In the ancient mythology of the sky people, there was a bird called the Sunrunner — neither fully eagle nor fully flame but something that existed in the breathtaking space between the two — who was born anew each morning from the first light that touched the highest peak of the highest mountain, streaking across the heavens like a golden answer to a question the darkness had spent all night asking. She flew not toward anything but simply forward, always forward, her body a living arrow of fire and intention moving through the blue and white cathedral of the sky with the absolute certainty of something that has never once doubted its direction or its destination. The clouds that gathered in her path did not block her but parted — not out of fear but out of recognition, the way old friends step aside for each other without needing to be asked, making room because that is simply what love does. Pilots who caught glimpses of her from their cockpits in the golden hour before sunrise would find themselves unable to explain afterward why they wept — only that seeing something move with such complete and total commitment to its own nature had briefly and permanently rearranged something inside them. She left behind her a trail of fire that cooled slowly into the first colors of dawn — orange fading to gold fading to the pale luminous blue of a world washed clean and ready, once again, to begin.