.
From above, the stratocumulus clouds arrayed in lines look vaguely like ocean waves. It was incredibly appropriate, given we were riding Manlon’s launch, an aircraft in the shape of a boat.
It might have been a bit stupid, but there were parts of me that were excited like a little kid. I was finally escaping Faerie, and getting back to the mortal world where I belonged.
But I was also distracted by last night’s visit, and by ideas that had been clear in my mind then, but as elusive as morning mist to my waking self. I made a mental note to my Illusory Space self; anything she wanted me to remember on waking, she had better really burn into her memory.
One thing she wanted me to know had survived though; my whole problem with Water mana could be fixed. I could remake my body to have the balanced elements of a greater fairy like Oberon. She knew how, but I couldn’t remember the steps. But the process of ‘cultivating a non-mortal body’ that Oberon had mentioned would be a similar process.
I had something else distracting me. This boat and its current speed and altitude. They would be fine if we were in an airplane, but this was no airplane.
The fish-fin ‘oars’ were currently swept back as we swiftly plunged through the high-altitude air. For propulsion, doors had opened in the sides of the hull below the quarterdeck and a pair of enormous bottle gourds had emerged from each side, mounted on pylons that held them out away from the hull. They sucked air into a hole in the front (the big end of the gourd) and blew it out a smaller hole in the back (the little end of the gourd) in a fairly dramatic application of Newton’s third law, as applied by utilizing Wind mana…
Yes, my host called them ‘Wind Gourds’ and they operated by magic, but no matter how I looked at it, this boat was jet-powered right? Even if they lacked that high-pitch turbine whine, they were totally jet engines, right?
Manlon asked me, “Little Tiana, you keep frowning this way and that, and it seems to be about our transportation. Does Little Talene’s work truly discomfort you so much?”
When my uncle asked this, the magic engineer in question was nearby, checking some fittings. She glanced up at us, curious to hear my answer.
I waved my hands rapidly in negation. “Absolutely not! It’s truly amazing! Did Talene really build this?”
He chuckled and nodded, but Talene stood and came up to us, pouting disapproval. “Don’t exaggerate, Master. I don’t possess sufficient naval architecture knowledge to design such a craft.”
With a fond smile, he answered, “The launch that I purchased for your project was only capable of floating on water, Little Talene. Everything that is special about it is your work.”
“Master Miröen!” Pasrue called from the opening in the quarterdeck bulkhead which let down into the ship. He bowed to us and took his leave.
“So you like my boat, Your Highness?” Talene asked.
“It’s… very imaginative,” I responded. “I’m very curious what inspired those wind gourds. I can’t think of anything in nature that flies by blowing air like that. Where did you get the idea?”
Her eyes sparkled. “Oh, I disagree. Have you ever been to sea? Kraken can propel themselves right out of the sea in that manner. They use water rather than wind, but it’s the same principle. Monster scallops do the same thing. And there are natural beasts which move under water using the same technique.”
“Is that a fact?” I asked. “I honestly didn’t know that.”
“Actually, an aerial monster found over the ocean to the far west called a sky jellyfish does use Wind, exactly the way my wind gourds do,” she noted, her eyes still looking like she was teasing me. “I could have found the idea in all sorts of places.”
I had a feeling I knew where her playful attitude was coming from. She knew darned well that she didn’t come up with jet engines by studying nature. I mean, this was the girl who designed the quartet of gundam-shaped ‘toys’ in the hold of this vessel. She was obviously from Earth.
I gave a heavy sigh, then said, “Those ‘toys’ in the hold… you created the magic, but you didn’t come up with the appearance, did you? I totally built the same models when I was younger.”
Her lips pressed together for a moment, then a “Pfft” came out of her and her eyes brightened.
A series of syllables came out of her, a question that I could tell had been in Japanese. It was clumsily spoken, suggesting her mouth wasn’t used to speaking the language, but my unsuccessful attempts at learning Japanese helped me recognize the first word, Nihongo.
Which means, “Japanese”.
I waved my hand. “I wasn’t Japanese. Let’s stick to Dorian or Fairy.”
She raised her eyebrows, but nodded. “But you knew about ‘gundam’?”
“Well, yeah. I’m sure I built the exact model you copied for your ‘toys’. It’s supposed to be the MK-II, right?”
Another nod, as she grew happy again. Thrilled to run into a fellow fan, I suspect. She said, “It’s not a good copy, of course. It only moves around slowly using [Levitation] because the puppeteers can’t manage the jets and wings it should have. And it can’t equip weapons well, so I had to build weapons into the arms, and it’s not big enough to fly inside.”
I smiled. “I think it’s special enough that you created something with the look, even if it’s just the basic body.”
“I’m still going to build one for real some day! My Toys are just the beginning!”
I laughed. She was a true gundam fan.
She noted, “Master said you were bothered by something about my boat.”
I shrugged and admitted, “It isn’t your boat. It’s the fact that we are flying so high with mortals on board. We are standing on the outside, well above the altitude that a mortal can breathe, yet the wind is minimal, and you mortals are fine. Only fairies or gryphons should be able to breathe the air this high.”
