She lands near the someone, still bird-shaped, and observes this activity. He doesn't seem to have a daemon, so that means he's probably not Midgardian...

He spins around suddenly, eyes going quite close to where the sound came from. "What the hell? Um, you're on a medium-sized island about 70 klicks up, close to the equator. Is this place yours? If so, sorry about your tree, I didn't see any claim marks."

"The tree isn't mine. I'm very lost," continues the voice from the same place. "Where is this planet, approximately?"

"If you're asking what planet this is, I don't think I can unlose you. This planet is called Cloudbank, and if I remember my astronomy lessons right it's about nine hundred light-years away from Earth. Of course, nobody's been back to Earth since the stargate broke, so we can't be sure."

"...Well, I know how to get home from there. What's the stargate? Where is it?"

"The stargate is... Some sort of massive ship orbiting the planet. It used to be a portal you could walk through and end up next to an identical portal that orbits Earth. It's hundreds of miles straight up, higher than anything can float, past the hydrogen layer. Nobody really understands the more complex parts of lost technology, sorry to say, so I haven't the first clue why it broke or how to fix it."

"Well, I don't have a way to get into orbit on me, more's the pity, even if we assumed I could fix the thing. This is very inconvenient. If the bridge doesn't reach here I may be stranded for centuries. Can I trouble you for some advice on where to spend them?"

"That depends on what you want to do, I suppose. I don't know what you can do. I'm headed down to the equatorial towns, which is probably a better starting point than here. If you don't weigh more than two hundred kilos you can come along, I'm descending anyway so extra weight isn't as much of a problem as it usually is."

"I don't weigh that much, no." She turns invisible, shapeshifts back into her normal form, and walks an illusion of herself from behind a shrub to where she's standing and merges it with her no-longer-invisible self seamlessly. She speaks with her own voice, no longer thrown: "I'd appreciate the passage. I don't know what tasks there usually are to do on a ship like yours but I may be passable at some of them."

"I've got regular flight pretty well automated. You could tend the garden, I suppose. I need to retune the engines for high pressure and finish loading that tree, and I prefer to set down on something sturdy at night so I don't collide with anything. But we can be off tomorrow morning at the earliest."

"I can help you carry the tree, if you like. My name is Loki, what is yours?"

"I'm Nick, and the help is appreciated. Nice armor, by the way, good metal is very rare, lucky you. Alright, let's drag the trunk over so I can weigh it."

"Is it that rare, here? It isn't so where the armor was made, so I wouldn't call it particular luck." She drags the tree. It doesn't seem to give her any trouble.

She helps. "So if this planet was settled from Earth, you're a human, aren't you?"

"Uh, yes? What, do aliens exist after all? Are you one?"

"I'm an Asgardian. Where is your little soul-creature, if you're a human, or do they only have those if born on Midgard?"

"I don't know anybody who has a soul-creature, apart from some people who think they really should have been born as jellywings or something. I've never heard of Asgard, what star does it orbit?"

"If you have star charts I could see if I could find it," she says. "When I was on Earth, everyone had an animal that accompanied them wherever they went, and could speak, and was their soul."

"On Midgard their souls seem to mostly talk to their persons and each other. Occasionally the conveniently shaped ones perform useful tasks. I have never had one myself, although I had to let them think I did lest they be upset about my incompleteness."

"All right, I'll leave your mechanisms be," says Loki agreeably. "I appreciate the hammock, although I'm not sure why you have one if you're typically alone."

"It's basically just a rope-bag. Useful for hanging things outside the ship if my cargo hold is full. Have you worked with plants before?"

"Not extensively. But I believe I will be able to water them for you. If you also want me to prune them into dwarf versions of themselves I will have more trouble."

He gives a little smile. "That won't be necessary. The strawberries are about ripe, though, so you could pick some of those. And I need to repot some potato sprouts soon. But that can wait. Would you mind coming to the cargo hold and helping me rearrange a few things? You're pretty strong, and we're listing to the right because of that tree."

"I can rearrange your cargo," agrees Loki.

"I think I have the gist. Floating islands, of which that one was apparently medium-sized, and ships between them, and some Midgardian living things but apparently also some native, and I imagine this causes all sorts of logistical problems especially with collecting raw materials, as you mentioned. One doesn't usually walk long distances on one's own feet; that's what horses are for."

