Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Eight - Clearing the Air

I pushed the brush forwards, carefully edging it along the sides of the plank so that not one drop dribbled off the edge. The wood beneath took on a beautiful wet sheen that matched the rest of the deck.

Lowering the brush, I used the sleeve of a big shirt Gen-Gen had found for me, and wiped at my forehead. There was still a lot of the Beaver Cleaver’s deck to cover in varnish, but what I had done looked great. The sticky paint-like stuff made the wood look a lot darker and shinier, and with a bit of well-focused Cleaning magic I could remove any dust or stray leaves that landed on the stuff before it dried.

Gen-Gen had even helped me find a big floppy hat covered in colourful stains.

New Skill Acquired: Painting

Rank: F

The ship was really coming along. Awen had replaced some of the pulleys with a bit of help from some mechanics that Rosaline sent, and the hull was completely repainted already.

The entire ship was cleaned from top to bottom already, which certainly helped make it look newer.

All we needed to do was finish up the painting and bring in some new furnishings for the inside. We didn’t need all that many bedrooms and rooms inside, and since we weren’t exactly using him for cargo hauling or anything, the room inside the Beaver was kind of... vast.

At least, it was vast when I considered how space on an airship was usually at a premium.

I was dipping my long-handled brush back in the pan of varnish when I heard some clunking from off to the side. A head of blonde hair soon appeared over the side of the ship between the two poles of a ladder, followed by Awen’s big inquisitive eyes. “Ah... hi,” she said, just her head and shoulders poking over the gunwale.

“Hey!” I said. “You might want to wait before coming back up. I just painted that part of the deck and it’s probably still wet.”

“Oh,” she said with a glance down. “Yes, okay. I wasn’t here to...”

She lapsed into silence for a moment.

"To?" I finally prodded.

Awen didn’t meet my eyes for a moment. I saw her hands tighten and loose on the topmost rung of the ladder. “Broccoli, I need help,” she said in a voice so small I had to strain all four ears to hear it.

I dropped my brush to the side and walked over, ignoring the prints I was leaving on the still-wet deck. “Okay,” I said. “What do you need?”

“Awa, it’s not that u-urgent!” Awen stammered. She wiggled her hands about in denial a bit, started to tip backwards, then seized the rung again. “Um... but, but if you want to talk now then that’s okay too, I suppose. Not here though.”

I nodded and stepped up onto the ship’s railing. “In the workshop?” I asked. “I’m kind of curious to know what you’re working on.”

“Ah, yes, okay.” Awen said before she started to scramble down the steps.

I hopped down and landed in the courtyard below with bent knees and a big huff of expelled breath. A glance up the ship a dozen meters up showed Awen moving down with surprising alacrity.

I might have taken the ladder too, but it wasn’t as fun, and I was wearing an old ratty skirt that one of the maids had insisted I wear instead of my battledress. They were probably worried I’d get it stained. Ladders and skirts just didn’t mix.

Awen landed with a soft thud on the grass next to me, then she spent a moment brushing her clothes before turning my way. “Um. This way?” she asked.

I nodded along, a bit of a smile tugging at the corner of my lips, but I didn’t want her to think that I thought she was really cute when she was all proper-like because that would make her feel bad.

Awen led me over to the workshops that she’d practically been living in since Rosaline showed them to her. I supposed that she had years of pent-up tinkering to work through, and now that she had all the tools she could want or need at her disposal, she was going all out.

There were a lot of projects strewn about and half-finished. I could only guess at what half of them were even supposed to be.

The tension in Awen’s shoulders loosened a bit as we stood in the shop. She faced some of the machines and knickknacks covering an otherwise tidy workbench.

I wanted to ask her what she needed help with, but I had the impression that she didn’t just need a pair of hands to lift something up, so I gave her some time to get her thoughts in order.

That could be hard sometimes. I often found my mind going to all sorts of weird places when I let it.

“Broccoli,” Awen began. She picked a wrench from the workbench and started to fiddle with it. “Did you ever fall in love before?”

That explained what this was all about, at least in part. I took a moment to think of a nice answer for her. We would probably be retreading some earlier conversations again, but that was okay too. “Not really,” I said. “At least, not in the way you mean.”

She turned the wrench over slowly. “What do you mean?” she asked.

I found a cleared bit of bench and hopped onto it so that I was sitting. “There’re..” I paused and changed tactics. “There’s a place where I’m from that speaks a different language. They have a bunch of words for love. They mean different things. Like how you might love your parents and siblings, or how you love a friend, or you might love someone who’s really special to you.”

Awen nodded her understanding.

