Of Sky and Metal Sea

Scarlett woke to the sound of a lone fiddle drifting through the wind into her cabin, haunting and lonely. She blinked a few times, to be sure that she was not still dreaming, before rising from her bunk and pulling on a nightrobe over her cream nightdress before slowly sliding out the door, closing it shut behind her. She did not care that she was barefoot, the wooden boards of the deck had been worn smooth that there was never a fear that one might get a splinter.

She walked towards the dim light of a lantern on the front deck, bobbing and faltering in the night winds. Sat upon a crate below the lantern was a boy, no older than fifteen, eyes closed as he slowly and carefully pulled the notes out of the violin in his hands, manouvering the bow with such grace it caused Scarlett to sigh and marvel at the beauty of the song.

Startled upon hearing Scarlett, the boy stopped playing abruptly, causing the violin to emit a harsh scraping noise before falling silent. But once the boy saw Scarlett standing on the deck before him, he relaxed.

"Oh, it's just you." he whispered, placing the violin and its bow back into its case which lay beside him.

"You are a wonderful fiddler Archibald, do carry on." Scarlett begged as she knelt down in front of him, clasping her hands together in her lap.

"Archie please, and I fear that if I continue to play I shall wake the others. We can't afford tired sailors." Archibald replied, folding his arms and leaning back against the bow. "What do we do next?" he asked, furrowing his brow and turning to his captain, waiting for an answer.

"We reach Orin Port tomorrow, hopefully before noon. Then we can dock, stock up, and possibly staying a few days in the town. Then we have to leave again." Scarlett said, grinning. Orin was one of her favorite ports, a bustling town full of diverse people and their different tradions, a busy market, and all surrounded by the sea on one side and a dense green forest on the other. It was all she could ever ask for, the place she could always run away to whenever she needed to escape her ship. It was the home she never had.

"Why must we always so leave so quickly? It would be good to spend some time on land. We can't stay up in the sky forever." Archibald muttered, staring at the woden planks below him.

"You know full well why, Archibald Greenworth. The authorities will come and lock us away. Do you want to spend the rest of your life trapped in a dusty prison, never again to see the sunlight? We can't attract attention, or they'll find us faster. We're suspicious, a Skyship crewed by children. They won't let a group of kids run around the sky, and worse, they think we're Sky Pirates! It's too dangerous to dock for too long."

"We are not children Scarlette Lee!" Archie spat, glaring. "There are two frames of mind, child and adult, and every single person on this ship is the latter!"

"That is true, but the authorities continue to turn a blind eye to that fact. They want to keep us children, drooling babies, they don't want us to be powerful or influential."

"I'm going to bed." Archie mumbled, before getting up and walking over to his cabin, which he shared with another boy named Jonathan.

Scarlett nodded in response and took up position at the bow as lookout. Just one more day, she thought. Just one more.