"I've never heard of horses before. And yes, that's about the gist of it. There's also the danger of falling, especially children falling - my jacket has a glider built in, so even if I fall I'll probably be able to glide onto another island. And bad weather - if you go too low the air fills with sulfur, and if you go too high it fills with hydrogen. I lost half my glass when I suddenly flew into a crosswind, once. Is there anything you need other than the hammock and maybe something to eat?"

"I'd expect the islands with children on them, and perhaps even those with adults, to be fenced, but perhaps the children can get around such precautions and dare one another to do it? Food and the opportunity to sleep are my most immediate needs - I may be used to eating more than you're expecting me to, but I can go on short rations for a few days if supplies are limited. In the medium-term I would like paper."

"I want the paper for long-term information storge. Anything short-term I have alternatives for that won't use up a scarce resource."

"How would I know what you want the paper for? Well, like I said, paper is expensive. You already helped with the tree and the cargo and you're going to help with the plants, so I'll feed you and give you two charcoal sticks and... Let's say twenty sheets of wetmill paper. It's already been remade a few times, so it's a bit flimsier than you might be used to, but it'll work."

"I can make do with that for the time being," Loki nods. "Thank you."

"Alright. You can find your paper in the box labelled 37 on the right shelf. Charcoal sticks are in the narrow box next to it. There's food in the kitchen, eat what you like. Please only take what I said you could. I've got to go work on the engines, and unless you're secretly a mechanic I don't think you can help with that."

"I'm not a mechanic. I might understand how things worked if I investigated them closely, but likely not quickly enough not to get in your way. And you do not need to fear for the contents of your boxes on my account."

"Well, it has land, and seas, and a fairly consistent variety of air above them. Asgardians live on it. We are ruled by Odin, who has been queen for a very long time. What else do you want to know?"

"What do people do with their time? Most people here fly ships, or work farms, or make crafts. We don't really have queens - it's hard to rule lots of islands when they can just float away if they don't like you ruling them. I visited a few towns that had kings, but they only ruled the one town. How are asgardians different from humans?"

"We're stronger - you noticed - and tougher, and longer-lived, but I believe those are all the genuinely inherent differences, and some of them may be deliberate enhancements from long ago, since lapsed from memory."

"I noticed you seem to be heavier, too. I don't suppose I can become asgardian? I would very much like to be longer-lived."

"We're denser - I was categorizing that under 'tougher'. I don't have a way to turn you into an Asgardian, I'm afraid, and I've never heard of it being done either, and by the time I could even potentially make any useful progress on it via independent development you would probably already be dead."

"Shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. How would you - develop a way to turn people asgardian? Are you a doctor?"

"I've never been taught any medicine, but I tend not to think of anything as out of my reach if I spend enough time on it."

"I could sleep now, but if it's useful to have someone up monitoring things on a night shift I can do that too," she mentions.

"If you knew more about the ship that could be useful, but any significant problems will set of an alarm in my room and any minor problems you wouldn't know how to deal with, so for now you might as well sleep."

"All right." She looks for a good place to put her armor and gets all the clunky bits off, leaving something only slightly laughable as nightclothes under it.

The next morning, Nick prepares a simple breakfast, yells into the cargo hold about the availability of food, and starts untying the ropes holding his houseship to the island. If Loki is nearby, he will start pointing out useful objects and what they do, or talking about the operation of an airship more or less at random.

Loki gets up, has no change of clothes so eats breakfast in what she's already wearing, and listens attentively to the monologue about the functions of the ship.

"No. I'm not at all sure of the underlying mechanism, but an unfamiliar monster I was fighting somehow managed to drop me in midair on another planet. I'm nearly as confused as you are, I assure you."

"Some sort of big predator dropped you here? That sounds... Well, if I accept you appearing out of nowhere, a monster putting you here isn't that much further out there. And you were fighting this monster because it was trying to kill you, I suppose?"

"Well, it wasn't after me in particular until I went out to meet it, but I didn't want it loose in a city. I'm not sure if it was a predator. It was aggressive, but herbivores can be that too."

