Chapter 2: Chapter One : Hazel Webb

“The first time I saw you, you were like a little baby deer. You’ve seen those, right? Innocent, freshly born, on legs shaking and shivering, trying to stand. You were so pathetic. I knew these woods were full of wolves, and I needed to protect you.”

~~~

One hundred years later….

June 21, 799

Hazel Webb decided she would never fly economy class again

Down in the bowing wooden hold of the Airship, humans and cargo alike were crammed together. The more the merrier for a captain who loved his coin. Boxes and barrels were crammed up to the ceiling, stabilized with ropes, the passengers meant to stuff the spaces in between. Hazel tried to shove her trunk between two of the towers, finding it more comfortable to be surrounded by walls. Only then to have her way out be blocked in by another, similarly desperate woman who slid her trunk next to hers and proceeded to not stop talking for the entire twelve hour flight. Hazel was forced to sit, sleep, and eat atop her trunk, smiling and nodding politely. Even pulling out a book wouldn't stop this woman from going on and on and on. An entire lifetime of petty nonsense flowed like a turgid river.

She knew the woman was just lonely, perhaps even terrified of flying alone in a hold crowded with strangers. But even a sociable and caring person like Hazel had her limits.

She didn’t even remember when or how she fell asleep. She just startled awake to a familiar voice.

“We’re growing closer to that human city — I can smell it in the air.”

Hazel snorted awake. Her hat slid off her face, tumbling to the floor. Her cloak was wrapped tightly around her as a makeshift blanket. She grunted in disgust; dried flakes of drool had collected on the side of her face. And she rose an inch, the wracking aches of her poor sleeping position asserted themselves.

She groaned and blinked awake, frowning, as the Fabric of the world made the hold awash in colors. She could see the green of the Earth-reinforced wood wobbling together with the brilliant yellow of Air, the magic of flight. Each barrel radiated a different color, depending on its contents. Her own body, the bodies of the others in the hold, glowed with dazzling threads of Water, Earth, and of course Life. She watched as the threads all around her gathered into the Fabric of Reality, coallessing, making her body whole and real.

Then she grumbled and rubbed her eyes. With a bit of a push, her eyes refocused, and the world solidified. The colors dimmed and fell away to what normal people could see. A dim and dingy hold, poorly lit by undercharged manalights, dirty and desperate people crammed in to make up for empty cargo space.

“Edelweiss?” she mumbled, pawing around her trunk.

Hazel peered between her trunk and the wooden wall of the hold. She saw a golden bird cage, large, about waist high. The bottom was lined with a fine satin cushion, well loved and oddly lumpy, because it held rocks instead of stuffing.

The door was wide open, and the cage empty.

“Here, Lady Webb.”

She peered in the black space between the crates. And two silvery cat-slitted eyes peered back. A small figure slinked from the shadows. One foot at a time, shoulders rolling, batlike wings flaring as the body slipped out from the cargo. A pearlescent dragon, white scales rippling with all the colors of the Fabric. An immensely powerful — and very tiny — dragon.

“Edelweiss…” Hazel groaned. “What are you doing out of your cage?”

“You slept through my supper, so I needed to procure my own,” the tiny dragon said flatly. With a short flap of its wings, it hopped up on the trunk and wove itself around Hazel’s neck. “These humans should be honored. I deigned to assist with their little rat problem.”

Hazel sighed and carefully stroked the small dragon’s head. He murred gratefully. The tiny thing could generously be compared to a small cat. Definitely larger than a kitten. But a large cat would dwarf the small dragon.

“How long was I… nevermind,” she didn’t bother asking the time. Edelweiss rarely cared for such things. “You said you smell the city?”

“The stink of humans is growing oppressively strong,” Edelweiss said, swiping at his nose with his claw. “I suppose I will have to get used to it again, if this is where you’ve decided to resettle.”

Hazel took a hesitant sniff. There was a smell like sewage… but that wasn't just the press of unwashed bodies in the hold?

“I’ll head up and see,” Hazel said.

She fished around her trunk for her fallen hat, and placed the wide brim back on her head. With a little tap on her trunk, and a refocusing of her eyes, she confirmed that the spell she had woven still kept it sealed shut. She peered at the chatty woman beside her. Her name, like so many other facts of her life, had been unintentionally discarded from Hazel’s memory. But she felt a small stab of pity for the woman. She was curled up in a blanket, clutching her necklace with dried tears on her face.

