– O, FRABJOUS DAY! –

–

"I don't want her to leave! Dad won't let me out of Burmecia, I can't follow her!" William fumed.

"Then you must tell her that you want her to stay." Puck replied.

"I can't. I know she wants to go home more than anything, and I'm way too young!"

"Then at least tell her how you feel."

William went red.

"I can't."

"Of course you can."

"You're the King! Promise me you'll tell her."

Puck hung his hands exasperated, but he understood William's pain far too well.

"I will."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

"And tell her to please come back soon!"

Voltaire had come in from the rainy gray and landed within Burmecian walls the day prior. With her from Alexandria came as many travellers and supplies as her small hold spaces could carry, but most of the former and all of the latter were quickly hastened aboard El Adrel, bound for Cleyra.

Among those that boarded El Adrel were Cleyran survivors that had convened in Burmecia from across the world, a few native Burmecians who had lost their homes or mates or families to the war, Claire, Nina, Sharon and Shannon, tired Kildea, Wylan, Kurn and Nella, Puck, and the Ninth Regent, and any object of Burmecian origin deemed useful to assist any possible need at the great tree, if it truly did exist again.

With these, and the coal delivered upon the last visitation, the War ship and the White ship lifted from the ground without incident and both pointed their bowsprit and ram South and West at the Vube desert.

El Adrel and Voltaire coasted effortlessly on the updrafts from the amber sand far below. The rising sun made their metals shine and covered their decks with warm rays, as did the laughter of the playing children.

Banter ran up and down from bridge to engine room and from bridge to bridge by the light of telegraph lamp as the airships and their captains raced to match speeds.

Cid let out a hearty laugh, looking from afar at his own battlecruiser. Bancroft leaned forward against the steering engine telemotor as if this would somehow add speed to his airship.

"Forward my beauty, ffforward!" He hissed, a fierce and sobered look in his eyes, intent on the unseen prize over the horizon. The Regent pondered, could it be he had forgotten his gin in the joy of his airship finally come into her own again, or had he simply run out?

The stokers below were laughing up the voice tubes at the blessing of good dry coal, and wisps of steam escaped from the safety valve pipes behind the funnels indicating all was as it should be with the men and machinery below stairs.

Cid knew Voltaire's captain to be a good sport, and that they were in fact barely working her engines. What appeared to be close race was in fact a trivial cloud stroll for the silver-rammed warship. He knew should she fully extend herself, she was capable of three times their current speed.

He closed his eyes and listened to the engines' steady beat.

The captain of Voltaire shortly ruined it by hanging on the steam valve for his whistle. Bancroft finished the job by responding overzealously with his. The bridge windows shook with the noise.

The voices of the two airships harmonized with each other and both ships took their turn serenading the other. The bronze whistles had come from the same foundry and machine shop in Lindblum and were tuned very well to each other, differing in note but sharing the same fifths and key. Mothers covered their children's ears. None of the long-tailed passengers had ever heard such a noise before or in such a context and as the throaty metallic vocalizations faded in their long ears, it was overcome by waves of laughter and cheering from the decks.

Puck pretended to fly with the ship, his arms spread wide as he ran across the deck, laughing.

The joy of the others around him been the catalyst for him to awaken from his thoughts, the wind exhilarated him, the warm air and rising sun filled him with life, the sensation of flight unencumbered him from his turmoil if only for a moment. For the first time since leaving for Cleyra the first time, he felt Young.

He stopped cold and his vision turned rosy when he caught sight of Nina, her head tilted back as she leaned on the railing with the others, long golden hair billowing softly in the wind.

She was to him a picture framed by all those others and the airship itself brimming with happy anticipation, hope and the wonder of flight and travel to somewhere they dared dream of as better. In that moment, he made a decision that landed in the well of his soul.

He must always be surrounded by these feelings, and see the world like this. These feelings must be those that live in his people. And he must win the heart of this beautiful one.

"Sandstorm starboard!"

"That would be Cleyra. Starboard rudder twenty degrees!"

