– EL ADREL –

El Adrel ran in the direction she had come from with Cleyra at her back. It took quite truly hours for the great tree to vanish over the Horizon, and it did not drop below it so much as it did fade into the haze of the sky, such was its height.

With her came all those who had been bound for Lindblum plus four more. Freya, Fratley, Steiner and Puck.

Steiner had glued himself to the very extremity of the foredeck on the prow of the ship, and stood guard there. Guard over what, he himself could not explain. He refused to sleep, or eat, or speak to anyone. When concerned passenger or crewman alike attempted to strike up a conversation or ask him why he was there, he said nothing and remained absolutely still.

The airship rocked gently on the warm winds of the Vube desert, and coasted easily on the updrafts at its border where the mountains began. She vaulted each peak with room to spare. Men bustled about and in and out of doors on the forward airscrew mast housing, checking the oil-filled gear casing and oil-fed thrust bearings within. Having run the airscrews on that mast as hard as they would go to avoid a crash earlier, nothing was to be left to chance.

The captain observed with his mostly-watchful eye, perched high atop the ship upon his bridge. He was in an especially fowl mood for having to backtrack to Burmecia, as the whole planned voyage had once again unraveled on him. He now found cause to wonder if a planned and simple itinerary were at all possible on this airship.

Retreating into his quarters, he unfolded across the table quite a long letter from his old friend and occasional nemesis Regent Cid the Ninth. It had come by tracking swallow, the birds who always returned to the silvery magnetite stone they were raised near, and this one directly to that specific stone carried in El Adrel's sterncastle.

It was what he was used to from Cid, beginning as a very state-of-affairs sort of document he thought, concerning the types of civic generalities that bored him to tears, and he had to force himself to read it in its entirety. He was surprised at what lay within.

Bancroft my friend,

I hope this letter finds you, your crew and ship well. I expected you in yesterday and I shall be very displeased if you've run into any sort of trouble. Correspond immediately if you require any assistance.

Converting everything that flies in Lindblum to steam power is proving a frustration. Steam engines are heavy and laborious and only lend themselves to large vessels due to economy of scale. It is difficult to fit them to any small heavier than air craft and due to this we have no further prospects on operating the fleet of air taxis that this city has used for the last many years, and a great deal of the working class has been stranded without affordable or fast mobility as a result.

To that end I am already through the contemplation stages of a transit system in the form of an elevated railway network. We and many other engineers and tinkers in and around the city have found that steam engines lend themselves particularly well to railway use.

We've retrofitted several work locomotives used previously only in the railway systems of the airship dock and have constructed a segment of double-track elevated railway between the Grand Boulevard and Pollander Boulevard running down Market Street to test these and other machines on.

You must come see it for yourself when you return, it has proven a source of excitement for our citizens and a draw for tourists.

I was forced to retire the Hilda Garde 3. Three days prior while out on a quick tour of the outer Kingdom she snapped her starboard outrigger and we nearly lost the entire ship a crash, it was a miracle we made it back to Lindblum in one piece and without injuries. She is now undergoing a dismantle to free space in the dock. I do not regret this end as she is a well-travelled ship and served the world well in those travels.

Due to the perfection of hindsight, it was to be expected as this she consisted almost entirely of her own engines, and spared on structure for the savings of weight and aerodynamic drag. I built and flew her right to the design limits, which was at the time of no concern. I have far too much on my plate now within the Kingdom to continue the experimental line of airships and we found a good recipe with vessels such as Prima Vista and El Adrel.

On matters of far greater importance: After much deliberation with certain groups of people and a great deal of contemplation and soul-searching on my part, I have put an end to the Festival of the Hunt. I don't know how much you know of what has transpired over the last year, but a great deal of serious ethical concerns have landed on my plate.

By rights, my Kingdom has decades of crimes to answer for due to the development and use of mist engines.

It has been explained now to me in great detail what Mist actually is, or was for that matter, and I am appalled at what has been going on regarding its use with this knowledge.

We were unknowingly using the pain and suffering of living beings as a source of power and this is unforgiveable. To that end comes with it a great deal of pondering the nature of sentience itself, and of course cruelty and pain inflicted upon other living creatures. None whatsoever is acceptable, we are a developed nation and as such it is our responsibility to act in an enlightened manner and lead by example.

I have a sour taste in my mouth over this Festival that is twofold. I detest my own lack of ability to recognize it as barbaric before this time, and I detest the event for being the reason I could not quickly mobilize an armed airship fleet to aid Burmecia and Cleyra.

If I had stationed my father's battlecruisers there in due time, Queen Brahne on the Red Rose would have been no match for them and so many thousands of needless deaths, and the obliteration of an entire Kingdom and its people, would most assuredly have been avoided. Now that things have calmed in the world and I have had a chance to look inward, I will never be able to forgive myself for this.

