Meet Kee
The adventure begins...
Early morning light strayed into the dim barn through tightly-woven walls of dried reeds. It poured its pinkish rays over the floor, illuminating the thin layer of sawdust and glinting metal shavings. Greasy rags, a few stray emerald feathers, and glistening, empty oil cans mixed with the light to reflect a rainbow of hues intermingled with the natural dark, caramel color of the residue. Water gently nudged against pilings beneath the floorboards, giving off a steady lapping rhythm. Apart from the streams of light, it was the only indicator that another world existed outside the barn doors.
Within the barn, a sizable floating craft occupied the whole of the free space. The airship boasted a sturdy beige balloon, pointed at both ends and blotted with patchwork. It extended from one end of the shed to the other, its rotund, taught surface nearly pushing up against the ceiling and walls. A latticework of hempen lines and fishing nets tethered it to a catamaran assembled from narrow hulls, each varnished to a rich, mahogany sheen and equipped with its own small outboard motor. These gondolas were slung beneath the vast envelope such that they hovered motionlessly just a couple of inches above the littered floor.
In the stern of one gondola, Kee leaned over the transom with a spanner gripped in each scaly hand. Her iridescent green plumage sparkled in the growing golden rays as her arms cranked the trusty tools back and forth. The click-click-click of wrenches on fasteners was the only sound in the space until she opened her beak wide to allow a yawn to escape. She blinked in the morning light. Another all-nighter. No matter, keeping busy distracted her and brought a sense of calm. Sort of.
It had been the same pattern for six weeks now. Or was it seven? She couldn’t be sure exactly. Months of Kee’s hard work and preparation built the Lori, but the idea of a maiden voyage had the young mechanist’s stomach in knots.
Every time she came out to her workshop with the courage to pull the thing out, hop in, and take off, the sensation lasted for about ten minutes before she decided there was more preparation to do. She seemed to discover an endless number of adjustments and fluid changes and preoccupied herself all day and night on her checklist without any thought of taking off.
So she busied herself with the tiller controls, making more minute changes. Working the lever back and forth, she swung the tandem outboards port to starboard before reaching back in with the wrenches. Tighten, test. Loosen, test. This ritual she repeated until she was satisfied there was no measurable difference change-to-change, and both motors easily swung in the same direction with one flick of the lever.
Kee sighed. Who am I kidding? It wasn’t the flying that made her nervous. As a wingfolk, she started flying from a very young age. By now it was second nature; her wings carried her anywhere she wanted to go. For some reason this project instilled that same fluttering sensation in the pit of her gut as the day she fledged—her actual first flight. She couldn’t sleep then, either, instead lying awake and equally wondering and worrying what it would be like to leave the surface for the first time.
The knotted pit in her gut rose up into a tightening sensation beneath her downy white chest. She took a deep breath and tried to shake it off, her feathers rippling and shimmering all the way out to her tail.
As if in response, another flutter and then a soft thud on the deck outside stole Kee’s attention away. There was an abrupt knock at the barn doors. An accompanying voice politely asked, “Miss Kee, you in there?”
“Coming!” she called back, standing up from her perch. In one quick motion Kee grabbed a hold of the suspended lines, and swooped down onto the shop floor. She gave her wings a flutter, shaking them out and disturbing the layer of sawdust on the decking before tucking them in behind her again.
She quickly strode toward the barn doors, squeezing past her crudely sawn workbench as she did. Nuts, bolts, and various oddly shaped pieces of scrap metal cluttered up the surface. “Ouch!” she winced as she kicked her toolbox lid shut, hopping the rest of the way while clutching her injured foot.
Finally, she reached the latch on the barn doors, raised it, and gave them a heave. They parted, bathing the rest of her hermitage in the light. By now, the vast expanse of the lake glinted with enough warm sunlight such that Kee had to shade her eyes to see the wingfolk before her.
“Morning, Miss Kee. Hope I’m not bothering you,” he said, raising his hands in apology, the bright ruby feathers trailing down his throat twinkling orange as he did.
