It's been so long, Jay

"What the hell was that?" 

Isera stopped in her tracks, failing to complete the hundredth and fifty-fourth lap of her back-and-forth stroll.

Something changed. 

She couldn't quite really put her finger on it, but a change had occurred. 

That was the one thing the girl was perfectly certain about. 

'My instincts wouldn't lie like that,' Isera thought, turning all around in hopes of spotting anything that would shed light upon what actually happened. 

The gut that warned her about the change wasn't kind enough to provide her with a detailed explanation of what kind of change it sensed, just its existence. 

Figuring it out was something Isera had to do on her own. 

"But there isn't much that I can go off on here, is there?" she muttered to herself, staring helplessly at the vast openness of the plain behind her and the uniform emptiness of the barrier lands ahead. 

'Or is there?'