"It's not. That's something called Allspeak. Which may or may not contain awkward translation glitches - once I went for quite a long time without noticing that it was switching the genders of all gendered words on me - but serves for most purposes. I'm using different terms for 'something that eats other creatures' and 'something that is dangerous to people'. A ladybug eats other creatures; a bilgesnipe is dangerous but only eats plants."

It's all very cunning. Once she has enough information to form questions, Loki asks some.

He attempts to answer them! It's fairly clear what each thing does and how to operate them - that thing will drop some water, making the ship lighter. That one speeds up or slows down the engines - but his explanations of how they actually work seem to be assuming a level of education Loki does not have.

Well, she's pretty bright, she can follow along for the most part and fill in with clarifying inquiries. "Using water as ballast is clever," she opines. "If everything else is hard to come by."

She follows and learns how to water the plants correctly.

Watering the plants takes not quite all of the rest of the morning. The ship is fairly small - When she's done, she could easily find Nick near one of the engines if she looks for him.

"All done," she tells him. "How else does one occupy one's time here?"

"Well, I tinker or read or update my wind charts. You could read my books, I guess, but they're mostly technical and boring. Star charts, engineering manuals, that kind of thing."

"Well, they'll do for a few days. Where do you keep them?"

Several books about navigation and handling lighter-than-air objects, a weather almanac, a long row of handwritten volumes consisting of detailed notes, charts, and calculations. A book filled with lists of usual weights and prices for various objects and substances. Books on farming and how one should grow plants. Lots of books that detail how the sort of mechanical devices all over the ship work and the best ways to build or fix them - though again, these seem to assume the reader has some amount of background education.

Well, she flips through the pricing books to get a sense of how much the common currency is worth, first, and then reads a navigational book which may after all continue to be useful if she gets around by turning into a bird. She's very well-educated, just not locally.

...Good to know. She is very glad she learned to turn into a bird before being snake-monstered to this planet. And that she has her healing spells.

Up she goes to take care of that then.

As she is watering the plants, a large, mostly translucent tentacled thing suddenly slams into the ship from above. It opens a circular mouth full of lots of sharp teeth, smashes a few panes of glass, and starts trying to eat the ship's mostly-for-maneuvering wings.

As soon as the spear clips a tentacle, it screams and flings all available tentacles in her general direction. Rather slowly and clumsily, compared to the things she's used to fighting.

Well, that'll make it easier to start scything them all off.

After it loses three of at least two dozen tentacles, the thing seems to decide this is more trouble than it's worth. It shoves off from the ship violently enough that Loki would fall if she didn't have grace, and flees upward as fast as it can.

She shrinks her weapon again, puts it back on her belt, and goes looking for Nick.

"It's scared off, anyway. It left a few tentacles behind. Are those useful for anything?"

"Squidmeat is rare enough to be valuable as a delicacy. How the hell did it manage to lose tentacles, did the propellor clip it? Fuck, that probably means my propeller's busted."

"Your propeller's fine."

"Which I will check for myself to be sure. Let's go see these tentacles, I have to put them in the coldroom or they'll just rot. And then I want to find a village to set down on. I could probably still get where I was going, but I don't want to risk finding a thunderstorm with only one wing and probably holes in my greenhouse."

"All right. The tentacles are up in the cargo hold."

"I did not use your sword. I didn't know you had a sword."

"I did arrive on your planet in the middle of a fight," she reminds him. "I do not intend to attack you. Why would I?"

"So you did. I thought you had lost your weapon, since you weren't carrying anything obviously weaponlike. Should I reevaluate the potential threat of that little stick on your belt? And it's not that I think you're going to hurt me, it's that you being able to hurt me makes me slightly nervous whether or not you're going to."

"Well, then you may have to be slightly nervous." She pulls the stick off her belt, turns it into a little knife in a way that could look like it's a switchblade if one weren't paying close attention. "My mother gave it to me and I could never replace it."

"Thank you for telling me. I can deal with being a little nervous. Do you think you've learned enough about the ship to help me set her down somewhere inhabited? It'll be tricky, with just one wing."

Loki puts Lævateinn back on her belt. On the opposite side of where it looks like she's putting it. When she's back in alignment with her visible outline: "I'll do what I can, of course."