My Fleet Admiral, Kurn, has a new Wife who is a woman of profound conscience and who believes all life is sacred. She has petitioned myself and the entire regency to stop the festival and has obtained an unthinkable amount of signatures from concerned citizenry. I cannot deny the request on these grounds alone.

The King of Burmecia was a dear friend of mine and I had held out so much hope he had survived the destruction of Cleyra. For a time I had searched the Vube desert and surrounding lands for him with any airship I could spare. It is clear now to most others and myself that he is dead. He was a dear friend, I lament his loss intensely, and feel personally responsible. In truth, everything has turned out very badly and not much sits right with me anymore.

Regrettably,

Cid Fabool IX

REGENCY LINDBLUM

SEAL OF THE CENTRAL OFFICE

"Not to worry, I'll have this room ready in half an hour. My apologies but this whole trip has been a bit upside down." The cabin boy quickly shoved boxes of soap and herbs out the door.

Freya and Fratley looked at each other. He meant well, but didn't know the half of it.

Commerce for Lindblum had occupied many lower and smaller passenger cabins while the Burmecian relief supplies had taken up the holds, and some of this hadn't been moved after that had been offloaded.

Neither voiced their frustration but both detected it in each other. After all that had happened, all they yearned for was each other, rest and privacy. Perhaps another thirty minutes, give or take, would make it all the sweeter once a place to rest was open to them. They locked arms, slowly made their way upstairs and tiredly began to stroll the long, mirror-varnished deck.

"This is my first time on an airship." Fratley said, looking all around them at the towering superstructure, the spinning masts and airscrews, the throngs of other passengers crowded around the ventilators and groups of chairs, the windlasses and capstan engines and other objects of curiosity he had never properly looked at before.

Freya shrugged.

"I know." He spoke libraries of understanding in just two words.

She looked at him. "Can you imagine if Burmecia had these? All the death and loss and destruction..."

"Freya…"

"Look what Alexandria did with just one."

He was silent. His idealism fell flat on the varnished autumn-colored planking.

"You're right." He said. "You've always been right."

He then drew her into his arms again, off of her feet. She did not protest, it felt wonderful to be borne off the ground and off her aching feet. It felt far moreso to be cradled by him.

The idealism inexplicably sprang back into him from the deck.

"But all those who live and do not possess the gift of flight from birth dream of it, asleep and when awake." He continued.

"Why not pluck the fruit of our current good fortune, and enjoy what so many others cannot and have not ever been able to enjoy for countless generations? We are standing on a ship that sails the sky instead of the sea, it is the dream of so many of the world's children and dreamers made real. The dream of flight is universal, my dearest treasure. I wished to fly like a bird since I was a child, and I know you daydreamt the same thing, as we all do when young. To me it is magic and it has set my heart beating almost as lightly as when I first met you. I wish for you to feel the same, and to enjoy this with me."

She clutched his vest and gazed transfixed at him. Each moment together had been a small reminder of why she had fallen in love with him, this one was not in any way small. He had always gazed with wonder at the world around him, something she had always tried to do since meeting him and now had forgotten how to.

He lifted her and placed her on his shoulders, and moved toward the edge of the deck.

Here the slipstream of air moved by the ship met the air it cut through. The wind sent Freya's hair and ears softly whipping all about her head. It made her feel as if she could take flight as well at any moment, her feet being off the ground only heightened the sensation and she tightened her legs around Fratley's head, and he tightened his grip around her ankles.

The cloudbanks towered and glowed orange-gold in the afternoon sun. Immense cumulus formations towered over the airship like mountains and overhanging outcrops. When the hull pushed against or through one, it softly yielded and sometimes poured over the deck. Young ones would play in the white aethereal fluff as it rolled over the planking and others near the railing would trail their hands out and try to grab and hold handfuls of it.

The breeze was strong yet inoffensive, it was warm and gave her no discomfort. The moisture of the clouds lovingly deposited dew on her nose.

Through her feet she had felt the vague but ever-present thrumb of the steam engines and through even his she felt it still. It combined with the more noticeable regular sweep of the rotating airscrew propeller blades. It was deep, consistent, rythmatic. It seemed to keep time over all she saw as a great metronome. The ship gently rocked as soft wind currents met her hull from this way and that.

She craned her neck and looked down on a floor of only clouds. It was as if one could leap from the ship and fall into a bed of them and enwrap themselves in impossibly soft warmth. The sun glinted off the crests of the floating wetness and cast rainbow here and there.

El Adrel crested the wave of a high cloudbank beside the voluminous form of a thunderhead, gold on one side and dark violet on the other. The cloud split under her bow and pushed to both sides like wake in the water, great and sublime puffs of softness floating away.