El Adrel pointed herself at the distant, towering, swirling funnel.

Voltaire bid a quick farewell salute of her whistle and the crack and bang of a green flare fired from the signal bridge. With a change in the sound of her engines, her airscrews became a blur and the battlecruiser shot forward, splitting the air with spiraling vapor trails from the tips of her whirling, whistling blades.

Bancroft watched in dismay and shame as she demonstrated her true capabilities, becoming small and disappearing toward the horizon.

"Bad form, bloody showoff!" He bellowed, reaching for the telegraph nearest him but becoming more incensed when he found its lever and its pointer both already resting on "Ahead full".

"I'm scared." Said Sharon.

"So am I." replied Shannon.

"You are?"

"Of course."

"Why?"

"The same reason you are. I've been wanting to go home forever, but now that we are, I'm terrified it will just hurt us more."

Sharon sniffed. "I don't know if I can bear to see it. It could never be the same without Eileen."

Shannon embraced her. The feeling of comfort was met with the pain of the memory of a similar embrace just before their home had been torn off the world by fire and had sent them whirling through the air.

The sandstorm churned and darkened the sky over the bow.

"All stop!"

The telegraphs rang in reply and El Adrel coasted on warm air, but as drew near the towering funnel of the sandstorm, it lessened, tapering down from the top. Emerald Green resplendence began to crest its amber and beige waves.

The frothing mass of white bodies suddenly shifted forward on the deck to the bow and packed to the railings. The crewmen on the bridge could make out a hundred craning necks and raised ears.

"Retain steerageway, ahead slow!"

Ringing above, ringing below, the hull shifted with the engines.

The bow pierced the spiraling wind around the tree and pushed the airship upwards. The pitching of the hull seemed to go unnoticed by the throngs crowding the deck. Through the vortex of hot air the sturdy airship pushed until suddenly under her was a wide circular floor of shimmering green leaves.

Now the silence turned to Joy, even over the noise of the wind behind her and her airscrews and machinery. The sound seemed to lighten the ship, and noticeably.

"Maintain level!" Came the call. "Shed lift!"

The iron hull still gently rose as she circled overtop the great shimmering tree and only began to settle once the engine power had been cut in half. Bancroft and his crew exchanged raised eyebrows, and then looked back out over their deck.

Through these past years of wartime relief and the trickle of refugees from every corner of the world, the Captain and his crew had become used to only the miserable covering the deck. Shadows and echoes of people, bent and downtrodden, until even a single playing child became foreign. It had been why the Captain had turned to drinking such inordinate amounts. It was responsible for quite a lot of slack jawed bad habits aboard ship.

This was entirely new.

None of them had ever seen happy Burmecians or Cleyrans before, let alone joyful ones. He could not in fact remember the last time he had seen any large group of any kind of people or creatures in a state of happiness. The whole deck below them became awash in different shades of wagging tails.

All present found it utterly infectious, Cid's mustache increased its inclination by several degrees, his eyes sparkled and he seemed to stand slowly taller on his toes.

Bancroft turned a shade of red.

Are You alright? Cid asked.

Red turned to purple.

"Were you just…smiling?"

Bancroft hurled his boot at him.

Kurn appeared at the door.

"Captain, they are demanding to speak with you!"

"Good heavens, what have I done wrong this time…"

Nella squeezed into the doorway beside Kurn, her face full of such sunrays it turned the bridge to gold.

"I never thought it possible, please, my people wish to celebrate…"

Before Bancroft could say anything, Cid interjected.

"We shall burn the furniture!"

Bancroft violently stamped on the Regent's foot. His mustache increased in inclination even further in response.

Any crewmember not glued to his station began to run out of the bridge, and down to the decks. Bancroft followed suit, screaming fiercely an endless list of items which were not to be burned, broken, overturned, moved, looked at, or otherwise disturbed, under penalty of instant death by his own hands.

Nella ran down the narrow stairway after him, trailing laughter that buoyantly lingered in the corridor. She paused before the corner at the bottom and looked back. "Come my dearest!"