Hazel took a deep breath. She didn’t want to disturb the poor woman. So she blinked, and the Fabric reasserted itself around her. She reached into the air, clutching at its Threads. So many Threads had been seized and woven by the Airship’s engine, commanding the Fabric to lift the ship into the air. But it needed to maintain some Air in the ship, lest the passengers suffocate.

Hazel gripped this Fabric. She dragged her fingers across it, Weaving it into a simple spell. She activated it with a word, “Float,” and there was a flash of yellow as the ambient Threads snapped together, and spun about her, the new spellweave adhering to the Fabric of her skin.

She hopped to her feet, body, clothes, cloak floating languidly, as if she was underwater. Edelweiss, still wrapped around Hazel’s neck, gripped her shirt reflexively. With a short hop, she vaulted over the woman, and landed softly on the other side. She took a few more long and floaty hops towards the stairs, before the Threads burned off her and dispersed, dropping her to normal gravity once more.

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Edelweiss tutted. “What a waste, spending precious air on such a trite thing.”

“Now, now,” Hazel mumbled, stroking his head once more. He settled into the crook of her neck, murring. The aches in her neck were soothed by the radiating warmth of his smooth scales.

She ascended the creaking wooden steps, past sailors quarters (also cramped with cargo), past second class (just lines of hammocks) past first class (a line of ten individual cabins) and pushed open the hatch to the deck. Hazel clutched her hat as the air whipped and roared past her. The Airship she was on was formerly a sailing ship, the three masts of the galleon still standing with its sails furled. With a blink, the yellow weave of Air and flight and the green Earth of reinforcement swam into her vision, coating the boards and spinning through the air in dazzling patterns. She blinked again and banished the image. Over both sides of the high railing, she could hear the roaring of jets, pulling in the Fabric of Air and Fire and tearing it to Threads in order to soar through the skies.

She took a deep breath of the air. Ozone, from the burning of Air and Fire. And Edelweiss was right, as he rubbed his claws furiously down his snout. There was a heavy stink of sewage in the air.

Well, it wasn’t something she was unused to. Even her old home of Vivania, the most advanced city in the world, had days where the breeze picked up the smell from the treatment plants.

She headed to the aft deck, avoiding the idling crew as they ran final checks before landing, shouting terms Hazel didn’t recognize. She tromped up the steps to the raised viewing platform, protected by extra layers of woven layers of spellweave. Even to a normal person, the spellweave was faintly visible, a yellow haze in the air. Several other passengers had decided to come up and watch the descent as well. A lovey dovey couple clung to each other at the tip of the bow. Hazel kept a respectful distance and tried her best not to wince as they kissed.

The sun was hovering above the vast ocean, halfway down the western sky. The ship had descended from the clouds, but was still well above the ocean. The couple was mumbling and giggling and the smack of kissing lips.

Hazel's heart ached. She could feel the ghosts of sensation on her skin. The touch on her hair. The warmth of her lips, the taste of vanilla and mallow. Chest against chest, skin both soft and pliant…

She sighed, reached up under her hat, and tugged at the Fabric of her mind. Her pain and anxiety left with a pop in her sinuses, but her heart still hammered. Her heartache wasn't gone, just pushed back, for now.

Edelweiss lifted his head at the motion. He eyed her, then gave her a nuzzle with his cool snout, snakelike tongue flicking over her chin.

“Homesick already, Lady Webb?” he asked. “We’ve not yet been away from Vivania half a day yet. I never took you for someone who’s heart could grow so frail…”

Hazel snorted a laugh and stroked his head. He leaned into it, pressing against her fingers.

“Hush you,” Hazel said with a weak chuckle.

Just don’t think about it, she insisted to herself. You have a whole new life ahead of you in White Cliffs.

She looked forward to the racing horizon, hoping she would have a glimpse before it got dark.

White Cliffs was a bay secluded by — what else — cliffs of a dazzling and pure white limestone. Hazel had been invited to the city by a friend of hers from university — Zinna Vermillion. Her friend had come to White Cliffs for the same reason thousands had flocked there. It was a boom town, a port that had grown fantastically wealthy with the advent of the Airship.