A sunbeam struck one at an angle and it showered part of the ship, and Freya, in sudden vibrant color. She saw as her lunar white hair turned every color in the world in its highest saturation as it billowed around her. Extending her fingers to try and halt its wild flight, she found them glowing similarly. The reflection off her diminutive shiny claws flooded her vision with sparkling stars.

She became aware of the presence of following birds. In her reverie on the ship she had absolutely failed to notice them. Doves and Gulls, Trick Sparrows, HedgeWards and even a large gray Puk Puk soared and wheeled about and rode the currents surrounding the airship. One or two would periodically sweep down and snatch a morsel thrown by a passenger, or alight on the deck or railing to rest its wings. The time they spent laughing at the gigantic mechanical contrivance that had the audacity to fly through their sky was equaled by the time spent enjoying the respite it provided.

She found herself smiling softly but uncontrollably. An undercurrent of laughter was present but could not escape, held back by sublime tranquility.

Anything she had dreamt of flight was overshadowed by the actuality. Now that she could enjoy the sensation without misery and loneliness blocking her view and feeling of all that was around her, she found it better than she had ever imagined.

Below, Fratley felt her body relax and grow warmer. He had achieved at least some of his goal and at this was filled with quiet joy. He kissed her inner thigh. She responded by again tightening her legs around him. She wished for nothing more than for him to turn his head around.

Again understanding her thoughts, Fratley shut his eyes and bent his knees with silent, breathy, unrestrainable laughter and nearly fell to the deck, and she followed suit. She gently put her hands in his hair and stroked his ears in an unspoken I love you.

He moved them to the bow, he wanted to perch his beloved on the very apex of the airship and let her experience being immersed in forward flight with the entire world before her. She knew what he intended and was suddenly filled with a deep excitement.

It was better than she imagined it and the constant gentle wind before her forced her to inhale involuntarily and draw a deep breath of the freshest air she had ever taken into herself. The clouds rolled under the bow as if the airship quietly and smoothly walked across and above the world on a gigantic invisible set of long legs, as the ground disappeared underneath one as they walked. The bowsprit assuredly pointed their way home, although they could not see it. She felt his body under her subtly keeping time with the engine's steady beat, as one does when lost in music. She loved how much he loved this.

Gaia was not visible, so complete was the cloud cover beneath them. The sky seemed endless, and without an earth or a horizon.

Something else caught their eye. Further forward and under the edge of the foredeck directly at the base of the upturned bowsprit they made out a familiar tin helmet.

Freya shifted on his shoulders to look forward and Fratley followed with his step as if he was an extension of herself.

Steiner stood, peering forward from the small hawspipe cavity around the bowsprit, his sword drawn but laid at his side. Fratley saw him, too.

Freya could only imagine what he felt but knew she imagined it accurately, she wished to help this man she had shared adventure and hardship and good guidance with. She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it. She thought better of it.

At this moment, anything she said would most assuredly make things worse.

She made to dismount and Fratley helped her, but not the way she anticipated. She had meant to slide down his back but he turned her around and lifted her down in front of him, kissing her crotch and lower belly and breasts as he did so. By the time their faces met she was flaming in blush.

She wanted nothing more than to be safely inside with him. The sky was far too large.

"Has it been half an hour?" She panted.

"Surely." He kissed her. "If not, we force our way in."

"Engine fire look like kitchen stove, no?" -Quina Quen

Puck found himself on a gallery deck along a wall, looking over a scene unlike any he had seen before.

Gigantic and ponderous machinery whirled and pulsed and pushed back and forth. Brass-capped blocks of iron on trusses straddled immense cranks and shafts and levers barely discernible in a dance of furious and complex motion. Plates and plaques mounted on everything told of the locations of builders, and various facts and figures unfathomable to him about what machine they were affixed to. The room was hot and close with humidity and continued onward it seemed forever into the dark.

The entire place smelled fragrantly but intensely of lubricating oil, something almost entirely new to Puck. The smell carried with it only memories of very specific places in the industrial district of Lindblum when he had spent time there as a pickpocket.

Men worked tirelessly here and there performing every imaginable task, none of which he understood.

He found himself taken aback that, despite the dim and toilsome environment, everything he looked at was in some way beautiful. The machinery bore striking symmetry and architectural features that he found pleasing, metals of different colors were artfully arranged and contrasted with each other and the despite its size and imposing nature, the sound it produced was musical and percussive, and somehow very quiet. There was something very satisfying to him about listening to it, as he had always loved music and felt similarly when listening to a favorite piece. The sound occurred in time with the complex visual symphony.

