Instead of being tightly controlled like her.
If her life were compared to a bird, she would be a bird in a cage.
Her mother worried that she would be kidnapped again like she had been back then, worried that she would get hurt, and wished she could watch her twenty-four hours a day. But that truly troubled her.
The more she was restrained, the more they wanted to lock her in a cage, the more she longed for a life where she could make her own choices and have a sky that belonged to her.
"Firefly-chan, why do you think birds fly? Is it because they are born with wings?"
Watching the birds completely disappear from her sight, Nene Arakawa could not help sighing as she asked Firefly.
"..."
Why did that question sound so familiar...
Firefly thought of something someone had once said.
"Why do birds fly? Because they must fly into the sky."
Thinking of that person, Firefly answered instinctively. Before Nene Arakawa could wonder what kind of answer that was, she continued.
"When the Star of the End descended in the Cretaceous period, only free birds could escape their predetermined extinction."
"Why do birds fly? In another world, a savior once said this: because they must fly toward the sun, toward places no one has ever reached. Perhaps they will fall because of it, but those who come after them will fly higher than they did."
"And a traveler of the Path of Nihility once said: generation after generation, they spread their wings and soar, trying to touch that distant zenith, simply because the sun is there."
"..."
"A savior... and a traveler of the Path of Nihility..."
"Another world? It sounds like their stories must have been very wonderful."
Nene Arakawa did not truly understand