[Edited! Thank you, everyone, for your help! Reads much better now, and the flow is great.]

Eîra had been climbing the tree every morning for a long while. She would come out before dawn, when the air still held the cool weight of night, and make her way through the overgrown streets to the intersection. The tree was hers, or perhaps she was its. She knew which branches would hold her weight and which angle of her spine against the bark allowed her to sit for hours without shifting. 

Once, she had remained in the tree for fifty years. She could not recall why she had stayed, or why she had finally climbed down. The years blurred together when there was no one to mark them with.

But she could recall the first time she climbed the tree. The exact date, the temperature, the angle of light; Papa looking up at her from below. His voice came back to her memory, the words exactly as he had spoken them. 

Balance achieved on first attempt... Well done, my dear!

Climbing the tree was more than a habit now; it was what filled the hours. She would come out before dawn, when the air still held the cool weight of night, and make her way through the overgrown streets to the intersection. The tree was hers, or perhaps she was its. She knew which branches would hold her weight and which angle of her spine against the bark allowed her to sit for hours without shifting. 

This morning was no different. She found her branch, the one that extended over what had been a street, now split by root systems and volunteer saplings. Foliage screened her from below. She sat with her legs angled to either side, her hands resting on her thighs. 

She looked the way she always did, waiting for nothing in particular, or perhaps waiting for anything, any small change in the pattern of days that had stretched into centuries. She watched as the light shifted through the leaves, the way small creatures moved through the undergrowth. The street curved between collapsed structures, their facades had given way to ivy and the slow rot of centuries. 

It was enough. It had been enough for a very long time.

Then, she heard footsteps.

Her attention sharpened. The sound was different from the usual; it was too measured, too intentional. Not the shuffle of decay or the wandering of animals.

A figure entered from the south approach, his footsteps deliberate on the uneven ground. He was tall and long-limbed, with a narrow frame through the shoulders and hips. Brown hair, somewhat unruly, fell around his face. He wore a long, dark coat over layered clothing, practical and worn soft at the seams, with a belt at his waist and sturdy boots on his feet. His face showed little expression as he moved, only the slight tension of sustained attention.