I'm not sure I like the smell of this place.

[ Katsa says this matter-of-fact, frowning as she quints from wall to colored wall and does her best to ignore the excessive flashing of the lights. ]

It's too strong. Sweet, even. What even are these scents? I've not smelled anything like them before.

[ Someone has clearly not grown up with access to a Chuck E. Cheese. These aren't smells of familiarity; instead they're things too heavy, cloying. ]

[ What Katsa loves the most, and what sparks sharp and strong on her tongue the moment the door clicks shut behind her, is the taste of freedom.

This is no room, she realizes in wonder. This is a horizon. Blue skies, as bright and clear and brilliant as her right eye, uninterrupted. Grasses as green as the Middluns plains, of her left eye, rolling and whispering in the wind that whips her clothes against her and bites sharply against her cheeks. Katsa laughs, for there is no end in sight. There's no one to stop her here from running.

So run she does—though not before turning to her companion, a wild exhilaration still on her face and in her eyes. ] We race, [ she suggests, ] unless you're willing to accept defeat before we even begin.