On a clammy summer’s morning already scented with coal smoke, aircar fumes, and the occasional flower, Taru sat on her window cill, gazing out into the red-brick and blue-slate city of Shude, and wondered what lay beyond. 

She looked down at a tatty shred of parchment in her hands. The custodians had found it flapping around her basket like an overzealous butterfly on the day she was abandoned at their door. Taru was scorched into one side and its consequence singed the other. She wondered how it remained intact, despite 19 sweaty summers having passed. 

The parchment came out on nights when the urge took her to swing a leg out of her window, high above the orphanage’s spike-topped wrought-iron fence. On these nights, she leant back outside the splintering frame, clung to it with her fingertips, and tilted her head in search of her precious secret. Through a slit of a gap between the red and the blue, she caught a flash of brown lit by an invisible sun. It was a chunk of one of the cliffs bracketing the city. 

She reached out towards it, the scorched parchment pinched between her middle fingers as she pretended she was close enough to touch the rough surface like she had done years ago, when she had made her decision. Hidden by that rough surface, just as the sun was hidden by the city’s tiers above, were the magical creatures who lived within. Or so Enna said.

She swung both legs inside the window, dropped onto her desk and then the floor of her cramped room, sparing a glance for the packed satchel she kept in a crumpled heap by the door before looking down into the desk’s only opening drawer. Returning the tatty parchment to it, she looked at its only other occupant: a larger sheet, much crisper and unsinged. Sponsorship ran across the top in swirling cursive. Incomprehensible babble sprawled underneath which Taru still didn’t fully understand but had been assured, at 13 years old, simply said she was being sponsored (a professional and social undertaking, impacting inheritance and education) rather than adopted (more personal and emotional). The names Aether and Charsen followed Taru on this form, as written by Enna Charsen, an upper-class working-caste automaton manager who had signed his name simply at the bottom and, in doing so, saved Taru from a life of servitude. Though she would remain an inhabitant of the orphanage until she had seen 20 summers, she no longer practised servantry at the cotton mill and, instead, shadowed Enna at their shared place of work, the city’s figurative and literal core: Shude Energy Terminal.

A young voice rose above others outside. Taru glanced out of the window to see the telltale ribbons in curly hair and, probably, light in dark eyes. From all the way up here, she could just see the bounce in their step and their hand clasped tightly in their nanny’s. The child stopped and gawped through the twisting bars, pointing at the other children and barking questions. This nanny didn’t cover their little darling’s face and hurry them away. Instead, they pointed too and said things that made the little one watch the other children quietly before straightening and turning away, nose up. 

It was moments like this that had forced Taru to make her decision. Though she would soon be living at Enna’s home or else an annexed property, staying in Shude would mean living in a city not only occupied by people like that, but governed by them. So her bag was packed and her route, mapped. Now all she needed was the right night. The problem was that the right night was shy. 

She cast her eyes up to the underside of the great disc-like levels above and wondered what it was like up there with the snotty stuck-up brats and their pudgy pointing digits.

“The more of the sky you can see, the less of the land you can stand on,” Enna would assure her, were he here.

Taru wondered what that meant for them, then, unable to see neither sky nor land. Only Shude. The shadowy underbelly up above. The sprawling aqueducts and viaducts down below. The looming red bricks and blue slate all around (except for the brilliant white shock of the terminal, running straight up the city’s centre). Shude, Shude, everywhere. 

-~*~-

“You finish the weekly report?” Enna asked as he collected her from the orphanage’s front gate, his usual tweed suit sporting new suede patches over the elbows.

“Splendor’s feet!” Taru hissed. She had finished it, but, “I left it on my desk.”

Enna glanced at his pocket watch. “I’m running late as it is. You’ll have to catch me up at the airship station.”

Taru called, “Will you clock me in to the terminal if I don’t make it?” as she jogged towards the door.

“This once, aye. Try and make it though, eh? Don’t want to blot my pristine record.”

Enna’s record was more blot than not, but in a city where jobs were assigned from birth to death, he had nothing to worry about.

As he left, Taru pushed open the front door.

The swinging brass pendulum of a grandfather clock, distant at the end of the entrance hall, threw flashes of light into her eyes with every tick it tocked. The sound bounced off every wood panel and plank, emphasising the strange silence of her current home. The musty carpet did little to dampen the sound of her steps, so she lifted onto her toes. Down a narrow hallway leading to the main office, she heard the familiar voices of two custodians known for being less than rigorous when on duty together, followed by the click of a lock.

She took the wood stairs two at a time, making sure to keep to the runner to muffle her presence. She skipped four creaky steps on the way up, once on the third floor, kept to the right to avoid the loose plank in the middle. Turning the handle to her room, she lifted it to ease the load on the old hinges, before twisting it to keep the latch hidden until softly back in its frame.

Glancing down as she went to turn, her packed satchel caught her eye.

She could just…

She forced herself to go to her desk, but the brightness of the world caught her attention through the window.

She could just… leave.

She knew the balconies she needed to leap between and the rooftops she had to run over to reach the cliff’s closest point, where she had once stretched out her fingers and touched them. Where a running jump would have her grabbing onto jutting rocks the perfect size and shape for her hands.

This was it. Though it wasn’t night, this was the right night she had been waiting for.

Enna would clock her in: it’d look like she’d been there all day. Those two custodians hadn’t noticed her return: everyone knew they were useless once locked in the office. 

There was plenty of time for her to get out and gone. The earliest anyone might’ve noticed she wasn’t there would be evening, when she wouldn’t return for dinner. However, as it was those two on duty, the first person to notice was more likely to be Enna, tomorrow morning. 