"Do you need me to decide quickly?" she asks.

All right. So she may be able to establish herself as an inventor - they certainly spend enough time worrying about running into things that she imagines they'd appreciate telescopes, and the basics are simple. But she'd like to do it someplace a bit bigger than this. She decides she'll carry on with Nick if he'll have her, and tells him so.

"I won't quarrel with the division. How much does that add up to?" wonders Loki.

"Hard to say until I actually find a buyer. Definitely enough to live on for a while - maybe half a year. You'll be able to buy whole notebooks, if you still want paper."

"That will be nice."

Loki likes this town! It's very cute. It needs a telescope workshop on it.

All right. Stroll, stroll. Where does one get glass, and miscellaneous tools?

One might pay attention to the helpful maps posted here and there. Some of the larger islands have names, the one she's on right now is "Stairway." It's probably the most vertical, and seems to be a hub of sorts. If she wants glass and tools, why not try for the island labelled "Glissei's Glassware Workshop"?

That sounds promising. Thataway she goes.

If she takes the most obvious path, she'll arrive at a very pretty storefront labelled Glissei's, on an island near the bottom and outer edge of town, leading into a store that sells glass and things-containing-glass of all shapes and sizes and colors.

She has no reason to take a non-obvious path. She takes a look at the glasswares before trying to speak to anyone. Just double-checking on the telescopes.

Okay, so she can't invent telescopes from scratch, but she can improve on them. If they can make mirrors. Are there mirrors?

There are mirrors. They are very expensive. They seem to be made entirely of glass and silver. The silver is probably what makes them so expensive.

There are tool shops, and clothes shops, and bakeries, and herbalists, and a lot of recycling workshops that will buy various used-up materials (like paper, wood shavings, or food waste) and sell other things at a slightly higher price.

She takes note of how the recyclers like things categorized so that when she has anything to throw out she can do it in an orderly manner, and looks at what tools they have in the shops.

Fruit and vegetables and bread things are cheap, meat is sharply expensive. If she wants alcohol, that's cheap enough. She can't afford meat.

That'll be a change. She doesn't want alcohol. She'll take a veggie pie and a fruit tart. Maybe she should hunt things. If she flew more or less straight up over an island, killed something in midair...? She'd still need a way to transport it from wherever she caught it to a buyer, which means a ship, which is probably out of her reach for now.

"And pickpocketing was your first choice?"

"This gentleman is telling me his life story," says Loki, smiling. "Excuse me, I'm new in town, I assume you're some kind of official because you match the currency but perhaps you could clarify?"

"I thought the lack of a farm was the problem in the first place," remarks Loki. "If there are farms to sign up with...?"

Loki lets him go and collects the coins he grabbed from the floor.

She heads back to the ship.

"Hello. It's a nice enough town, save the pickpocket," she remarks. "Did you sell the tentacles?"

"Yes, I caught him and then someone showed up to arrest him. That sounds like a good deal on the meat. Your half will cover your damages, I hope?"

"It should take care of the wing and then some. Especially since I managed to sell my temporary replacement. I haven't taken a good look at my internals yet, though. If something important on the inside is subtly destroyed I could be taking a loss. But accidents happen, right?"

"I'm sure the squid would own its actions with pride."

"Heh. I guess it's not really an accident. Wildlife attacks happen, then. Well, in an hour you'll have a decent startup fund. Do you have a good idea what you want to do around here or was it a wasted trip?"

"I'm considering the logistics on taking up squid-hunting, actually, with that price tag. In the shorter term I'm thinking inventing."

"Meat is pretty valuable in general, but squid in particular is only so ridiculously expensive because hardly anybody human is stupid enough to try to hunt them. You stand a much better chance, obviously, but if you take them down regularly you'll flood the market. There's other airborne wildlife that most people don't bother, though - I can suggest a particular book if you want to take up hunting, and you can prowl bookstores for it. Unless this town has a library? Not all of them do."

"I don't remember spotting one, but I could have missed it."

"Thank you, and likewise."

"I will be happy to kill a squid, if you think you can find one for us."

"I have some ideas, but this scheme is still in the planning stages. I just wanted to make sure you're willing before I spend a lot of time and effort preparing. Did you look for that book?"

