Cinnamon Bun

Chapter Five Hundred and Fifty - Slow on the Uptake

The day passed surprisingly quickly, though not easily.

This was only the second time the Beaver had ever had to fly in formation, and the first time had been with a bunch of sylph navy personnel aboard, helping to keep him nice and steady in the air.

As it turned out, the Beaver, even though it wasn't the fastest ship around, was still way better than the Pyrowalkian merchant ships we were trying to stay in formation with. If it wasn't for the added safety of flying in a group and the fact that I'd given my word as a captain, I might have been tempted to jump ahead of the convoy.

"How come they're so slow?" I groaned while at the helm. It was me and Awen, who'd come up to bring my lunch. She sat on a stool nearby, eating out of a tin plate.

"They're older," Awen said. "Their engines and overall classes, I mean. And they're poorly tuned."

"Really?" I asked. "How can you tell?"

All three ships had their engines in nacelles on the sides, with little ladders of scaffolding to reach them. Each was connected to a jumble of hydraulic lines that emerged from the balloon.

"The smoke," Awen said. "See how they burn different colours? That means that all four are tuned slightly differently. They're not calibrated for the right fuel-air mixture. They might not be taking in enough air. That might mean clogged filters, but I think that they're also probably just older engines. Can you hear them?"

I twitched my ears, then pressed a knee against the ship's wheel so that I could reach up and hold my bun ears straight against the slight wind. I could hear the engines, but there were a lot of them. "I guess?"

"They're four-cylindres," Awen said. "Smaller, probably a lot weaker than the engines we use. And look at the pans beneath the nacceles. See that one? It's got these rust stains on it. I'll bet my favourite wrench that they're water-cooled."

"Is that bad?"

"It's cheaper than magic cooling," Awen said. "But most engines now have a small array of cooling charms."

"Uh-huh," I said before dropping my ears so that they'd flop down (and pick up less sand). I retook the wheel then looked back and smiled at Awen. " You're very smart."

Awen flushed. "Awa! It's knowledge anyone could pick up."

I giggled, then perked up as Amaryllis came up to join us. For a moment, it was just the three of us. I'd never put one best friend over another, but it was nice to be with the girls who'd been my best friends the longest. "Hey," I said.

"Hey yourself," she said before squinting out at the convoy. "Not exactly moving quickly, are they?"

"Awen was just telling me that their engines are old, and poorly-maintained," I said. "So that might explain it."

Awen nodded.

"Then Awen went 'awa awa' when I told her that she's very smart," I continued. "And it was very cute."

Amaryllis looked over to Awen who wore a look of absolute betrayal. "Hmm. Well, who am I to disagree? Awen is very smart. As for whether or not she's... 'cute' well, I suppose she's alright looking for a human. I trust that my sister sees something in her."

"A-ah!" Awen said. "Broccoli, why are you a bully?"

I laughed, then covered my mouth with a hand as the laugh turned into giggles. I was such a mean friend, but Awen was smiling, so I don't think she took it too badly. "Sorry!" I said.

Awen put on a pout, but it was clear that she didn't take offence. "Fine," she said. "Appology accepted. Besides, you're much cuter."

"Nope!" I said, straightening my back, squaring my shoulders, and forcing my ears to stand upright in denial.

A second later, the floppy one flopped back down.

Amaryllis huffed a meaningless huff, then looked out at the ships ahead again. "They are rather old. We used to produce similar designs, but the entire class is something we've stopped producing years ago. A decade, at least. But from everything I've heard, the Pyrowalkian airship industry is about three decades behind, still."

"Is that a lot?" I asked.

"It didn't use to be. Across history, advances in technology and even magic have been piecemeal and rather slow, but in the last century or so things have picked up."

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"Because people are more interconnected now?" I asked.

Amaryllis blinked. "Possibly? It's likely more complex than just that, but I suspect that having easier, cheaper transportation between the various nations in our part of Dirt, as well as competition between those, is helping."

"And Pyrowalk doesn't have that?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Not to the same degree, no.. The nation has one major adversary, the Endless Swells, but the Swells have invested heavily in maritime travel. Pyrowalk hasn't had the drive to really push their airship industry forwards, so now they're lagging far behind."

"They must have something else going on then, right?" I asked.

"Trains," Awen said.

"Trains?" I asked.

"Ah, large engines that pull cars along tracks," she said, but stopped when I shook my head.
"No no, I know what trains are. We had them back home. A lot more trains than airships, even."

Amaryllis grunted. "They... aren't terrible, I suppose. Over flat terrain I imagine that they're even faster than airships, and can likely carry more. But the world doesn't offer easy flat terrain all over."

"Yeah," I said. "Back home we used to have a lot of trains along the sides of mountains and in tunnels. I think it took decades to lay out some of the bigger networks. Probably cost a whole lot, too."

"And how did you defend your trains from monsters?" Amaryllis asked. "Because while airship travel is certainly not danger-free, it does allow you to avoid the majority of monsters and dangerous creatures, seeing as how they tend to be landbound."

"Are there a lot of those in Pyrowalk?" I asked.

Amaryllis paused, then reached up and scratched her chin with a talon. "You know, Broccoli, you might have made a point there."

"I did?"

She nodded. "Pyrowalk is old. One of the oldest known empires. It technically predates most of the civilizations on our part of Dirt, and by some time, too. There are, of course, likely still pockets of monsters and areas that are untamed, but with large, expansive cities that date back to thousands of years, I imagine that there have been several attempts to civilize the land itself."

"Isn't that a bit like what Deepmarsh is doing with the Dark Woods?"

"Exactly," Amaryllis said. "Only on a much longer scale. If that's the case, then it's entirely possible that Pyrowalk has successfully pushed back any threats likely to attack a train line. That would make overland transportation a lot more appealing than it is around home, and if that's the case, then people would invest more into it."

"Ah, which would mean better roads, and more tracks," Awen said. "So more reason to invest more."

"Yes. The same logic as to why airships are only growing more popular as cities build larger, more convenient ports and the cost of older airships goes down so that more companies and individuals and nations can afford them."

Awen hummed. "And mechanics too."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, when I was young, there were only two shops near my district, but then a third opened, and I think there's something like five now. The port is much larger too. There used to be space for maybe ten airships the size of the Beaver Cleaver but now you can fit three times as many. Which means a lot more people are working at the docks."

Amaryllis leaned back onto... whatever she had that counted as heels, and looked up into the sky. "The world is growing smaller. A generation ago it was still not fully charted, you know? Now... well, it's possible that the next generation, or perhaps the one after that, won't need an Exploration Guild anymore."

"That's okay," I said. "Things change, but change isn't inherently bad."

"I suppose not," she said. "It will be interesting to see how the shrinking world handles it when nations like Pyrowalk butt heads against our continent."

"Do you think they will?" I asked.

"Oh, definitely," Amaryllis said. "We'll see whose unique ideas survive in a century or so. Maybe we'll even still be around to see it!"

***