PassMeOn

This Imperials home was destroyed when a great fire purged an ancient forest of life. In remembrance of that forest, he leaves a sapling with each clan he visits.

2/21/18
Mumbling to himself as he walked as quietly as he could through a sunbeam-filled forest, he brushed his claws over the bark of the ancient trees and his mind was greeted by a fleeting memory of his old home.
With it came a heart-aching sadness, one that ran through his brain over and over as he paused to sit underneath the shade of a tree.
It's gone forever, and you'll never see it again.
It wasn't like he was moving and couldn't visit the place. Rather, he was forced to move away from his old home because a fire destroyed it.
[It's gone forever, and you'll never see it again, you'll never walk underneath the branches of the trees you loved so much. Remember how Mother and Father told you that one day they would take you up to the magnificent treetops and run and leap from the branches? Did that ever happen?[/I]
No, he thought, answering himself unconsciously. It never did, because of the fire. But I'm moving on now, like a traveler. What any wanderer would do.
How long will I stay this way? Not just being some wanderer, but having to... to mourn the forest. Which is why I have to keep moving.
The wanderer got up again, muscles aching as if a weight had been placed upon his legs, until he reached a wide-open flatland dotted with bamboo and brush and the softest grass he had ever felt in his life.
The Windswept Plateau, he realized.
He leapt into the air, riding a breeze, and the very wind seemed to invigorate his tired muscles.
"Take me wherever you wish!" he called to the sky, arching his neck and stretching his muscles. The wind seemed to respond by riffling his slightly-burnt feathers, and followed it to a collection of cliffs not so far away, facing the sea.