"Not yet, no, but I read quickly."

"Please find it if you can. I need to refill consumables, expand my coldroom to fit an entire squid, and buy lots of ice. I'm going to disassemble my greenhouse, too, it'll just get smashed if we get into a fight with an adult squid. Would a walkway or platforms around the outside of the ship make it easier to fight a squid? I could build some. I'm already going to make a net launcher to try and tangle it up."

"An open space to stand on is all I need. The net will help keep it from dying when it isn't above the ship, I suppose."

"I was also considering a barbed bone-spear. Penetrate deep enough with that and it won't be getting away, dead or alive. I should find some idle hands, get the ship rebuilt sooner rather than later. I'll find you again in a couple of days."

"I am suitably armed. I do not need a bone spear."

"You have a ten centimeter knife. What are you going to do, throw it?"

"No. But I'm not going to show you here."

"Asgardian technology of some kind, then? Alright, if you say so. Find that book if you can, please, it might tell you how to kill the squid without puncturing its lift bag." Nick turns to leave.

Loki goes looking for the book after collecting her coins for the crate hauling.

The town has a public library. The book she wants is not in it. A certain bookstore does have it, and this particular bookstore will let you sit in a comfy sort of cafe area and read things for a much smaller fee than buying it outright. (Paper is expensive, so the book is also rather expensive)

Then she will sit and read whatever it has on squids.

The person she rented the apartment from is surprised! She seems to think Loki is recklessly risk-seeking and makes an annoying attempt to assure her that life is worth living without adrenaline rushes.

"I will be fine," Loki says. "I can't speak to the fellow who is conveying me, but he seems to think the risk worthwhile. Your concern is appreciated."

Loki brings her armor, of course. She might be fighting something with poison spikes. Lævateinn pretends to be a switchblade at her belt.

"Is that all you're bringing? I can probably find my way back here, but you should still bring anything you don't want to lose - change your wood coins for metal, bring that paper you wanted so badly, and anything else you've bought since then."

Loki has a little bag. It clinks when she pats it. "I'm all set."

"Alright, then. Off we go!" Their first task is to ascend to the squids' usual haunt. "I hope we find a jellywing pack on the way up, though. If we catch a few and use their innards to paint the top of the ship green, we can probably get a squid to come to us."

"If I see any I'll nab them."

"Oh, lots of things. There are craftspeople and healers. Scholars, explorers, warriors."

"You really only find those specialized jobs in big towns here. A few adventurers try to explore the upper latitudes in hope of finding leftover technology from the orignal settlers. I even considered trying it once. Would you call the town guards warriors? They would use slingshots to drive off pirates or beasts if the town was attacked."

"I suppose they could call themselves warriors, yes."

Well, she can do that, then. Diligently and with excellent handwriting.

Nick appreciates the diligence and says so. "I swore never to take passengers again a few years ago. You're much better than the people who caused that oath."

"I'm glad they weren't bad enough for you to abandon me on that empty island."

"Well, call me a bleeding heart. You didn't have a house or tools or anything. You probably could have fed yourself, but you'd have been pretty miserable the first time a storm came along. Those idiot passengers are why I laid out a lot of rules for you on the first trip, though I know you enough to trust you have common sense now."

"What did the idiots do? And why were you carrying them to begin with?"

"Impressive. Both that you built this thing and that you didn't tie them up and dangle them out the window halfway through the trip."

Loki, having neither relevant meteorological expertise nor weather magic, stays out of his way while he does that.

He asks her to add and subtract a few large numbers while he runs for a book. Comparing the results with something in the book, he declares, "I think we can make it over. I'll start maneuvering, you close all the doors and hatches."

She goes and closes all the doors and hatches, of course.

"I wouldn't blame you. That was impressive to watch."

"Was it, really? It's just a matter of focus. I wasn't even aware you were still here. Anyone can - get in a rhythm like that if they have a good reason to."

"Yes. But only in areas of great expertise. Someone who doesn't know what they're doing will choke instead."

And Loki watches the wind.

A few hours later: "Nothing broke while I was asleep, right? I should have done a check earlier. Nothing feels wrong, at least, I built this thing tough. Oh, and thanks to the homesick angel I pulled to get us above the storm, we're close to squid-territory now."