Kurn and Cid stared after her.

"Quite a woman." Cid stated.

"A drop of rainbow who has become earthbound." Kurn corrected him, and followed her.

"This will be the new Festival for Lindblum you know." Cid called down. Kurn stopped where his wife had just been.

"What?"

"Yes, Reconstruction day, in which we celebrate the rediscovery and reconstruction of Cleyra and the helping hand of captain Ellenroad Bancroft and his intrepid vessel El Adrel, where furniture in vast quantities is burnt in the boilers of our great metropolitan powerhouses. Among other things, I can think of no better way to annoy my colleague."

"No one is going to give up their furniture every year for that mess."

"That's why we will build it specifically for the festival."

"Regent, that is completely idiotic."

"Far less so than the senseless torment and killing of living things." Cid raised his eyebrows, his mustache finally readjusting to its original position. "As your drop of rainbow would say."

Kurn was silent.

The airship alighted gently upon the tree, cradled by a trillion green leaves and a hundred thousand softly bending boughs. She did not tilt or scrape her bottom.

"All stop, boiler room cease stoking and prepare to stop feedwater!"

Before her airscrews had ceased to turn, a frothing tide of white noses, ears and tails overflowed the deck, pouring down ropes and rope ladders, out of portholes and windows and gangway doors, sliding down the sides of the tumblehome hull and bouncing down into their waiting tree. The white tide ran in every direction as it met the green, as each individual began to explore what they had thought lost forever and ever.

Each rat formed a roaming white dot. Groups and pairs and small families, some diving under the green and re-appearing sporadically somewhere else.

Cid watched as he inched his way down the ram bow by a rope on a pair of skids he had fastened to his boots. Reaching the end of the slope where the plating became a vertical drop, he dangled at the end of the rope until he was caught by white forepaws.

"Welcome to Cleyra, Regent!"

"I never thought I would see my home again, it looks so new…"

Cid surveyed as the rats who had caught him lowered him against the floor of leaves. He was extremely unsteady as he felt his feet meet yielding branches with gaps between them.

All around, the tree formed meadows with its canopy. Violet and blue blossoms dotted the green by the millions, and the color shifted as each gentle puff of wind disturbed the surface. Hills and gullies were actually large branches and offshoots pushing up through the leaves. The beige waves of the distant sandstorm licked over the green horizon made by the tree.

"So… this is your home…" He pondered. "I've never been here before, how similar is it to what it once was?"

"There used to be our settlement, but the tree feels just the same. Cleyra was always the tree, our settlement was just built upon it."

"But it's grown now!"

"So much bigger..."

"It will take us so long to rebuild here."

"I want to help you." Cid replied. "In any way I can."

He turned to look as four joyful figures flashed by.

"You can't catch me!"

"I always have!"

Long golden hair and laughter trailed behind quick bodies glistening in the sunlight.

One caught another in a flurry of squeaks, another went to lean against and examine a large branch towering up above the leafy plain, and the fourth joined her. He saw Puck moving after them, as if magnetized.

"I love this place." Cid said, more to himself than anyone around him.

"We love it, too."

"What's wrong?"

Cid was abruptly on his knees.

For a moment, the Regent saw the tree burning around him. Laughter was replaced with screaming and pain. Dwellings he had never seen but could only imagine the form of and those in them turning to ash, and in the red sky above a pronounced absence of any of the rams, airscrews or cannonade of the Fine and Fair Fighting Fleet he had flaunted like rings on his fingers.

"Regent?"

"I – I'm sorry…"

Nina had followed Claire when she dove below the leaves and found herself in a little shaded cavern arched over by branches just under their surface, one of hundreds in a labyrinth of dim, moist, sunbeamed corridors.

Approaching her sister, she saw her expression had turned from frolic to fret.

"What's wrong?"

"I want Eileen to be here!"

"I…"

Claire turned her head away.

"I do too." Nina whispered.

"Do you think she's out there somewhere, still trying to come home?"

