Title: The sky is ours.
Rating: T. Possibly M in the future.
Description:
The skies were once a wonder, now, in 3782 they were normality. Arthur falls from the polluted sky town of Leeds and into little Pangaea where his days of shovelling change, it's just too bad his personal heaven is compromised when the sky towns may have to take to the ground once more.
Pairings:
-USUK
-SpaBel
-CanKraine
-BelaLiech
-Frachelles
-SeaWY
-HongWan
Open to other suggestions.
-Goodness, I should be writing the next chapter of innovation invitation but writers block rears its ugly head. I am not too sure how many chapters this will have but I am somewhat sure of what direction I hope to take this. Hopefully no giant periods between the chapters. This is probably horrible rushed but I just want to get it out there so that I can get some critique. It would be nice if someone could give me a piece.
The world had first taken to the skies at the midpoint of the 2nd millennium.
When the earth was said to have become unsalvageable, when the oceans were said to have been polluted and all life upon that dead, dead earth just about ready to die.
And that was when the air had become a choice. The only apparent choice.
When the towns of each country had taken to the skies, those old films that we see now played of men and women alike taking flight on the land lifted slowly by bag upon colourful bag of air and propellers that spun wildly, excitedly, to take flight for the first time. Romantic it was, as couples embraced, kissed, as balloons floated by and they lifted off with the screams and cheers of the people who were being lifted steadily slowly in hot air balloons to join them. Romantic both adventure wise and love wise. It was touching to see the old flickering bright colours of the past and wonder where they had gone.
The town of Leeds felt the need to show it whenever possible, show the once colourful, now grey, town that people like him stood upon as they floated through cloud upon cloud and hit by storm after storm. The picturesque scene had faded as the current year of 3782 hit, and all that was left was the town of Leeds, just like any other that floated by in the vast skies on a day to day basis and Arthur hated it. Hated the old films, the town where everybody but him seemed to see the goodness in the row upon row of houses each pushed against each other like jagged teeth with crooked chimneys that spat pollution all day.
The clouds were a boring sight, as was coal shovelling; which was the shit job he had been pushed into. Shovelling coal because this damned town couldn't even provide a proper education anymore. He couldn't wait to step foot on one of the bigger towns, the ones from foreign skies that often didn't speak the same language yet provided some of the weirdest most beautiful contraptions Arthur had seen in all his soot covered twenty three years. He remembers it, the day that Turkish town known as Istanbul had let them dock. His mother had taken him around the streets that looked so much like the day it had also first taken to the skies. He hated to admit it, but the blonde English boy had wished he had been able to sneak into that lovely little town that spent so much of its time in warmer Eastern skies, not needing to feed from the sky provided electric like little unknown Leeds.
No more dreaming, Arthur, no big town would want the stragglers from this old town to board it.
"Kirkland!" A shout from on the platforms above echoed down to the men separating the fire fuel apart. A certain pale skinned and platinum blonde haired man looked up, wiping the sweat from his brow as he glared up to that all too annoying Gilbert 'slave driver' Beilschmidt who seemed to see amusement in each fall he made from these damned long hours. The platinum blonde man in a white sweat-stained tank top similar to everyone who carried on shovelling the black rock that streaked stains across their faces and clothes was leaning against the rusting barriers of the viewing platform of what once had been a large lake, now gone fuel pit, with that smirk that never meant anything good.
Arthur carried on staring though, levelling those maroon eyes with his own venomous green until he flicked his head to the side and snorted in defiance. Then went back to what he was doing. Fighting with Gilbert via eye contact certainly wasn't what provided for his family. Neither did reminiscing a long gone and never to return past.
Where had the romance gone? He would never know.
Despite his usually unapproachable exterior, Arthur was a family man. Worked all day and half the night to provide for his much too kind mother and family that seemed to be growing in size faster than that of a rabbits. Abandoning children was such a regular occurrence that nobody really batted an eye anymore, anyone other than kind old Anne Kirkland who was the first person people dropped their basket bundled half dead babies on the door of. Arthur swears they had only needed one table when he was five.
And when he hung his hole ridden hat on the peg along with his coat and scarf that seemed to be in similar shape he had infants and toddlers alike all clinging to his legs like a safety blanket as he waded through them like one would water towards the dim light of the kitchen with the noise of squealing children following him. He pulled a bleached oak chair from the table closest to the dirty stove, running a dirty hand through his hair and smearing the sooty dirt across his still sweaty forehead. "Long day?" His mother asked, in that aging voice that was probably brought on by all the dirt surrounding the city. He looked at her through his fringe and the spaces between his finger as she sipped at her tea and looked at the newspaper. He nodded. Silence.
And then all of the children came rushing in, all of them, crowding round him and pulling out seats or simply lounging themselves along his lap like the waves against shore of the earth he never saw as their big eyes looked up at him expectantly. "Uncle Artie! Uncle! Did you get anything today? Did you?" They all seemed to ask at once cheering, looking at him and shouting as they waited for him to answer which made his already horrid migraine skyrocket. The pale man waved a hand dismissively before reaching a hand into his black loose fitting pants and pulling out a piece of black shiny rock and putting it into the chubby waiting hands of a blonde girl who looked down at it then back at him and opened her mouth slightly in curiosity.
