Chapter Two Hundred and Forty-Three - Sanity Check

The work of getting the Beaver fixed and ready for flight was tough, but not impossibly so. We found two intact helium sacs at the first cry airship, and one at the second. They were considerably smaller than the sacs the Beaver Cleaver had by default, but Amaryllis and Awen did a bit of math together and figured that they’d be enough, if just barely.

The better news was the intact helium tank aboard one of the ships. It was a big brass cylinder that took two to lift, but we managed, especially as some of the townsfolk from Mistrust didn’t seem to mind giving us a hand.

Initially, they weren’t super open to helping us, but they were quite neighbourly after we proved we didn’t intend to cause any trouble.

Amaryllis seemed fairly pleased with her negotiations. We were going to lose a lot of the produce we had. As it turned out, Mistrust lacked some very basic things, and the mayors were both interested in getting all of the potatoes and turnips and onions we had in our pantry, even those that had started to sprout buds.

The town would soon have more vegetables to eat, which seemed to excite them a lot. When I asked Mayor Marques about it, he said that they had a few local crops for their gardens, but not many. Mostly carrots and some local plants they’d discovered were edible.

By the time noon rolled around, we had all the new balloons mounted within the wrapping tarp of the Beaver Cleaver’s original balloon. With one of the burst sacs repaired and refilled, the Beaver was slowly gaining back some of its buoyancy.

It would be a bit of a rough flight though, with us relying on our gravity generator to reduce our weight. Awen was in the engine room monitoring the machinery while some of our other mechanically-inclined teammates scurried over the ship and patched things up. It wouldn’t do for a bad bit of sewing to open up a tear.

“Your crew is quite competent,” Mayor Fallfront said as she came to stand next to me.

I grinned and nodded. “We have some of the very best,” I said. “Maybe not the most experienced, but they’re all people I’d consider friends, and that’s important, I think.”

“Hmm. Where will you be flying next? Not somewhere too distant, I imagine?”

“Sylphfree,” I said. “It’s not too far now, and we’re late to arrive already. I think we’ll make it though.”

The mayor hummed again, then looked at me critically. “You might want to be careful. Sylphfree is a beautiful nation, with some excellent people. Smart, talented people, but they value certain virtues more than others. Propriety is greater than kindness in the eyes of many a sylph.”

“Oh,” I said. That wasn’t great. She didn’t seem to want to explain much more than that, though, and soon returned to the other mayor. The town was organizing things so that their best gardeners would get some samples from our pantry. Amaryllis had also traded away a bunch of other foodstuffs, things they couldn’t get here. Flour and grains and such. I think they were hoping to find some seeds they could plant too.

We ended up meeting mostly outside. I slapped together some sandwiches with what we had left--we really would need to restock soon--and handed them out to everyone in the crew.

By the time the sun was clearly starting to dip, we were just about done fixing up the Beaver as best we could.

The detour to the Lonely Island had cost us about a day, I figured. Maybe a tiny bit less since we had flown as fast as we could after the Grey Wall, as opposed to just taking our time.

Still, it was my failing as a captain that was leading us to be even later to our appointment. I didn’t regret the fun we had, or the great adventures helping people that needed helping, but it was still my fault that we’d be late.

As we were packing things up and picking up the tools that had gotten scattered around, I noticed a familiar cry hovering closer. “Moonie!”

“Hello,” Moonie said. “I wanted to greet you one last time before you took off again.”

I grinned and bounced over to the cry to give it a quick, tight hug. “It’s nice of you to come say bye. Did you make any new friends?”

“We are... uncertain if we have made friends, but we have certainly met new and interesting cry. This place is better than I had imagined or hoped for. There are still many things to do, and the cry who are here are very different from the cry I know, and even more different from each other.”

“That sounds nice,” I said. “You get to meet not just new people, but strange new people.”

“I have!” Moonie spun around, and while I wasn’t an expert at reading cry body language, I figured that was a good sign they were happy.

We chatted, just for a little bit, but it was obvious that Moonie was excited to return to their new friends, and I had a lot of work ahead of me too.

It was hard, being all responsible and stuff.

Once everyone was back aboard the Beaver and the sails were tucked in, I turned to Clive behind the wheel and nodded. “Alright, bring him up.”

The engine rumbled to life and I felt the ship shifting a moment before we started to rise. The crew cheered. Well, mostly it was just me, but technically I was part of the crew too.

It was slow, no faster than I could walk, but we were moving upwards, the ground dropping below and the cry towers sliding past. The wind picked up a little, and set us to rocking, but with Clive at the helm, we managed to stay right in the middle until we cleared the tops of the towers.

“Clive, full speed ahead! We have some catching up to do!”

“Aye, aye, captain!”