"I didn't notice anything awry. Homesick angel?"

"You'd have noticed. Ah, homesick angel is a colloquialism. An old religion thought that divine... Winged things called angels live in the hydrogen layer, so a ship ascending as fast as possible is like an angel trying to go home. Hence the phrase."

"Huh. Cute."

"It is, isn't it? I don't think my ship bears much resemblance to anything divine, much as I love it. I should go maintain the mechanisms, but if you have decent vision, soon would be a good time to find a jellywings."

"That's like asking, do you want to make a deal? Depends on the deal. Depends on the secret. I don't normally have a good reason to gossip, at least."

"What would you consider a good reason to gossip?"

"I'm mostly wary of unconditional promises. If there is a compelling reason to reveal something I promised to keep secret, I will reveal the secret. If I promise to, I don't know, keep it secret that I saw someone hanging out in front of an abandoned building. Discovering them with a bloody knife and hearing that someone was murdered inside is a good reason. Thinking that abandoned buildings should be left alone is not a good reason."

"Mm. Well. I can do a number of things which I have not told you about. I would like to disclose one of them so as to speed this excursion up. I assure you that if you ever hear of a murder which could only have been committed with the use of my unusual abilities you will not be obliged to keep your promises to me, but do I otherwise have your word on your silence?"

"I knew something was up. Yes, you have my word."

"Lots of things are up. The thing I have in mind is -" She holds her hand out palm-up. She appears an illusory jellywings there, revolving slowly on the spot. "Squid bait."

"Magic."

"I could try, but I've never taught before. I'm largely self-educated myself so I have no tutors to imitate. Also, spell development takes decades."

"Yes, do. Is my animation decent? I've only seen pictures of the creatures."

"Good enough. Squid are smarter than most critters, but they're still pretty stupid. One attacked my ship just because the roof was a little green, remember?"

"I do. All right, do you want to be anywhere in particular while I bait squids?"

"I'll be flying the ship, trying to keep her as steady as possible for you. Let me fly well clear of any islands first. If that thing knocks around my ship, and it will, I don't want to crack open against one."

"Sure. Say when." The mini-jellywings disappears.

After a few minutes: "Now is fine."

No squids immediately attack. If they're as rare as bears and other monsters are in Asgard, it'll take an hour or two before one finds them.

"I don't think so. Not that humans can hear, at least. A wounded one might smell like hydrogen sulfide though. Should I vent a little gas from the ship? The effect would be similar."

"Might help. I can't do smells with my spell."

Lævateinn instantly smooths, shrinks into her hand, and goes long and sharp and barbed again between the plates.

The squid is really really upset by this. Thanks to how its body is fitted together, wedging the chitin open has made it pretty much immobile. A good half of those tentacles are still moving around angrily, though.

The weapon gets a little wider. It sprouts a few more barbs. Doesn't this thing have a brain?

It does have a brain, and Lævateinn finally found it. The squid goes limp.

There is not an immediate response. One of the tentacles went limp inside the ship's control room.

"It's dead and tied to a railing by its tentacle." She looks at him for a moment, then sighs and taps him on the head. Ker-heal.

"Fifteen," says Loki.

"Well, it's very intellectually stimulating work but I go through a lot of paper. That was one of the more time-consuming spells. The other healing ones built on some of the same groundwork, they didn't take as long. My first was fifty years. Is this the only room it tentacled its way into?"

Loki saws off tentacles too. With her little knife. Small doses.

After a while, Nick says, "I'm going to start trying to backtrack. Do you mind letting me know when the other tentacles are done? I want to try to recover the central body. That chitin looks inches thick, a solid piece of bone that big will make some great tools."

"Sure. And I assume the gas sac is still meant to be kept intact?"

"For now at least. The weight of all this squid without its gas sac will be good when we're ready to go back down."

"You can't, say, sell the sac? Will it eventually deflate on its own even if we don't cut it?"

"No and yes. Human-made gas sacs use goldbeater's skin, which is basically dried cow guts. Without a living creature to feed it, the squid's gas sac will die and start to decay within a week. Same way with any other floating critters."

"All right."

So Nick gathers all the notes on direction and speed from the last few days, opens his navigation book to a wind chart, and starts calculating.