He found his foot tapping with the beat in the floor. Almost entirely forgetting his emotional turmoil and somewhat rested from a nap underneath the crate but aching from its discomfort, he descended with inquisitive curiosity into the great confined display of wonders.

"Who's this?" Asked a gruff voice.

Puck turned to find a tall, brawny man towering over him in loose oil-stained slacks.

"I'm Puck." He expected the usual response and was both surprised and grateful when he did not get it.

"Hello Puck, you aren't really supposed to be down here you know."

"Sorry about that. It's just really interesting in here."

"You're right about that." The man smiled, and extended a gigantic calloused hand. "My name is Giffard, I'm the watch engineer for the next four hours, and will be again eight hours after that."

"Pleased to meet you. I'm…." Puck stopped himself. "I'm from Burmecia."

"Is this your first time on an airship?"

"No, but it's my first time being in….."

"An engine room?"

"Is that what it's called?"

Giffard laughed. "What else would you call a room where all the engines are."

Puck continued to gaze this way and that.

"How does this all work?" He finally asked. "I've always wanted to know, and I've never understood how something as heavy as a ship can fly in the air."

Giffard grinned. "Come with me."

The fire doors of the boilers were as great hungry mouths, wide and low and pouring forth orange light and intense heat whenever they were opened. At the gesture of Giffard's hand, a stoker brought one of the iron doors open. The light blinded Puck and the heat made him shield his face.

"You've seen a kettle on a stove before."

"Y – yes." Puck replied.

"This is the same, but bigger. Think of the boiler as a big kettle with tubes running through it. These fires are inside of tubes that are surrounded on all sides by water, they're called Morrison tubes. You'll also hear them called fireboxes." Giffard went closer to the hulking iron creation and gestured with his entire body. "The fire's hot gasses and smoke go back down the tube, and then through a big space where it turns around, and then through rows of much smaller tubes back through the water. From here they go into the smokeboxes." He pounded his hand on an overhang over the fire doors with more gigantic doors on it. "From here it goes right up the chimneys and out."

"What happens if you open those doors?" Puck asked.

"We'd both turn black." Giffard smiled. "That's where the soot from the fire collects and we only open those when we are cleaning out in dock."

Puck nodded.

"You need air to draw the fire, the height of the chimney helps but it isn't enough especially with a bad wind." Giffard let puck to a howling round-sided box with a wheel spinning in it visible through a hole in the side. A machine with a brass cylinder and another large wheel drove it with a shaft. "This is a steam engine driving a fan, just like the big ones drive the ship's airscrew propellers to move it through the air. The fan drives air through the fires in the boiler and up the chimney."

Puck understood.

"You're a good teacher."

"Only because I had good teachers!" Giffard beat his chest over his heart with a fist. He pointed over the row of boilers, four on either side of the narrow aisle where the stokers worked, eight in total. In the dark Puck made out large pipes connecting them.

"The water in the boilers turns into steam from the heat, but unlike a kettle we don't let it escape, it stays trapped inside and attains a great pressure. Come."

They went back through a door to the room of whirling music where they had met.

"Put out your arm."

Puck did so.

Giffard extended his hand and placed his on Pucks. He gently began to push toward him. "This is pressure. With enough pressure I will move your arm. With enough steam pressure, we can move the piston in an engine cylinder. The faster I move your arm, or the steam moves a piston, the more work we've done in a given amount of time. That's called power. With enough power developed, we can lift and move a heavy object using a propeller."

He pointed to one of the great iron boxes supported on columns above the whirling machinery.

"Those are cylinders. Think of it like a room with a moving wall." He spread his arms wide. "Steam under pressure wants to get bigger. Much, much bigger. If you put it in a room, it tries to make the room bigger. If you give the room a moving wall, it can." He cupped his hands to form an approximation of a cylindrical shape. "This is the cylinder and the piston is a flat disc that can move back and forth in it."

He gestured to the machinery in motion underneath the box.

"Going back and forth is all well and good but it won't do to drive a propeller. You know how a propeller works?"

"No."

"You've played with a Galilean before?"

Puck was impressed. He had many memories of twisting the stem of the small feathered toy between his forepaws to spin and then letting it take off into the air, he was surprised someone who wasn't from Burmecia knew what it was.

"Yes, I have."

"Then you understand how an airscrew propeller works!"

"When the piston gets pushed, there is a rod that connects to it and that comes outside the cylinder through something called a packing gland, this is just something to stop the steam from escaping out around the rod. The rod is attached to linkages that spin the crankshaft. There are valves driven by the crankshaft that allow the steam in and out of the cylinder at the right time."

He lead puck to the far side of the engine he had pointed to, above a shimmering silvery shaft spinning in the dim light. "These shafts drive the airscrews on those long masts that lift the ship. They push air downward, to pull the airship upward. Do you see?"