We deployed the Beaver’s sails, spun up the propeller at the back, and shot forwards over forests and rivers and hilly landscapes. We were heading north, to the next leg of our adventure, and hopefully to Sylphfree where, if everything worked out, we’d be able to stop a war.

I stood on the foredeck, eyes peeled and ears straight despite the wind battering them down every so often. I was expecting someone to come up and talk. The excitement had died down a little and there wasn’t all that terribly much to do on the Beaver when we were just sailing peacefully along. I wasn’t expecting the friend to come up to me to be Joe.

I hadn’t been spending all that much time with the Scallywags.

That was probably a bit weird. We were on the same ship, and we had breakfast, lunch and supper together everyday. But still, all three of them tended to hang out together as their own little clique aboard the ship, the same way Steve and Gordon and Clive tended to hang out together. There were plenty of times where we’d all mix together, and I was pretty sure that everyone considered everyone else a friend.

“Hey, Joe,” I said.

“Hey, Broc,” Joe said. He moved to the rails and leaned down, elbows against the wooden surface. “That was exciting.”

“Yeah. That fight with the rocket planes was kinda fun, but scary, then the airships. I’m glad no one was hurt,” I said.

“It might have been a near thing. The Beaver’s a tough ship, but he still took a beating.”

I cringed a bit. “I guess so. I really wish things had gone easier. Next time, I’m sure we’ll do better.”

“So there will be a next time?” he asked.

I nodded. “Definitely. Joe, I’m not the sort of bun to not do what I can to help people out. Sometimes, that means getting into a bit of trouble. Other times, that means flying halfway across the world to try and stop a war. And sometimes it’s risking hide and hare to clean some Evil roots. I want to be a good person, and that means acting on what I think is right.”

Joe chuckled, his head bowing. “Yeah, I think I see that. At least you’re not all talk.”

“Is it too much?” I asked while gesturing vaguely around us. “The adventures and the other crazy things we get us to?”

“It’s a lot, yeah, but I think I can handle it for now. I still think the Scallywags and I will be heading out one day, but maybe... maybe we’ll do something similar? I don’t know. It feels wrong to do things when they’re not things that’ll pay you well. But it feels right to do things to help folk. I guess we might need to find some middle ground?”

“You could join the Exploration Guild,” I said. Which reminded me: we hadn’t done much guild-related stuff in a while. Did they still owe us for that flower thing way back when? “They’d give you an excuse to move around a lot, meet new people, explore new dungeons.”

Joe laughed. “I don’t know if I’m made for that kind of adventure. Just being on the Beaver is a lot for us already, I think. I can’t imagine doing what you and your friends do.”

“I don’t think we do anything that weird, do we?” I asked.

He shook his head. “You don’t realize how wild you are, all four of you.”

Four of us? I suppose he was counting Bastion in our party. Which was probably fair. He was pretty close, and he had come on all the scarier adventures lately. “We’re just people trying to do our best,” I said. “Even if that sometimes means doing things that are scary.”

“You’re all insane,” Joe replied with the certainty of someone that knew they were right. “But it’s not a bad sort of insane.”

I pouted at him. I wasn’t nuts.

Joe chuckled as he stood up and stretched his back. “Well, I’m getting back to work. Someone needs to organize our tools and such, and it sure won’t be Oda who does it. Keep us safe, captain.”

“Have fun,” I said. “And don’t work too hard. Take regular breaks!” I called out.

I felt like a bit of a hypocrite there. Breaks were for people who wanted to slow down.

I wasn’t sure exactly what to do. It didn’t feel like a good time to start making noise. Maybe I could take a few hours to just... train things.

A final glance around showed that things were pretty calm, all said and done, so I headed to the rear of the Beaver and down a level.

I found Awen’s room empty; the girl was likely in the engine room again, or tinkering on her cool turret thing. Amaryllis’ room wasn’t empty. My bird friend was on her bed, face buried in some pillows and the rest of her laid out flat.

“Uh,” I said.

“I’m sleeping,” she said.

“Are you sleeping... well?”

“Yes, Broccoli, I’m sleeping well,” Amaryllis said into her pillows.

“Do you need anything?”

“I just spent a few hours negotiating after a very stressful morning. Not everyone is as capable as you at dealing with chaos.”

She sighed and pushed herself up to stare at me from the corner of her eyes.

“I desperately need a nap.”

“Okay then,” I said. “Uh, nap well.”

I stood around in the corridor of the ship for a moment, then sighed. Maybe I did have a problem. I couldn’t sit around and do nothing. If I could at least train, maybe, or help someone with something.

I thumped a foot on the ground and stomped off to find something to do. I might, maybe, have a wee, tiny sliver of insanity in me, sure. But that was something I could bother with later. Right then and there, I needed a distraction.

I’d find someone who needed a friend, or my name wasn’t Broccoli Bunch.

***