Which Loki does not interfere with.

And by sunset the squid is packed away, gas sac safely disposed of, the engines are humming, and Nick predicts a two-day return journey.

"Nicely uneventful. Although you might want to consider investing in a helmet if there's the demand to support making a habit of this."

"Or possibly just some stronger glass - you seemed to be just fine by yourself up there. No need for me to get close to poison-spined tentacles if I don't have to."

"Of course. I've killed nastier monsters, some while unable to use magic."

"Oh, like what? And did you learn anything useful from this one?"

"My first solo was a wyvern," she reminisces. "I had its tail made into a knife but I don't have it with me. Mostly I had my sister along, helping, sometimes her friends too. This one, well, yes, one always learns things, but nothing easily put into words."

"I feel the same way about airships and storms. Hard to put into words. Maybe... Maybe you could show me how to fight, or how to magic? All I managed to do to the squid was stab randomly."

"Teaching you to fight would be easier than teaching you magic. That I was conventionally taught, and it's quite common for even peers to show each other things, so I've more than no experience with it."

"Shall I fetch my sword, or should I start with fists or at least something less... Sharp?"

"You are not likely to hurt me with your sword, and if you do I can fix it. We can begin with unarmed if you prefer though."

"It seems sensible." He is much too polite to attack first and see if he can get some kind of advantage with even a minimal amount of surprise. But it looks like he considered it.

"We'll want a decent amount of space. And you will spend a lot of time violently encountering the floor and may want a mat of some kind."

"Well, the cargo bay is full and the rest of the ship is pretty narrow. The platform on the roof and some furs? They're probably the best padding I have - there are some rubber things in my mechanisms but not enough to make a mat. We can wear ropes so we won't fall off completely."

"Furs are fine if that's all you have. I'll skip the rope, but you can wear one, just be aware that they're going to throw off your form and limit your ability to move in three dimensions."

"If by 'for real' you mean 'with intent to kill' that will last until they cut your rope, which cannot defend itself, or grab it to make you lose your footing. Did you mean something else?"

"...Good point. I was referring to the fact that all the stories of pirates I've heard of involve them descending by rope and fighting the target ship's crew with everyone still attached to their ropes. I had a friend who survived a pirate attack once, and to hear him tell it neither side fought to kill. But stories are stories, and you're the one with real experience fighting things so I should trust your judgement."

"Pirates might want a ransom," she says. "Which its own tactical situation. You might benefit from learning to fight with a rope, but it'd be a handicap on your expertise any time you tried to work without one."

"Then let's fight without one. Just be careful not to throw me too close to the edge."

"I will be very mindful of the edge. But at first I'm not going to throw you. You're going to throw yourself so that you can learn to land correctly without hitting your head, hurting your neck, or catching an elbow wrong."

He follows Loki's instructions as best he can. It helps a bit that he's lived his whole life on flying objects, he has better balance and recovery than an untrained Midgardian would have. But not that much better.

And she corrects his stance and his technique. Relentlessly. And when he screws up, well, the cat is out of the bag on her healing; she heals him.

"Yes. Are you sure you should stay up, though?"

"Just long enough to get us attached to an island. Somehow they avoid hitting each other all on their own, so attaching yourself to one is a good way to stay safe."

"All right. What sort of light will be best?"

He looks around. There's still, barely, enough light to see outlines. "We should head for that one. Can you shine a beam on it, bright enough to see details? And enough light for me to see the controls and dials, too."

Now the island is bathed in clear white light, and there is a little blob of more light over Nick's head, which will follow him when he walks.

"Night."

The next morning, Nick is up at exactly sunrise. While making breakfast, he notices something. That bag of flour seems strangely lighter than it did yesterday. He experiments by throwing various objects across the room.

Loki hears the racket. "What are you doing?"

"Does your healing spell happen to repair muscle fatigue as well? I'm a fair bit stronger than I was yesterday, as if I've been practicing fighting for weeks."

"It will not repair all the symptoms of exhaustion. You will need enough food to support the exercise you're doing and so on. But it will repair any injury, and I suppose that could lead to very noticeable effects on a Midgardian."