Puck nodded.

"Most of our engines drive these because it takes a lot of power to keep it in the air. Lifting is the hardest work. The engines further back are what can drive us forward and backward with the airscrews underneath us."

"Are there different kinds of steam engines?"

"Yes, thousands now. These are called non-dead-centering engines!"

Giffard pointed to something under the engine that looked like a great bronze cask with a rod furiously pumping in and out of it. "That's the wet-air pump. After the steam has been used in the engine to the point where it doesn't have enough energy to do anything else, it goes into rows of pipes in a tunnel through the ship's hull. There's a fan that blows cold air from the outside through this tunnel, it cools the steam in the pipes so much that it collapses back into water."

Giffard drew his hands together rapidly.

"Just the opposite of what's going on in the boiler, it collapses so small that it makes a vacuum and this helps pull the steam through the engines and gets them to make more power due to an increase in difference in pressure. The tubes in the tunnel are called a condenser, this pump is driven by the engine and pulls the water and any air in it out of the condenser and puts it in a tank, and then we use this pump next to it…"

He banged his fist on a much narrower and less visible cylinder next to the bronze cask shaped one, with a similar rod going in and out of it driven off of the same arm above. "We use this one to return that water to the boilers. It's a big circle, and the fire provides the energy to make it all happen."

Puck found he was able to mostly understand everything Giffard had told him.

"This is amazing."

"Yes, it is, steam engines are amazing. They made me who I am today, they use the properties of heat and water only to do whatever we can imagine."

Freya and Fratley did not unlock from each other after gently coming awake. Their weariness and the gentle rocking of the airship had put them right to sleep after they made love. They were not aware of the time, nor did they wish to be, but he was troubled.

"What are you thinking about?" She whispered.

"Everything at the tree, it's my fault."

"And how is that, my love?"

"You can't see how?"

"All I know is that Beatrix was finally given what she deserved." She hissed and he felt her breath grow hotter.

"It was my fear of Beatrix that caused me to leave you."

"Yes, and fear is powerful. My fear for you drove me to chase you. You left because of Beatrix, and those like her. She was responsible for not only the destruction of our two kingdoms, but for filling your heart with doubt and worry and for you becoming lost to me.

Nobody spoke the name of Sir Fratley with fear in other lands, because regardless of your prowess, you conducted yourself differently. It was she who set all of the events of our own misery and the misery of our people in motion. This was all her fault, not yours."

Fratley did not respond in words, he only held her tighter.

"I wish I could return to a time long passed and stop Jack, Adam, Dan and Learie from being harmed, so they could live full lives together as a family."

Freya felt a lump in her throat.

"They are together now."

"What does that even mean?" Fratley asked, looking at her.

She could not find words.

"My Freya, they tell me, and you tell me, that our souls come from the center of the world, and return there? And all those that were barred from returning became as wandering mist? What horrors are these… and how do we know that? How can you be sure? What became of all of them? What happens to us after we die? What will become of me, and you? I can't lose you again!"

Freya clung to him so hard he could feel her heartbeat through her entire grasp.

"I never used to think about things such as this, and now I can't stop, it hurts more than I could ever imagine."

"I feel it too, I hate it. Pain can make you run faster, and run longer, it can drive a person across the world. This is the same pain and fear that drove you from Burmecia and from me."

"Pain and fear are great drivers of all things. I did not know it so tangible. I did not dare think it the power to drive machinery. I can't believe humans were running engines on the pain and suffering of the dead."

He stopped again, lost in thought. "Perhaps pain and suffering and misery are the true driving forces of this world. It's not fair that living things have the capacity to feel such joy, and yet exist in such a world."

She did not feel that idealism in him anymore, and it scared her.

"Fratley, that story you told to Jack…"

She felt hot tears begin to fall on her forehead.

"I – I know it was stupid and foolhardy, my heart got the better of me…" He began.

"Do you know you would make such a good father…" She interrupted him.

He froze and she could feel his hair stand on end. She was suddenly as nervous and insecure as she was in the beginnings of her novitiate.

" Fratley – I'm sorr…"

He cut her off with a powerful kiss and he felt his tail worm its way around her legs.

The room was tiny and close. It had barely enough room for the bed, and only one small round window, and they both loved it.

"It's so cozy in here. I never needed or gave great care to lodgings so I was used to sleeping in places like this, but whenever I was in rooms like these I wanted nothing more than for you to be there with me. The smaller they were, the more I wished for you."

He rolled her over so she was on top of him and he kissed up into her and made her feel as if she would fly away, and then rolled her back securely underneath before the feeling became too intense. As he made her feel safe and warm, her gaze wandered from the tips of his ears to the amber and violet clouds against the pink sky outside the window.