Zinna had sung the praises of the wealth to be had in the city. But what had won Hazel over were the paintings. Beautiful white limestone over a hundred meters tall lined a long stretch of otherwise barren land. It was a pristine beauty, one of the few natural wonders of the world. She had seen paintings of the tiny port set into the small little bay. Human homes were sparse, docks small and frail humanity dwarfed by the sheer size and brilliance of nature’s beauty.

She knew the city had grown since then. There were bound to be more boats, more houses, more docks. But surely that view of the cliffs was still glorious.

She looked over the horizon eagerly as the Airship sank lower and lower, closer and closer to the ocean. The warmth of the late fall waters surged up around her, salt hanging thick in the air.

Edelweiss recoiled around her neck, small claws scratching his face. “Urg! The sheer stench of it!!”

Hazel laughed nervously and stroked Edelweiss’ tiny white head. “Come now, it’s not that bad…”

But it wasn’t long until she was struggling to breathe too. The sea below her was slowly shifting from a dazzling blue, to a foul green and brown. Hazel put a hand over her nose and stepped away from the splashing foam. The couple had the same idea, laughing nervously as they retreated. Putrid water. Undeniably human.

It was then, in the light of a lowering sunset, that she glimpsed the barest hint of glimmering white and gold in the horizon. But the closer and closer they got, her idea of a beautiful landscape that dwarfed humanity crumbled.

It seemed that humanity had dwarfed the cliffs.

Scaffolding ran up and along the famous white cliffs, wood hammered into the unstable white rock. Some intrepid business had even set up whole market lanes, either lining zigzagging wooden steps or set alongside a slow moving continuous elevator that dipped into the sea and rose to the top of the cliff. Boats and airships, large, small, new, and old clustered at innumerable docks, running for miles along the cliff face. The naturally narrow bay entrance couldnt accommodate the largest of ships, after all.

That old entrance was now flanked by two massive statues carved directly into the limestone, which if Hazel had to guess were the Heavenly Father and his Earthly Queen. Between the cliff-carved statues was a narrow passage, which led into the original bay surrounded by the white cliffs.

But even that pretty little bay was gone. Even if a boat managed to squeeze inside, there was hardly space for more than a dinghy. Contained by high cliffs, a full pell mell of wood and rot festered in the salty water. The wooden scaffolding that merely clung to the outer cliffs had grown outright tumorous, spreading throughout the small bay into a whole city on stilts, layers upon layers stacked precariously atop each other, filling nearly all of the cove. It was like driftwood from a hundred kingdoms had washed up and been trapped, human lives teeming within it like crabs and barnacles.

Hazel was full on retching, eyes watering. It was like she was looking at a decaying corpse of a city, with humanity the insects and massive surges of seagulls the flies.

“That cannot be safe,” Hazel moaned. “Zinniaaaa where in the world have you brouught meeeee…?”

Hazel squealed and stumbled back as the boat at last touched down in the water, a massive surge of dirty filth washing overboard. She squealed and stumbled back from the wave, overthinking every bit of debris that came with it. She raced back down to her terrible trunk in the hold, the sailors barking orders as the engines were wound down, and the sails unfurled as they approached the docks.

The next hour was an exercise in patience and fortitude. She sat above her trunk, waiting for the crowds of people to slowly surge off the ship. Her sense of smell eventually dulled, which was… fine. She guessed. Not like she was going to weave a spell of scent nullification; that kind of magic wasn’t exactly her specialty. And making a bubble of fresh air would be too complicated to be made without something to attach it to. Yes, she would have to sit and get used to it. Like a normal person instead of a powerful and special little witch.

Eventually, the hold emptied of people. Hazel took a deep breath (big mistake) and hopped off her trunk. She had already strapped Edelweiss’ cage to the top of the trunk, and closed it. Edelweiss decided he would continue to ride on Hazel’s shoulder, his little claws washing his face and nose repeatedly as if trying to scrape off the smell.

Hazel ran her fingers atop her trunk. The Air woven into its frame activated with a yellow flash, and it began hovering in place. It was not a weave of her making, but instead woven into the Fabric of her trunk itself.

She grabbed the handle and dragged it after her, the heavy trunk manageably light.