Nina sniffled. Many answers stuck in her throat at once. She lay down in the hollow beside her sister.

"We will get through this, together, the way we always have. The four of us together."

"But it was always five!"

Nina winced.

"All we ever knew how to do was dance and listen to the Oracle's stories and the high priest's wisdom, but I had no idea the world was such a big place. How can we ever make anything we had before again?"

"With ease, now that our home tree lives again."

"Shannon always made everything look so easy. I don't know how she survived out there so easily, all alone."

"It was never easy for her, Claire…"

"Is he still following us?" Shannon asked.

"The brown kid?" Sharon looked back over her shoulder.

"Yes, he's strange!"

"I think that's Puck!"

"What, King Puck?!"

The small brown head behind them vanished underneath the leaves.

Puck's footing lost the branch and he tumbled down through yielding branches and dew-wet green, and into springy white softness.

The softness reacted with a squeak. So did he.

He turned from brown to bright red when his face met Nina's. He felt her breath against his.

"Puck!"

"You're so beautiful…" He murmured, his lips seeming to act of their own accord before he could stop them. He was dazed more at his own phantom statement than having fallen on the object of his desire and being face to face with her. She was far more beautiful up close than from peeping out of corners at a distance.

"I'm – what?"

Puck froze. His body had betrayed him by speaking and now did so again by refusing to take flight.

Nina's expression became one of bewilderment. Claire's became one of brightest beaming joy and mirth.

"House engines port and starboard, shafts in to open up!"

The great wooden deck of El Adrel opened downward like gigantic trap door to expose the cargo hold packed almost to deck level with goods.

"Shafts out for the crane!"

Kildea and Wylan had quietly presided over this great burden being loaded into the ship while in Burmecia. They had patiently taken the time to describe what stone their cathedral had been built of, the color and recipe for the Cleyran form of stained glass, shingle material and its preferred age, what was needed to make the sort of twine used to bind their dwelling rooftops and the forms and origins of Cleyran hand tools. The kind of food, spices and ingredients their people preferred, all down to the most minute detail, the shapes and methods of creating silverware and crockery, the clay used in their chimneys and the special fibers of their windmill sails, and how Cleyran knitting and spinning wheels were built.

To that end, the airship had been piled with all these things that could be built on short notice, and as many supplies and goods as could be found to create them once at the tree. This as well as tarps and temporary shelters, lamps and lamp oil, candles and nonperishables and barrels of brandy and beer and other housewarming gifts from throughout Burmecia and afar. Enough to make a real start of things.

And now the great steam driven arm of the crane forward of the gaping door in the deck lifted these things out and placed them gingerly amongst the leafy green. The ship's crew dispatched each load and lot of tonnage into the air, and the rats received them as they came down. The airships frames and hull groaned as she slowly shed her immense and heavy load. The supplies dispersed around and under the leaves as the unloading continued so as to avoid producing one localized piled mass that would break through the branches and go tumbling down the tree.

The furniture again moved throughout the ship and across the deck, but this time not to the boilers. Any that had not been burnt went down with the Cleyrans into their tree. Most of them had noticed it was built with a peculiarly familiar Burmecian touch and had demanded it not be burnt despite the overzealous Cid's sense of humor, and had requested to take it with them.

"Stairways, stone, and roofbuck." Kildea reiterated. "These are most essential to establishing an initial settlement. It will make our people able to create and reach shelter.

"Roofbuck?" Giffard asked.

"The proper term for what you call roofing clay tiles."

"How do you make the stairways?" Cid asked with interest.

"They are carved into the trunks and strongest tributary branches of the tree. They are our streets and thoroughfares. Flat places are rare in a tree and we will have to carve those for ourselves much later.

"What do you need?"

"I have preserved these drawings of the traditional Cleyran tools. They are our records, I only was able to save some. These records have been kept since the first settlement was built here long ago, and record how each feature was made. These tools have their origins in Burmecia, they can still be made there. We were never toolmakers, we had kept the originals under our cathedral in case we needed them again, but they were destroyed…"

"I shall arrange regular supply runs, as I have done with Burmecia."