“Morning, Kluric! Not at all, come on in,” Kee said, smiling at the edges of her gape and beckoning him in with a free hand while she swung one door wide.
“Wow,” Kluric paused, raising his beak to gaze up at Kee’s airship. “So this is your secret project you’ve been workin’ on?” he added, stepping across the threshold, still gawking.
“Yep, guess you’re the first to know. What do you think, not bad?”
Kluric turned his attention toward the propellers. Long, elegantly carved four-bladed props extended from each outboard motor. “This is a clever job, this,” he remarked glancing back at her. “Never seen anybody take a boat motor and put airship propellers to it before.”
Kee swelled with no small amount of pride. She hadn’t seen it done either, and was pretty happy she came up with the idea. She could gush about how she engineered it, but her mother’s voice interjected in her head saying, “There’s no value in ruining a decent boat like that. The farm needs it and you’ve a perfectly good pair of wings already.”
Instead she just nodded and ran her hand back along her nape. “Well, thanks Kluric. You know, Lori here’s nothing like the ones I got to work on at the academy. But I bet you won’t find any better homemade.”
“You certainly have found your calling,” he continued with his hands on his hips. “I’ll bet she goes real good.”
“Haven’t flown her yet.”
“You’re joking! When will she be ready?”
“Uh, well, she is ready. Just finished the final pre-flights.” Kluric didn’t need to know how long her ship had been ready to fly.
“Well that’s great, how about I help you haul her out and you take her for a spin?”
“Mom would probably drop off the shelf if I did. She thinks of all my work as a waste of time, calls it a hobby. Even my academy training! I graduated and applied to enlist in three different crews and she was furious when she found out, ignoring the fact that I didn’t get into a single one. Can you imagine how she would react if I crash-landed this thing?”
Kluric chuckled, “Yeah, I hate to think how Miss Kerah would look if you touched down in the middle of a honeysuckle paddy.” He paused again, coughed into his hand, and then finished with, “You know, er, actually she sent me out here to check up on you.”
Kee glowered at Kluric and threw her hands up, stomping out onto the end of the dock outside. “Oh great, you see? She doesn’t trust me with anything! I spend a few late nights out here and she thinks I’m either dead or up to no good.”
He eased up his hands in mock defense as he called back, “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger! I work for the family but she’s the one that pays me don’t forget.”
Kee sighed and sat down on the edge of the dock, letting her clawed feet dangle over the ledge just above the rippling water. “No Kluric, you’re right. I’m sorry, I haven’t forgotten. But would it really kill her to trust me with something for once? Something not so choresy.”
Kluric snickered again, evidently unhurt by her outburst. “Yeah, I hear ya. Maybe she’d be more open to it if you weren’t cooped up in here durin’ all your free time. You do a lot of good around the farm, what with the boats and equipment and all. Miss Kerah knows that.”
“Yeah, but that’s all she thinks I’m good for,” she gesticulated, pointing a thumb into her downy chest to punctuate each I. “I’ve got over a year’s worth of training with the Ilrenian Air Academy and all I do with it is fix boats. I have a brand new airship that I built by myself and I don’t have the guts to fly it. All because I’m afraid of what mom might say,” Kee finished while crossing her arms.
“I’m sure she has your best interests in mind. We all do,” he reassured softly, resting one arm on a tether. “She just doesn’t want to see you fly the nest. It’s natural.”
Kee said nothing, instead opting to outstretch one tufted arm to trace her finger through the sawdust, watching the gray particles collect on her fingertip as she did. Finally she looked up across the lake to the horizon line where the bright blue sky met the teal green water.
“You know, if I’m this hung up on flying that thing then maybe mom’s right. I’m not cut out for it. This kind of work I mean. It’d be better if I did crash-land, heck I think the worst thing that could happen is this ship flies great and she still thinks it’s a waste of time. I can just hear her now, ‘Good, now that that’s out of your system you can get back to readying to take over the estate one day.’” Kee held her wings and hands out in a mock curtsy in imitation.
“If it’s not so bold of me, Miss Kee, your whole life is an awful long time to live outside your calling. You’ll never be happy like that. Why, could you imagine how I’d feel if Miss Kerah told me it wasn’t in the cards for me to fly?”