"What is it?"
"It's that rabbit from the picture book you made me read you last night."
She looked back down at it, everyone else crowding round and looking down at it, only just seeing the tall ears and head that, indeed, looked like a 'rabbit' from one of the picture book stories that lined the shelves of their cramped bedrooms. She stroked it with her finger before wrapping her hands around Arthur awkwardly as he sighed into his dirty hands after a long day out. Each child filed from the room in a flurry to go put away the rabbit shaped coal and Arthur let a small smile grace his lips when they left that Anne let out a dry chuckle at before sipping again at her tea.
"Shall I put them to bed?" Anne asked after another moment when her cup went empty, she pushed the glasses further up her wrinkled nose as she looked at her only biological son she had left.
"It's okay, I'll do it."
"Arthur…?"
"Yes, Gabby?"
"Have you ever been on the ground?"
The question caught Arthur off guard and he stared at the young girl as her surrounding friends in beds across the wide room chorused their interest. The hand that was originally stroking through the girls short honey coloured locks froze as he stared at her dumbfounded a moment. She looked back with a smile as she squirmed in her light pink cover.
"Of course not. We can't live on the ground anymore; it's not stable." He said quietly as the girl stared up at him through pale blue eyes with interest, she reached under her ratty pillow that Arthur made a note to remember to clean and grabbed a picture book that had gone soggy on the corners, she flicked open it's cardboard pages to a certain page.
The pop up book came to life as the cardboard lifted to create a 3D landscape with small text on it; a grass covered horizon dotted with trees with a girl and boy stood in the middle holding hands and picking flowers as russet coloured rabbits hopped to and fro between the forget me not's and daisies. Arthur stared at it a moment, interested, the only time he had ever truly seen flowers was on the passing air town and, like Gabby and friends, in picture books. He looked at it a moment enraptured before taking the book from her small hands and closing it gently before passing it back to the girl, who tilted her head slightly in imitation of a confused puppy.
He looked at his lap a moment before looking back up at the child wrapped in her bed cover still looking at him. "You shouldn't trust picture books so much. They're just fantasy." He said with a smile, patting her head and leaving dirty black dust behind before walking to the slightly open wooden door to the pink girl's bedroom despite the girls whining and asking him to come back, he shushed them before turning the switch and wishing them pleasant dreams before joining Anne in the kitchen who was just on her way from wishing the boys a goodnight.
She sat down in the wooden chair that creaked beneath her weight as she sighed. Arthur sat in a seat at the side of her as he sighed too. He looked at the digital clock that hung above the window above the sink; 1:30pm. Yet he wasn't even tired. If it wasn't the lack of heating the airborne town could provide at the moment he would probably be washing the week of hard worked dirt, grime and sweat from his skin. It felt almost revolting with all this mud amongst other things clinging to his skin, it felt as though it wasn't his. He could truly never get used to the lack of clean enough water.
"I'm going for a walk, mum." He said when he could no longer sit still. He usually wasn't a fidgety person but the idea of dirty clothes had him cringing. He needed these thoughts to be gone. A walk in the dirty night air would surely provide such.
"Be careful love, we're supposed to be passing through a thunderstorm tonight." She warned, Arthur waved her off and went out to the door to grab his coat and scarf once more before heading out of the door.
Leeds was not a pretty sight, anything that had ever made it considered that had disappeared over the time or sold off to other towns for things that were needed. There was absolutely nowhere to walk other than close to the barrier to get away from the row upon row of shabby brick and metal houses alike that were lined up like something out of a nightmare street that one might run down. Their forte was factory work. Factory work and digging from the pit were about the only jobs available to people like Arthur. If you were related to the mayor then you may just get something council related but otherwise, it's to the factories with you. Or possibly a shop if you were lucky enough to get ancestors who ran them.
Arthur walked along the left pathway, past identical houses for what felt like an hour. The cold air bit at each bit of exposed skin he had available. The night was silent other than the mechanical whirrs of the propellers on and under the flying city and the flapping of the flags up in the sky with the gasbags. He was expecting nothing but a simple walk through the houses before heading back home feeling tired, but curiosity got to him. The blonde man walked to the metal side that shielded citizens from falling from the city.
Nobody was supposed to go near it, he knew this, yet he wanted to look over the side. See truly how high in the clouds he was. Arthur had chosen a bad place it seemed though, a few metres off stood the lightning pole that supplied power to his street. Yet he stood, staring into the blue and purple night.
"Hey!"
Arthur's eyes grew wide, knowing he had been caught. He turned slowly, guiltily, to face the men running towards him in orange work outfits lined with light strips to work safely in the dark. The pale man gulped as they stopped a few metres off from where the dirt road ended and turned into metal platform waving and trying to lure him over like he was a scared animal.
"Quick! The lightning's going to hit any moment!" a gruff man with a brunette beard shouted to him as he waved desperately. Arthur took notice of what he was saying too late as he finally saw the light in close clouds crackle with thunder and a zip of white light shoot straight to the pole.
The next thing he knew he was falling and the town of Leeds was getting further away as he plunged through the clouds and watching the metal belly of the town drip further from his sight before hitting something hard that most definitely was not the earth floor.