"Just not with my ship you won't. I'm going to have a long, perhaps indefinite, rest when I get back to Home Port and Port Wine." Bancroft declared.

"I was certain we could count on you, Captain!" Cid laughed in exasperation.

Nella lead Kurn deeper and deeper under the canopy of the tree, to where natural brooks of dew and dripped moisture flowed between ponds and basins. Great knots in the branches became reservoirs and channels for wandering glistening streams. Falling water shot sunbeams in every direction and into dancing rainbows. Birds and small creatures flitted from their sight and eyed them from crags and hollows. The sound of a woodpecker busily making a new home echoed through the cavernous spaces.

"We will make our home here as he is doing now." Nella whispered, never unlocking her grasp from his.

Kurn said nothing, only following his wife wherever she lead him. This eventually ended at a sheltered hollow that looked for all the world as if it were made for them to re-marry each other in. The growth of branches and moss had grown in a perfect arch over a shadowed alcove covered in a roof of leaves. Flowers blooming in small rays of sun moved and revealed themselves to be butterflies that surrounded her as she drew them inside. She sat down on the floor of moss and pulled him down to her.

"I remember this…it's just the same."

She felt tears fall.

"I remember…."

She felt a deep and primal nesting instinct.

"Of course it's the same." She said, looking up at him. "How Could they destroy it. How could anyone destroy my home. My home is life itself."

Kurn surrounded her with his arms and she sank into him and pushed her head into his long black beard.

"My deepest fantasy was bringing you to my home and resting in it with you. Until now I thought it impossible. Lie down here with me."

Kurn did so.

As Bancroft ascended the stairs from hold to deck to promenade to bridge, inspection turned to stroll, to jaunt. Joyous rats, jovial humans, and happy other creatures past him in both directions. Conversation of nothing but hope and cheer filled his ears. Laughter rang through the halls and corridors and stairways spontaneously and for no apparent reason, at random intervals. His step up stairs was inexplicably lightened by currents of emotion he could feel running in the air.

Even the horrid miserable little cook was smiling uncharacteristically, and had presented him with a pie he did not in any way want or ask for.

Bancroft Ellenroad had attained a state he detested, he had become infected with the happiness of others, in spite of himself, and worse yet he was now indulging in it and unable to stop himself.

Arriving at the bridge and finding it devoid of crew save his first mate, who was busy tallying the weight of unloaded cargo in the ship's ledger, Bancroft arrested him heartily with a re-assuring arm upon his shoulder.

Bannister startled.

"Skip! What can I do for you, isn't all this wonderful?"

"Bannister, do you desire a pie?" Bancroft beamed at him.

"Absolutely, once I've fin – "

The captain happily brought the pie very quickly against his first mate's face with a loud slap and a splattering of crust and freshly baked fragments in all directions.

Bannister's muffled scream of protest blew the pie tin off his face and he staggered back as Bancroft stared intently at him.

He disappeared into the stairwell leading down to the promenade, and Bancroft heard him laughing through the suds as he tripped down the stairs. His last attempt to find or indeed to cause a reference point of old familiar misery with which to ground himself had failed.

He had banked on the pie being that of fowl and evil qualities to be expected from that tiny heinous cook, but to no avail. The little bastard's contagious happiness must have been baked into it along with everything else and accidentally made a masterpiece tasting of summer sweetness! What a horrible thing life was!

But what a wonderful thing life could be.

He found himself laughing uproariously as well as he staggered over to the sunny windows in front of the immense steering manwheel.

He looked over his airship sprawling out before and below him and watched as those who were now enrapt in similar thoughts and feelings spread them everywhere and milled about the deck and its gaping great opening, and watched as through that opening, from the heart of that ship poured the stuff of life and sustenance and peace and healing. Old lives repaired, New lives beginning, a home found again, a kingdom lost being remade.

"O Frabjous Day, Calous, Calais!" He chortled in his joy.