Kiri— Aerstelle City

Kiri believes the best way to learn something is to not just do it in a classroom. You’ve got to do it while moving, when thinking creatively, under stress, and while distracted. Plus it makes class a lot more fun.

That means going to her student, Judyth’s, condominium island to practice while doing the concentration and stretching activity she loves to do. Kiri hasn’t practiced this exercise in years, but it sounded like a lot of fun, and she knows it would be good for Judyth.

She leaves her house mid morning and walks to the air-bus stop. She pays, gets on the air-bus, and takes a seat near the large gas-filled balloon. Deea, her little orange dragon, sits on the empty seat next to her, invisible.

The air-bus carries her away from her neighborhood platform and away from the city center, towards another platform, where she gets off twenty minutes later. There, she waits for her student, who arrives to pick her up in her own air-car.

They fly to a small floating island that holds Judyth’s condominium. It’s a little higher than the rest of Aerstelle City, so the view from her apartment is breathtaking. From her balcony, you can see all of the islands and platforms that make up the city. You can see the air-buses and air-cars flying between different platforms. A giant airship sits at a dock on the other side of the city, it’s giant balloon visible between islands. Some platforms are close enough to be connected by stairways and bridges. The city looks beautiful from there. It looks like home.

They take a cage-like elevator (a nicer one than some of the old clunky ones Kiri usually takes) to the roof. From there, she can see the tip of a green mountain that sticks up through the clouds below. Kiri’s hopes to one day travel to that mountain and look up, to see the flying city from below.

On the roof, they roll out their mats and open up the booklet that has the instructions for their stretching lesson that day. Side by side, they follow the instructions, laughing as they suffer through the different poses.

The sun breaks out of the clouds and shines down on them, warming them up as the breeze blows across their bodies and plays with Judyth’s long hair. It’s much windier up there on the top of the tower, than Kiri’s used to, but she’s fine with it. You get over any fear of heights pretty quickly when living on Aerstelle.

After the lesson, they go back to Judyth’s apartment, where she prepares a lunch of gorgeous green salad and specially imported fish. They watch as a mass of dark clouds slowly cover the sky and rain starts pouring down in sheets, obscuring their view of the city. It’s beautiful from this vantage, though Kiri knows she’ll have to go home in that weather. It’s not so bad to suspend air-bus service, though.

Eventually, the rain dies down a bit, and Judyth flies Kiri back to the bus stop on the next platform over. She gets on a bus and flies through the rain back to her own neighborhood platform. By then, the rain has stopped completely, so she walks back to her house in peace. Once back in her house, Deea appears and demands to be fed. Kiri feeds her and sits down at her typewriter to do some afternoon writing.