She smiled. “It is containment.”
I puzzled over that, not sure what she meant, then shook my head. “No, we’re not contained. We’re outside.”
She grinned. “As a fairy, you can sense the barrier around the boat, right? The barrier leaves a small opening at the very front. As we move through the air, it can enter, but it is trapped by the barrier. It’s how hikouki do it on Chikyū. I’m using the forward motion to create yoatsu.”
I frowned as her words turned into gibberish because she had to use Japanese words for things that lacked Dorian words, until I remembered ‘Chikyū‘ meant Earth, and filled in the rest. She was trying to describe airplanes and pressurization. I couldn’t think of any word for these concepts in Dorian, either.
“I never realized that a barrier could hold in air like that,” I said. Then, with a smile, I continued, “You’re just like an Isekai protagonist, using magic in ways nobody here has thought of.”
“I sekai?” She tipped her head. “Different world?”
Didn’t she recognize it? Was it my pronunciation? No, I’m pretty sure she understood it correctly, the way she translated it into Dorian.
“Yeah, you know. Isekai stories. Like manga where people go off to different worlds?”
She thought, then brightened. “Like Kyaputen Hārokku? I read that.”
I frowned, once I was able to recognize the words ‘Captain Harlock’. A science fiction title, not Isekai, and really, really old… wait.
“Just how long ago did you come here?” I demanded.
Her smile went away, but a sparkle remained in her eyes as she laughed softly. “Don’t let me appearance fool you, Your Highness. I’m actually an old lady. Master uses magic on us that he created to help his mother. He keeps us both preserved at the age at which we apprenticed to him. It is fifty five years since I was born on Huade. I had just begun university when I died in Nihon, so maybe I should add that to my age.”
Now I was more puzzled. 1988 was a lot less than fifty five years ago, right?
She smiled at my expression. “Don’t try to make the dates match up. We don’t know if we really come here at the same time we leave there, or if time moves at the same speed. We don’t even know how well the months and years compare to Chikyū. Actually, I’m personally of the opinion that the years and days are both longer here.”
I remembered my confusion with the timing, how I showed up on Huade at the same moment that the latest volume of IseNai ended. It wasn’t logically possible, but the HR Manager had shrugged it off as a ‘minor excursion in time’.
Then she frowned. “Your Highness… Master Miröen told us about the world you came from. It didn’t sound anything like the Chikyū I remember. I thought you were from some different world. Really, it sounded horrible. Did something like another Taiheiyōsensō happen?”
“Another what?”
“When Amerika and Nihon fought.”
“Oh.” I smiled. “No, it’s nothing like that. He was talking about video games.”
She shook her head. “Veedeeoh games?”
I sighed. “I don’t know the word in your language for them. Listen, about what year did you … um, leave there?”
It’s a little too weird to ask, ‘what year did you die?’
“It was Showa sixty three. One thousand nine hundred eighty eight.”
She had translated it into Dorian, so the date didn’t sink in immediately. Then I realized, “Showa?”
And my brain finally caught up. “Yeah, you said fifty five years, right? The Showa Era was over before I was born. I think they were calling it Heisei.”
I needed to answer her question though. “When I left, Japan was safe and at peace.”
Even though I said ‘Japan’, she understood me. She looked relieved
I had to know. “Did you also create that aerial tramway system in Tëan Tír?”
She shook her head with a smile. “No, I don’t build things for the mortals. Mortal businessmen are always so hung up on profits and control. It’s unpleasant working with them. Why do you ask?”
As I recovered from my surprise, I explained, “It looks a lot like what you would see in Tokyo.”
Not that I’ve been there. But I’ve seen lots of Anime.
It was her turn to be surprised. “Really? I don’t remember a suspended tramway in Tokyo.”
“No, not the suspended tramway part. It’s the things at the station. Like the fare cards, the entrance gates, the magic boxes to purchase fare and look up routes…”
She looked happy. “They’ve made things like that in Nihon also?”
I finally realized that if she left there in 1988, she had never seen the things I was talking about. She couldn’t be the one responsible. They probably still purchased fare from attendants or something, in her time.
I didn’t get a chance to explain that I was pretty sure they were directly copying the current Tokyo system in Tëan Tír, because one of the mages acting as crew members approached us at that point.
“Great Senior.”
As she turned to him, her expression becoming businesslike, I was thinking, Great Senior?
That was how the members of academies and scholarly orders addressed a member well above their own rank. This guy was a middle-aged mage. Even if he was only average rank for his age, his ‘Great Senior’ ought to look like Gandalf.
Having been introduced as Manlon’s ‘disciple’, I had pegged her far too low at the beginning. I needed to work hard to completely erase my first impression of her.
Well, it was her fault. The first time I saw them, she and Pasrue had been acting like a couple of bimbos. When they were hanging all over their ‘Master Miröen’, competing for attention, there was no ‘Great Senior’ to be seen.
They were discussing the approach into Dausindiu, the capital of Arelia. It sounded like we would soon reach our destination. I gave a surreptitious wave to Talene and left. I wanted to watch from the quarterdeck as we descended.