Kee retorted, still facing the lake, “Yeah, but she doesn’t expect you to sit on a nest either, Kluric.”
At this, he slapped his knee and burst into raucous laughter. His chortling and wheezing sounds echoed off the sides of the packing shed and projected out over the slack water. It was contagious, and Kee couldn’t help but turn and grin, and then laugh full on with him, hard and long cackles until her sides hurt.
When he had calmed down a little, Kluric wiped the tears from his eyes and said, “Well, if you’re askin’ me—and nobody’s askin’ me—I think you gotta do your own thing. Be your own you, meet like-minded people.”
Before she could answer, out of the corner of her eye Kee spotted another wingfolk circling his way down toward the workshop. She was sure it was a stranger, as he was larger and all of his feathers were gray or off-white, not nearly as flashy as locals of the lake.
“Hello, who’s this,” Kluric pondered aloud as the stranger alighted on the deck with a swoosh.
“Letter for Miss Kee of Lake Grirrick,” he announced, removing one of the many brass canisters from a bandoleer across his chest.
Kee felt the heat rising in her cheeks. “Oh for crying out loud, she sent a message courier?! Do you work for my mother now, too?” she accused.
The courier blinked in stupefaction, but replied professionally. “No, miss, I have a letter from New Ilrenia.”
Her heart skipped a beat and her beak hung open. She struggled to make sensible words but only emitted a handful of disjointed vowels.
The Air Mechanists? she thought. Her heart was racing now, the pitter-pat beats triggering her wingtips to quiver ever so slightly, and that same clenching sensation rose up in her chest.
With a hint of impatience, the messenger tersely repeated, “Are you Miss Kee of Lake Grirrick? The lady at the house up yonder said I might find you here.”
“I- I am here. I mean, yeah I’m Kee.”
He unscrewed the lid of the canister and drew out a small roll of parchment, offering it to Kee. The note was typeset, and some blanks had been hastily typed in with what appeared to be drying, thin ink.
Graduate Kee
Lake Grirrick
Your application to crew aboard [EXPERIMENTAL VESSELS, RESEARCH EXPLORATION PROGRAM VESSELS, AND TECHNICAL PROTOTYPE VESSELS] has been accepted. You have been assigned rank of [FLEDGLING MECHANIST] under chief air mechanist [LLYR].
Report to [AIRDOCK 21, SHED 3] in [2] days to receive further orders.
-Imperial Airship Works of New Ilrenia
An insert, this one handwritten in blue ink, included an addendum.
You are allotted ten pounds of personal belongings to bring aboard with you. Meals and tools will be provided, so save the weight.
-Llyr
Kee had hardly finished reading when the courier interrupted, “They’ve asked for receipt of delivery. Would you sign this please?” He produced another scrap of yellow parchment alongside a small, sealed bottle of ink and a ruddy feather which easily could have come from his own tail.
She signed the receipt, which he closed up in the same canister and fastened to its loop on the belt. “Thank you ma’am, I’ll be off. Nice dirigible, by the way, you make this?”
Awaiting no reply, the courier stretched out his wings and beat them firmly to rise up and away from the shed. In a few moments, he was gone, soaring away over the lake. A dozen or so stunned seconds passed before Kluric started up the conversation again.
“Well, that clammed you up. Whatcha got, secret admirer?”
“I’ve been accepted, Kluric,” Kee stammered with a wry and expectant grin.
Kluric rested his head on his palm, studying Kee’s face.
She continued, her voice rising, “They want me as a mechanist. Kluric, I’m gonna crew on an airship!”
Kee stared at Kluric dumbfounded, as if awaiting his reply. After a handful of seconds, he quickly shooed Kee away, shouting “Well go on, get goin’, you’re losin’ daylight! I’ll close up here.”
Kee flared her wings out and dove out over the water, the oscillation of her buzzing violet wings disturbing the teal surface as she rocketed for home.
Worries, plans, and nonsensical thoughts cluttered her mind, but Kee smiled all the same.