“I love you. And I love Amaryllis. And I love Orange too when she’s not being a pain in the butt.” Which reminded me... where was Orange? I set that aside for the moment.

“I think I see,” Awen said. She turned around fully, still idly fiddling with the wrench. “Broccoli, do girls where you’re from like... other girls?”

“Some of them do,” I said. “Not all of them, of course.”

“Oh. Back home that’s... not something that’s normal.”

I didn’t know what to say about that. I really wanted to hug her, because hugs made things better, but I wasn’t sure if that was appropriate just yet. “I guess you can make it normal, then,” I said.

Awen smiled wistfully for just a moment before the expression dropped with a sigh. She set the wrench onto the bench behind her and pressed a hand over her heart. “I don’t know how I’ve been feeling,” she said. “About Rosaline and about... you. It’s all weird, and I don’t know if I have the words for it. But it’s--it’s not nice, but it’s also not bad.”

I tightened my grip on the edge of the table I was sitting on. “I think that maybe you’ve been through a lot? Like getting away from your family, and being free, and then being around me and now with Rose. You had a lot of big adventures in a short time.”

Awen nodded. “I guess. I just don’t know what to do now.”

I grinned over to her. “You can do whatever you want Awen. I’ll always be there to support you,” I said.

She smiled back, a small smile, but a smile still. “You make it really hard sometimes,” she said.

I was going to ask what she meant, but Awen stepped across the room and came to stand right up in front of me.

“Broccoli,” she said.

“Awen?”

And then she leaned forwards and pressed her lips against mine. Just a quick peck that ended as soon as it began.

Awen scampered back, face blossoming in bright red. “I’m... sorry. It’s just, you said that I was free, that I could do what I wanted and I’ve wanted to do that since I met you. And I know you’re not that way. And that’s okay. I think, I think I’m better now. But it’s all thanks to you and--”

“Awen,” I said. Now I was the one blushing a bit. “It’s... okay?”

She looked down, not that it did much to hide the incandessence of her face. “I... okay,” she said. “I’m going to date Rosaline.”

I blinked. That had come from nowhere. “Uh. Alright.”

“I don’t know if I feel the same way about her as I do... but that’s okay. She’s nice, and friendly, and I think that even if things don’t work out we’ll still be friends. So it’ll be nice to learn and--” she swallowed as her face somehow got even more red. “And try new things.”

I nodded. “That does sound nice,” I said. “Can I be your bridesmaid if you get married?”

“Awa! No! It’s too soon for that kind of thing!”

I giggled and jumped off the bench to pull Awen into a big hug. She tensed for just a moment before loosening up. “So,” I said. “Want to show me what you’ve been building?”

“Yes!” Awen said. She nodded her head like a crazed woodpecker and started to gesture at things. I let her go so that she could show off better.

“What did you make?” I asked.

“I started by improving on the design for my crossbow. It’s got a sight now, like a telescope. I still need to mark its ranges But that’s an issue for later.” She grabbed my wrist and pulled me deeper into the workshop while her voice grew faster and more excited. “I got to thinking. My uncle always said that air-piracy was a bit of a problem, and that the best way to get past them was to be an unappealing target. Even tigers hesitate to eat a hedgehog. But the Beaver Cleaver isn’t very scary looking, so that wouldn’t work.”

“Okay,” I said.

“So I had another idea.” She stopped before a big thing and gestured at it. “This!”

I stared. It was about the size of a bike, with a bench at the back, set atop a pair of steel rails and a sort of turnable base with little notches to lock it in place. The entire front of it had not one but three recurve crossbows mounted one atop the other with a complex mechanism that I suspected was made to reload it with the pull of a crank.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a rapid-firing automatic ballista,” Awen said. “It’s like my crossbow, but it fires much bigger and stronger bolts.” She opened up a box next to the chair and pulled out a three foot long shaft with some fletching on one end and a glass head on the other. “See the head? It’s a bulb that you can fill with anything you want. I was thinking some reactants could do the trick. Rosaline mentioned one that catches fire when in contact with the air. So it could be very dangerous against wooden ships. And we could fill them with acids too! If we come up against a more modern ship it could do a lot of damage to their hull. But I think the kinetic damage alone would do a lot.”

“Yes!”

“And the rails,” she went on. “I’m thinking that we can make them go from one side of the ship to the other. So that we could fire from both sides with only one device and it can be safely stored in the cargo hold until it’s needed. I made it so that you can turn it by moving your foot on that pedal, and unlock it with the other foot, and when you’re not moving, that third pedal cranks new bolts into the feed.”

I smiled and let her babble on until Amaryllis found us some minutes later and started yelling at us to get ready for our big evening.

***