"Yes, it is very noticeable. Now that I'm done embarrassing myself, we should do some maintenance. It's never a good idea to go very long without maintenance. You've been on this ship twice now, you know how to check the gas cells and water tanks and so on, yes?"

"I can likely do that, yes."

"Excellent, thanks. I'll have a look the engines and controls while you do, they're much more... Picky. Custom-built."

The cells are opaque. She puts a bright blue illusion light in each, looking for where it shines out.

"Delight. Perhaps my next spell project will be the transmutation of matter."

Well, then, he gets a review of all the ways to fall, and then he can learn to retain his grip on someone he's trying to keep hold of. Loki doesn't break any of his fingers - she doesn't rely on mere superior strength to break his incorrect grips at all. If he does it wrong a little twist of her arm will free her wrist.

He manages to learn the grips fairly quickly, though using leverage correctly escapes him for a while. Gripping things and climbing around is an essential part of living on an airship - a few new ways to do it to a person and not a rope are quickly learned when he leans on the old patterns.

He falls. A lot. Correctly, for the most part. He's usually good at dealing with his feet being in uncomfortable places, but not when it comes in the form of a sharp pull on his leg or a sudden unexpected obstacle. He's also hopeless at trying to trip Loki in return.

"When you sweated for several hours, probably."

"Yes, probably. You may have noticed by now, but I have a tendency to focus on one or two things, sometimes to my detriment. How do you think I'm doing at fighting, by the way?"

"Not at all badly for your first few days, but we're still in the maneuvering stages. I haven't seen you throw a punch."

"I was wondering about when you planned for me to start hitting things. You're the expert here, so I didn't want to ask."

"Moving without hitting things is more useful than hitting things without moving, so this is the accustomed order, but we can start on that next time."

And then they can spend the morning teaching him to hit things. Such as Loki, who can take a Midgardian's fist to the nose without flinching if he happens to hit her, which he doesn't.

Loki disembarks and sketches a privately ironic bow. "I've killed a squid for you."

"And I will pay you for it," she replies. "As soon as I receive it, of course."

Loki doesn't object and has no need for a prize from this squid.

"That sounds delightful. I accept."

"I make no objection."

"Your math is correct. I have little enough familiarity with the markets that I cannot but trust your pricing of the chitin, but you came to ready agreement with the Baroness on the other parts. And if I find that you have been cheating me, I will be very angry with you. Should this not suffice?"

"Then it is all the more likely that you expect I will not find you have been cheating me, is it not?"

"Indeed. But I gave you the chance to verify that I am not cheating you, since I would have expected the same."

"I appreciate that."

"It seems like common courtesy. In any case, enjoy your hard-earned wealth! I'm off to buy a nice steak, and then lots of supplies and hired hands for my ship."

The glazier is rather surprised to see her. He had heard that she left a few days ago. It seems the expectation of never seeing someone again is strongly rooted. He still has her telescope diagrams, but has not yet attempted to construct one. He has questions - first of all, where does she expect to get enough silver to make mirrors on any kind of scale. Second of all, how in the world is he supposed to make a curved mirror?!?

Working from memory without any of the notes she took while studying optics makes it difficult, but she does her best to render the steps into something he'll be able to do. He should certainly make one prototype and see how easily he can sell that before he tries to churn out a great many improved telescopes, she does not disagree.

He agrees to follow her instructions and try to make various pieces of unsilvered glass in the correct shape. Making the glass in the first place will certainly be the most difficult part of the construction if not the most expensive.

Fine, fine. She'll pay him to make the components and assemble a prototype.

It will take the glassmaker a few rounds of prototypes to produce an acceptable lens. In the meantime, Baroness Hath's feast arrives. She is contacted by one of the guards and given an address and a time to arrive. The address contains a fancy manor. It's constructed largely of wood and glass, in contrast to the floatstone buildings everyone else uses. Nick is at the door at the appropriate time.

Loki is on time too. She has even bought a set of more local clothes so that she doesn't need to look so outlandish all the time.

Loki likes feasts. She is gentle with the alcohol, enjoys the meat, and can live with the mouthfeel of her kill for a polite serving's worth. "It's not so much of a tale. We went up, a squid visited us, and then I stabbed it until it died, the ship somewhat the worse for wear."