Giffard's watch had ended. He and Puck sat perched high on the flying bridge in front of the imposing brass searchlight.

He handed the young rat a sandwich. Puck took it in grateful silence and let his gaze, too, wander to the sky. The red moon made itself visible in the haze of the late afternoon, and the clouds framed it in a way that could not be compared with anything else he had ever seen.

He had told the engineer only some of what has transpired that day.

"Cheer up lad." Giffard gave him a soft pat on the back. "It's not as bad as it seems."

Puck's gaze did not shift.

Empty ginbottles lay all over the floor.

The captain had long since become glued into an incensed trance on his dividers and had begun swinging them repeatedly between Burmecia and Cleyra, an imagined never-ending dance, and was now walking them across the chart in ever more complex imagined patterns. A knife stood on its handle atop the point marking Alexandria. Lindblum had been entirely barricaded by and covered in pencils.

It was evidently time for one those delightful little breakdowns again.

He was about to attempt to see how far he could wind out the pair of dividers until its spring snapped, when he was brought from his trance by a loud knocking at the door.

"It's not like you won't come in anyway!" He roared.

Bannister stuck his head in, his face white as a sheet.

"Captain, I'm not sure how, but we've run out of coal!"

Bancroft stared at him, and then grinned.

"Oh, good."

"…What?"

"Good!" The captain repeated loudly, grinning wider. "Now go away!"

Bannister recoiled in shock, remained for a moment and shut the door.

As soon as the door latched, Bancroft slammed his gigantic head into the table. The knife and pencils and dividers went everywhere, the ginbottles on the floor jumped into different positions.

Withdrawing slowly and taking almost no notice of the dull pain, he blankly surveyed the dull red stain and dent left behind with disdain. Wide eyed and slack-jawed, he lingered for a moment.

Then, for good measure, he abruptly repeated the motion with greater virulence. He took great catharsis and a freeing sort of joy in feeling his face crumple under the tremendous impact and feeling the wood under the chart give way. The table buckled, and his chair jumped and settled with the reactive force of driving himself down into the former.

Re-entering the sphere of cognizant thought, he began to furiously turn over the problem he had just been rudely presented with in his mind.

"Oh Frabjous Day… What ever could be next."

Mistakes had been made before in the transition away from mist engines to steam engines. Before, had there been mist to intake, the ship would fly. One simply did not stray far from where the mist lay and the engines would keep running.

These steam engines were far more demanding and required vast stores of fuel and tanks of makeup water and many other things, and quantities against the weight of the ship's load suddenly mattered. Weights and measures was the new order of the day.

He had been in too much of a gin-induced fog during his last tabulation and, as he remembered it in fact every tabulation since leaving Alexandria.

"Cooler heads do always prevail, be clevveerrr Bancroft…."

The bridge was fully staffed; Giffard had just finished describing the various telegraphs and steering engine to Puck, but none of the crew present had been informed as to the error made or the lack of fuel.

The sight of Bannister sprinting to the captain's door, hurriedly discussing something with him, turning away with a look of horror, running to the helmsman to say something and then not doing so, and then running even faster back from whence he had come, justifiably caused concern in all those present.

This concern was magnified when the captain's door smashed open so violently it nearly broke from its hinges, a familiar boot quickly retracted and Bancroft thrust himself through and cried; "Burn the furniture!"

Those present collectively stared at him.

"Don't just stand idly by damn you, I said burn the furniture!"

Freya and Fratley were awoken from their deep slumber by a loud knocking at their door. They both startled.

Slowly looking toward the door, the knocking repeated.

"Just a moment!" Fratley spoke up frustratedly, and then muttered, "Rest is all we ask for…"

He found his tail again involuntarily locked with hers. The rest of her was reluctant to let go as well. He kissed her.

It was an impossible task to unlock their tails. Their bodies again showed their true colors. Still connected together, with Freya silently laughing, he partially robed, and hid her behind the door as he cracked it open.

An airman stood before the door.

"I'm terribly sorry but the chief engineer requires all of the furnishings in your room."

"What?" Fratley asked, after a long pause.

"It is a matter of some urgency." The crewman replied.

"What sort of urgency?" Fratley rarely ever showed frustration or exasperation but now they freely showed themselves.

"Engine crew's orders." The crewman evaded.

Fratley expression and stature changed and he instantly yielded.

"Listen, it really is an emergency and they told me if I said a word about it to anyone I'd be stapled to a bulkhead and they'd use me as a dartboard. You don't know what kind of man our captain is, he isn't making a joke."

A sudden warmth and gyrating tightness around Fratley's tail and badly masked snorts and squeaks indicated Freya's mirth. He found it impossible to maintain his intimidating presentation and his mouth quivered.

