A short story I started a while ago and never finished…
The pink balloon hadn’t popped despite it being nearly ten thousand feet off the ground. A scientific impossibility and yet, a magical reality. Terry reached out for the string, but a huff of wind shot it wobbling out of his grasp and his fingers snapped on empty air.
“As I was saying,” continued the annoyed voice behind him. “The Kingdom will be hard-pressed to show any results this season if we can’t manage the Lightning Leashes. The infrastructure is failing. If we can’t find more copper by end of quarter, we’ll have to send out more airships.”
That, or fall to the earth, ten thousand feet below their once-great city.
Terry frowned at his adviser. A squat man with a white neck beard, waxen skin, and pale blue eyes, Gerrit left little wiggle room for his clothing–or optimism, for that matter. The gruff man’s buttons strained at his middle, and again where they tugged at his excess neck folds. Gerrit wasn’t old. He was ancient.
Terry’s mind was still caught up with the rogue balloon, but he cleared his throat and forced a response he knew would appease Gerrit, at least for a time. “I’m perfectly aware of the consequences. I’ll consider the problem.”
Gerrit persisted. “You’ve had time to consider. Years, Sire.”
“Years spent in wise counsel and consideration.”
“And what does this wisdom suggest we do now?”
“We don’t have the resources to send out more ships…” Terry had indeed thought about this for a while, mulling through their circumstances and the supposed dangers of the below people. But the magic of his floating city waned more each year, enough that even the lightning wouldn’t hold back the inevitable.
Terry walked around his desk to stand over Gerrit. He glanced down at the shorter man, folding his hands behind him. “We send a message to the Land-dwellers and ask their mages for help.”
“Reveal our existence to those dust-suckers?” Gerrit spluttered, which quickly turned into a cough. Terry worried the old man might keel over then and there. He patted his adviser genially on the shoulder until he wheezed out, “We cannot risk exposing ourselves.”
Terry sighed and turned back to the open window, at the spanning city glittering below, and the puffs of white clouds sailing past. “We can’t afford not to,” he finally said, a flicker of excitement lightening his deadened heart.
He didn’t wait for his adviser’s objections. Terry strode out of his office and down the stairs, Gerrit hobbling after him.
“All we need, Gerrit, is a crew worthy to take the Kingdom’s plights to sea level,” the young King of Aerestia declared. And I’ll be going with them, he thought with a private thrill.
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