sore. Her long brown hair had been twisted into elf knots by hours of flying at top speed. She had narrowly escaped nearly falling to her death a few times that day. Roan supposed being torn from your family made you reckless.<br/><br/>Now, it was after midnight, and the lights in the small apartment where she and her brother lived were off. All was dark and quiet. She knew that her brother would be asleep in the living room, not far from the door, and she had no wish to wake him. He would have sat up most of the night waiting for her already. A twinge of guilt stirred in Roan’s gut.<br/><br/>She turned away from the front door, and climbed up the tree that grew outside her window. As always, the window was cracked open, so it was no trouble at all to raise it. First, her hover board went in, and the girl soon followed.<br/><br/>Roan did not think she would be able to sleep, so she filled the old, cracked porcelain tub with hot steaming water and slipped in. The how water soothed her muscles, and she washed and combed out her long hair.<br/><br/>Now, alone in the quiet of the night, Roan finally had a chance to really think about what was happening to her. In the next day or two, she would be sent beyond the wall for good. Hardly anyone ever returned. Could she? Would she even want to? Sometimes Roan thought that things outside the wall must be a lot better than those inside for so few people to return. Then again, maybe no one returned because they were no longer alive to return.<br/><br/>Roan shivered even in the steaming bathroom, and turned her thoughts away from that dark place. She thought instead of her brother, who would be alone when she left. Roan fervently hoped he would meet someone nice and settle down. He wasn’t the type to do well all alone. He needed someone to live for. Maybe she would return after all. For her brother, if nothing else. To be honest, Roan didn’t like the city all that much, with it’s stupid Wortherence line. She hated whoever had come up with it in the first place. A person’s worth was absolutely not determined by their wealth. She thought back to her rich drunkard of a father. The girl had never known a more worthless person, but he sat high and dry, well above the Line.<br/><br/>Roan looked down at her fingers, pruned from sitting too long in the hot water, and decided it was time to get out. She dressed quickly, shivering from the cool air in her room, and then padded softly into the living room. Roan’s brother had forsaken the couch for a pile of blankets on the floor; the only visible part of him was a tuft of dark hair the same color as her own.<br/><br/>Roan laid down with her back against his, the same way they had when they first came here. Before they each had their own mattresses. Back when the heater never worked.<br/><br/>James stirred sleepily. “Night Pips,” he muttered.<br/><br/>Roan closed her eyes. “Night James,” she said, but he had already fallen back asleep.