The crewman tried to look into the room "Who's…"

"You shall have our furnishings, give me a moment."

He pulled himself in and looked at Freya. Her face was red and she was streaming tears of laughter, and softly banged her fist against her own chest in an attempt to keep quiet. He shot her a perplexed look and spread his forepaws, asking her what to do. She hadn't dressed. She drew against him and indicated for him to pull the door open. He did so and drew it completely around on its hinges so that it concealed her between itself and the wall. Her cleverness never creased to amaze him.

Fratley drew his arm out, allowing the crewman in. Not one, but three entered the room much to his chagrin, and began dismantling and sliding everything made of wood out the door, including their bed.

"Hey!" Freya complained from behind the door as two of the boys began to slide the dresser out, causing Fratley to blush. The three of them instantly stopped.

"Our clothes are in there, I'll thank you to leave that be until we get them out! And if you mean to take our bed, at least leave the blankets and pillows behind!"

The three of them sheepishly left the room, and were made to wait outside as she dressed and carefully arranged her and his meager garments and items they had brought with them on the floor. Their tails finally untwisted from each other as she busied herself.

Once this had been done, out went the heavy wooden dresser and behind it the reading desk chair and tiny nightstand, even the small wood-framed mirror affixed to the wall. When they tried to take the window curtains, Fratley stopped them.

"You can't have those either."

When they had finished, the first crewman stood before the door, saluted them and remarked; "The Regency airship program of Lindblum thanks you!" and drew the door shut before Fratley could have the satisfaction of doing so.

"What in all the world was that about?" he asked her as she stacked the last of the few articles they had brought with them.

"I don't know, but I'd really like to find out." She smiled. Something about all this would not cease being hilarious to her, and it was contagious to him.

"So would I."

Fully dressed, the two rats strode arm in arm down the walkways and stairs of the superstructure. Men moved furniture in a flow of brigades through groups of outraged and mumbling passengers, and it did not take them long to find out where the flow converged. Coming under the spacious arches of the promenade deck with others who had come to watch, they found that a stout metal door stood open and strong arms shoved through it every conceivable object made of wood that had not been bolted down.

Freya looked up at him and pulled him gently to the side to an adjacent door. They went through it and into a corridor, and she deftly navigated them a very short distance to another door and unbolted it.

In front of them lay a stairway down which all the furniture and crew bearing it were travelling down, and it proceeded into a great dark space presided over on either side by what they recognized as the immense boilers of the ship. The room was hot and smelled of fire and the fire doors opened and shut with the hands of the stokers, pouring forth rays of orange light and heat.

As their eyes adjusted to the flashing reds and darkness, they saw that all the ships furniture was being piled against the back of the room, and thrown into the fire doors whenever they opened.

Chairs and end tables and small shelves went in in one piece. Larger tables, dressers, bed frames and cupboards were smashed into smaller pieces with fire-axes before being fed in. Linens and tablecloths, pillows, blankets, silk drapes, curtains, napkins, flags, sashes and bunting went in in great balled masses. A chessboard and all its pieces went in, as did a grotesque carving of a gnome, as did a tacky and un-picturesque lignum hat stand. The wooden sticks and balls from the ninepins row up on deck weren't spared, either.

A grandfather clock had its works quickly pulled out of it by a stoker and in went its wooden casing, glass and all, followed by its long pendulum.

One tall and well dressed ship's attendant with a gruff voice and almost unintelligible accent proudly declared how he had pulled apart most of the grand staircase over the din of the boiler room, and he and several others began throwing in the bannisters and balusters and beautiful finely made varnished smooth railings and finials. Another group of airmen slid in a grand piano and a harpsichord from the ballroom which that staircase lead to, and began smashing them to pieces.

It was when the particularly short and angry man who could have only been the ship's cook began throwing several fine paintings into the fires with such a glee and passionate dedication it seemed like he had been wanting to do so all his life, that their mirth began to get the better of them.

Freya detected Fratley rising on his toes.

"I predict that most of those dressers haven't had the clothing retrieved from them." She speculated flatly.

He could not keep back the laughter he felt and buried his face in his forepaws. She felt it with him and she nearly fell.

They chased each other back to their room.

On the newfound source of fuel for her fires, El Adrel descended through the clouds, and did not find a path out of them. The warm hues and towering banks of early evening sky turned to the familiar rainy gray-blue of the Burmecian fog of rain as she plowed lower and lower. They were near, but no one new exactly how near.

Flying without a visible horizon or sight of the ground was dangerous at the best of times with all the crew at the ready, but the situation with the emergency fuel source had thrown ship's business end over end and navigation was compromised as a result.