He’d wait at the gate until half past and then he’d come to the door and ask the custodian to get her. Going back to the gate, he’d check his pocket watch a few times before they returned to tell him she wasn’t there. He’d look politely confused, shaking his head and frowning into his gentle smile so the crease over his nose deepened. Looking past the custodian, he’d search the doorway, hoping to see her peering around the frame as she had when she was younger, shier, and had only met him a week ago. Then, his eyes would dull. He’d search the grounds for a solution, offer another tremulous smile and half a nod. He’d quietly thank the custodian, unable to meet their eye. Then, with one last glance towards the door, he would turn away.

There would be no Taru Aether Charsen to run after him, this time.

-~*~-

“Here she is!” Enna’s smile was bright, and Taru couldn’t help but return it, even if she couldn’t meet his eye. She squeezed through the crowd to where he pressed against the brass-framed airship window, his hand and wrist wrapped up in a leather strap bolted to the ceiling. The cloying sweat of someone else’s summer struggle hit Taru in the back of the nose as she pressed into a gap beside Enna. Here, there was enough day-old smoke and morning coffee aroma to hide nearly everything else. “Nice of you to join us,” he chuckled, untangling his hand to take the report before ducking awkwardly sideways to stuff it into his briefcase. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.” He straightened then lurched, wide-eyed, as the airship disengaged from the dock.

Taru held him up by the shoulder, gripping a brass pole for stability as the ship ascended. She scoffed, “Don’t be ridiculous,” then asked, “Where would you be without me?” though her throat tightened around the words and her gut twisted strangely.

“On the floor,” Enna replied, dusting himself down with one hand and grabbing the pole above Taru’s hand with the other. “But earlier to work.”

-~*~-

Clunk hiss. Clunk hiss. Clunk hiss.

Even through thick leather goggles and ear protectors, the pistons of engine 1, rig 3 were so deafeningly loud it was hard for Taru to hear her own thoughts. So she usually left them behind the hatch with Enna. Unfortunately, as she heaved the lever for piston 138 from manual to automatic and watched its gradual rebellious reset to manual for the third time in as many hours, thinking was proving necessary. Huffing and storming back to the hatch, she thumped it twice before whirling the wheel open.

Beyond was an office stacked with full-to-bursting bookshelves and a large reinforced window through which to watch engineers working. There stood Enna, smoothing down his plump beard, his brow creasing unhappily.

“One three eight, eh?” he asked her.

“One three eight,” she confirmed, shoving closed and locking the hatch. When she turned back, Enna was mid-grimace, pointing at his ears. Taru whipped off her ear protectors and muttered, “Sorry,” as he returned to his desk. “When the pressure changes, it kicks back,” she explained, rubbing off the oil from her gloves onto her overalls before pushing up her goggles. “It’s resetting every other time, too, just… slower.”

“I think I’ve read about a couple of things like this,” Enna murmured, pulling a manual closer and clipping his pinch-nose glasses to the bridge of his nose. “You’ll have to keep it in check for now.”

Taru’s irritation turned to dismay. “What? All day?”

Enna nodded, looking up over his glasses. “All week, if needs be.”

Taru rolled her eyes, groaning, “What a right mess!” as she turned back to the hatch.

Enna chuckled, the sound tuneful with sympathy. “Hopefully, I’ll find the chapter I need before then,” he said, returning to his book, “but for now we have to keep it running. I’ll write a bit in the journal for Margery and James and mention it at handover. For now, you just keep it ticking, little skvader.”

Taru protested the nickname with a wordless grumble but the truth was, it felt warm. She shoved her goggles back over her eyes and looked back at him. “But, uh,” she began, watching carefully, “you could ask Selwyn about it, couldn’t you?”

Enna’s head snapped up, his cheeks reddening over the white flecks in his dark beard. 

Taru rushed to add, “He’s usually good wi’the pistons,” to make sure he knew she wasn’t teasing.

“Selwyn?” Enna muttered, staring into the middle distance. He cleared his throat and ducked so close to the manual, Taru wondered how he could read the words for the grain of the paper. “He’s probly busy with, uh, worries of his own, aye. Not been round these parts in yonks, has he? Too, uh, het up… managing, uh, staffing issues? In the labs? No doubt. Wouldn’t wanna bother him.”

Taru nibbled on a bit of dry skin on her bottom lip as she frowned at the top of his thick-haired head.

“Don’t like being a bother, me,” Enna added quietly before announcing, “Anyway, off you trot, little leaper. That piston in’t gonna shove itsen back, is it?”

-~*~-

That night, after a hard day managing rebellious pistons and leaky pipes, Taru’s aching body had barely tumbled under the covers when she passed out from exhaustion.

It wasn’t long until, buoyed on a fluffy white cloud of comfort unmatched by anything she experienced outside her dreams, the smell of smoke began to seep from a cloud now turned glittering grey. Gradually, it turned black, grew great leathery wings, and curled a long neck back to fix her with a nasty, sabre-toothed grin. 

“Hello Dragon,” she greeted her dream-dwelling dragon friend and leant down to wrap her arms about iro neck.

For hours, si carried her on iro back over green oceans and brown rivers, through snow-peaked mountains and frosty clouds. All the while, si swirled prismatic stars across a velvet sky to make a picture-show of the tales spilling out like smoke from iro lips.

As si carried her past a dark tangle of forest that seemed to disappear inside a vast cavern, si told her with a voice that brooked no opposition, “You were meant for more.”