“Is there anyone you need to let know that you're going up with us?”
A sullen glance to the side.
“Your friends? Won't they miss you?”
The kid shook her head, still not meeting Annalise's eye.
Annalise and Wren shared a glance over her head.
“It's just a couple days,” Wren said.
Annalise nodded back.
“I'm… just going to run real quick back to the canteen,” Todd said. “Forgot to pick up some.... emberberries.”
Annalise managed to somehow not roll her eyes as Todd quickly hid the notepad and pen he'd been gesturing with behind his back just as Brook turned around. Emberberries didn’t even grow on this side of the mountains, and they weren’t in season anyway.
The kid narrowed her eyes at him. He grinned.
“Just get going,” Wren laughed.
Todd turned his grin on Wren, then slipped away to grab a bike from the bike station for the short ride back to Sparrow Ridge to leave a note on the community board about the whereabouts of their young companion. She was welcome to come with them, but it really was best to let someone know when you were going up. If for no other reason than a rescue crew would know how many they were searching for, in a worst case scenario.
Annalise didn’t have the heart to try to convince the kid go back to the village to tell them herself, and it looked like neither did Todd or Wren. Todd’s note would have to do.
“C’mon,” Wren said to Brook, “if you’re going to go up with us, we gotta show you the ropes—literally.”
That got a small smile from her. Wren shot Annalise a triumphant grin. Annalise did roll her eyes this time, which only made Wren smile more brightly.
As Annalise watched them step up into the cabin, she remembered her first day on the dirigible, years ago. It had been Hollis and Mylie who had shown her around. Wren had already been on the crew, but Todd had not yet joined them.
Now, Mylie was happily ensconced in the village of Foxflower, their destination today. She facilitated the local repair cafe, as dedicated to helping keep all the small particulars of village life in running order as she had been to maintaining the Abounding Kestrel. Wren did that for the Kestrel, now.
Hollis had died years ago, their long life at its natural end, not too many years after they had shown Annalise how to run the navigation board. She thought of them every time she engaged it and pointed the Kestrel toward their next destination.
Years before Annalise had been born, Hollis and their comrades from several villages had worked to bring a dirigible to the region, and for decades now a crew had regularly taken to the skies between the villages dotted around the mountains. The villages were separated by rocky terrain and rivers too rapid to easily navigate, but the Kestrel was able to bring food, supplies, and sometimes people between them.
Runners could make the trek between villages with information and occasionally small goods—a tradition with both cultural significance as a practice and practical importance as a contingency. And folks did journey on foot to visit or to relocate from time to time, though it was a substantial undertaking. For quickly bringing a load of cargo, there was nothing like a dirigible, Annalise mused as she finished loading in the cargo for this journey.
When Annalise made her way into the cabin, she saw Brook perched on the edge of a jump seat, attention rapt on everything Wren was saying as they explained the workings of the Kestrel. Annalise wondered if the crew of the Kestrel would soon be considering a new regular crew member, or if this was just a temporary respite from whatever in the village was troubling the kid.
Whatever it was, Annalise didn’t think it was that bad. Brook was not traumatized, as far as she could tell, and Wren—who had one of the best senses for people Annalise had ever encountered— didn’t seem to think so, either. Annalise wasn’t going to worry. It was likely a spat. And while Annalise thought the direct approach to conflict resolution was the best approach, if the kid needed a couple of days away to clear her head, there was nothing wrong with that.
Annalise joined Wren and Brook to show Brook the navigation board, to her delight. She picked it up readily, and Annalise had to take a moment to quietly cherish just how right it felt to be passing on to someone else the knowledge she had received from Hollis, even if it would be used only for this journey.
As they were just finishing up with how to read the radar output, Todd bounded into the cabin. They all glanced up at him.
“Ran into some friends of yours in the village,” Todd said, trying and failing to affect a casual tone.
The kid bristled.
“They gave me this,” Todd said easily, holding out a folded piece of paper. “It’s for you.”
Brook seemed to want to hold onto her scowl, but she couldn’t keep an expression of wide-eyed trepidation off her face as she looked at the slip of paper in Todd’s hand. Todd held it forward for her with a gentle smile.
The kid stood up and gingerly took the note. She curled into herself as she held it open and started to read, but by the time she looked up from it, her shoulders had lowered and she was standing with more ease. There was the faintest flush high on her cheekbones, and she blinked a few times as she looked out the broad front window toward Sparrow Ridge.
“Still coming with us?” Wren asked.
The kid nodded, still looking away.
“Yeah,” she said softly, almost to herself. Turning and meeting Wren’s eye she added, with more certainty, “Yeah, I’m still going. But I think I’m coming back.”
#solarPunk #solarpunkSunday #youthLiberation #familyAbolition #anarchism #dirigible #flashFiction