Bancroft, terrified of running El Adrel aground or wrecking her upon a mountainside, had ordered the airship slowed to very nearly a walking pace, and when no ground had made itself apparent, had slowed the descent as well using his silvered stopwatch against the mercury filled atmospheric manometers used to measure altitude. She hung in the air and although her progress forward was minute, she burnt fuel at an alarming rate to stay airborne.

They were losing daylight and the situation could not have been worse. The foggy blue began to darken all about the airship. Up shouted orders above the bridge. "Lumen!" The word echoed many times, and the immense searchlight perched right atop the flying bridge sprang to life.

Through a door in its side, one of the crew opened the lamp gas valve and sparked the striker. The blue, dim, hot flame of gas shot forward and as the valve was opened, it impinged upon a sphere of Sunstone suspended in two forked brackets. Upon being heated, the stone, as per its name, began to glow with a fierce white-gold intensity, and its light was cast by the sprawling glass parabolic reflector at the back of the lamp. He adjusted the brackets forward and backward within the lamp on a screw until the reflector focused the lightsource into a solid beam.

Two men worked the gigantic lantern left and right, up and down on its bronze gimbal with sets of handwheels on either side. The sweep of the beam cut the fog like a sword brandished by a silver star.

At last through the fog, the dark rocky ground became visible, first as a disc at the end of the lamp's beam and then as a visible floor. At last a bearing as to their height and speed could be made. Bancroft ordered level flight and slower still. He had the horizontal screw engines completely stopped and the airship coasted forward.

The sense of urgency was tenfold when he was told the furniture was almost gone and the crew had begun to burn their shoes. The ship had to be landed, but the ground was craggy and anything but level.

The great peering eye of the searchlight moved this way and that, searching the ground for anywhere even remotely flat and free of boulders. To save on steam and thusly fuel burnt, any and all machinery deemed non-essential had been shut down and this included the steering engine, and four men laboriously worked the gigantic manwheel at the front of the bridge, moving the rudder by muscle alone and un-assisted.

"Burmecia!" cried the man on watch, turning from his telescope.

Specks of warm light became apparent through the rain off the portside, still very far away.

A voice tube whistled, and a crewman pulled the whistle plug from its end.

"We're losing the fires, captain!"

He could not chance it.

"We must land immediately, do not attempt to make the city."

The searchlight had stopped its sweep and focused upon a patch of earth just to port. It traced the length of the hull on the ground.

"We can only hope, slip port and set down!"

The airship leaned, and slowly slipped to its left. The engines shed minute amounts of lift and the great white hull sunk lower and lower to the rocky ground. She met it with a gentle grating and creaked in protest from the uneven support.

The gauges on the bridge wall showed the steam pressure beginning to fall away, the crew downstairs did their very best to keep the engine speeds to those ordered.

"Fifty revolutions…."

She listed slightly to port.

"Fourty…."

She ceased, and slowly righted.

"Twenty…"

More quiet creaks and groans as the airship shed more lift.

"All stop."

The ambient noise within the ship tapered away as the machinery came to a stop, and the airscrews slowed and ceased to turn.

Bancroft drew a great breath and expelled a sigh of relief, which masked the noise of the ship beginning to shift again.

Suddenly his worst nightmare became real.

El Adrel began to tilt to starboard, and as she did so, the tilt gained speed. The sound of rock and earth grinding and breaking underneath her hull permeated the entire ship right up to the bridge, and several cries of surprise and dismay echoed from outside in all directions. Bancroft and all present instinctively leaned in the opposite direction as if this would somehow stop her.

"Damn this day, she's going over!" He muttered. "Steadyyyy you bastard ship!"

Then there was a lurch. The tilt slowed, hesitated, briefly and incrementally continued, and stopped. El Adrel finally came to rest at a raucous angle.

All were silent for quite some time and the only noise was the sound of small objects and ginbottles sliding across the floor in neighboring rooms and in the spaces underneath them, and the pounding of the rain on the roof and decks. No one dared speak.

Thanks to the demands made by Adelbert Steiner and the events of the day, Bancroft had been awake for the last two days without rest. Any crewman that came to ask him questions quickly deferred to the first mate or tiptoed away at the sight of him as the finalities of securing the tilted ship were made.

Without steam, the radiators had ceased to work and most of the airship had grown cold.

As the activity began to wind down, Bancroft approached Bannister.

"Is the ship out of danger?" He asked.

"Yes, captain, and we've inspected the engines. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Right then. Shore her up further in any way you can, I don't trust things as they are. I suppose clean up and organize anything we haven't burnt."

"Aye."

"And mister Bannister…"

"Yes?"

"When all is said and done, I order all of you to go to sleep."

Bannister made no remark about the beds having been burnt.