Pushing The Sky Away
Part 2
The good ship Whaler Tom glides through the air captained by air commander Anne Croma.
This is a total blue milk run and she has made this round trip flight hundreds of times already the past three months.
It pays well, but she wishes she would be transferred to the TransAtlantic flights already, at least those are more eventful.
Other air ships in the fleet of The Oculus Come And See Blimp Touring Company are, The Ryou, The Mr Owl The Cecona and The Lothmar.
As the Whaler Tom slides through the air, people gather at the stern of the ship pointing and exclaiming at something flying far away and high above the the chimneys of the main steampower station, that looks like the famous Battersea London power station, only much bigger.
The railings are made from copper and brass, with thick glass for brave fluffies to look around.
Frosty is gawking at the flying form with her mouth wide open.
She can hardly believe what she is seeing.
Those are fluffies.
Actual fluffies, actually flying.
They seem to swoop effortlessly around in the sky.
Gliding on hot air currents, swooping up, then down utterly fearless.
Utterly at ease.
Frosty follows each graceful movement with her eyes, utterly enraptured.
She has no eyes for the city of New Orleans below them.
Normally she points out excitedly to Robin and anybody who will listen, the famous land marks of the city.
The Crescent City connection. A wrought iron cantilever bridge, that connects parts of New Orleans with the main land.
Its both a walkway, separate bicycle road, and a two level train bridge.
The Saint Louis cathedral in Jackson Square is nearly hidden by the lush greenery of the park.
The University of New Orleans campus.
The vast steamboats, slowly treading water in the Mississippi on the horizon.
Frosty knows them all by heart and she has eyes for none of them right now.
Just the fluffies flying in the air, untethered, contemptuous of gravity snapping at their heels.
Just fluffies.
Fluffies like her.
“Lookit them go.” says one of the spectators.
“It’s like they are pushing the sky away.” says another.
This expression is something that somehow lodges itself in Frosty’s head and won’t let go.
When the Whaler Tom touches down again and during the walk home Frosty is oddly subdued.
But when she and Robin get home.
The moment the door closes behind them, Frosty explodes in excited chattering as if she has been waiting for this exact moment to arise.
Robin can hardly make head nor tails of it, but the message is clear.
She wants to fly, just like those fluffies.
“Fwosty wan, wan push da sky away !” she exclaims excitedly.
The next Saturday, Robin and Frosty are not visiting the market and the stalls, they are also not passengers of any of the air ships.
Instead they are walking through the streets of New Orleans, in a part of the city they never have been.
Frosty gawks around, at all the new things she sees.
Steam driven street cars, horse trams. Noisy children playing in the middle of the street, while other people try to peddle their wares.
Robin constantly consults the map he has with him, and drawn the way they are supposed to go out with red pencil.
His sense of direction is pretty poor, so poor that he could end up in Baton Rouge instead of New Orleans, if he was driving a train.
But eventually he finds what he was looking, after turning a corner robin and frosty find themselves looking at an open field.
Surrounded with a chain link fence and a sign attached to it.
The Flying Fluffy Society it reads.
The chain fence is open.
“Wook daddeh” says Frosty excitedly and she points with a hoof. “Fwying fwuffies !”
Behind the main building, that looks suspiciously like a small hangar, several fluffies are skirting around in the sky.
Robin enters the hangar, with Frosty besides him and the two look around an ear splitting banging and crashing sounds fill the air.
It sounds like a train yard.
Good thing both Robin and Frosty are used to this bloody racket
Right in front of the front door stands a massive, red brown polished wooden desk so big
It’s hard to miss and it’s over flowing with all sorts of things.
An electric lamp with a green shroud lots and lots of papers.
Several overflowing ashtrays, several overflowing pipes as well.
Welding apparatus, heavy lead pipes, brass rings nuts and bolts. A fountain pen lying in a big blue stain of leaked ink, on a form that says urgent.
Empty bottles of wine, a half full bottle of cleaning alcohol.
A new fangled Zippo lighter. and a very large silver press bell with a note saying for inquiries ring.
Robin looks around he sees several different divisions, dividing the hangar in smaller spaces.
Half of the hangar has been give up to people working on what look like rocket packs with wings.
None of them seem to have noticed that they have a visitor.
Robin presses the bell.
A sound like a steam whistle slices through the small building. Most of the people present don’t look up from their work except one.
A rotund looking gentleman, with a red faced complexion, balding red hair and a massive, massive red moustache, that makes him look a bit like a walrus.
He raises his welding goggles and makes his way towards them.
“Hello there Angus Deerborne !” he booms at Robin, weho is reminded of Mr Clayton.
Deerborne extends his hand.
“Chairman of the Flying Fluffy Society and you are ?”
“Uh, Robin Ollershaw, I’m here because.” he gestures at Frosty.
Frosty looks up and waves.
“Hewwo nice mista, Fwosty wan fwy !”
“Excellent little fluff, excellent” booms Mr Deereborne, clearly pleased with what he is hearing.
“Yeah,” says Robin “We’d like to join the society.”
“Glad to hear that,” says Mr Deereborne. “What say we move ourselves to the back of the building, we can talk a bit easier there.”
Angus Deerborne leads Robin and Frosty down the twisting and wending hallways of the small hangar, which is deceptively big on the inside.
But eventually they reach the back of the building, which opens out to the field.
Several people are standing there, looking at the fluffies in the sky and booming orders at them.
Their owners off course.
As well as a row of twelve wooden pens for the fluffies, some occupied, some not.
“Alright then,” foghorns Mr Deeborne who doesn’t appear to have a volume knob…
“Let me tell you what this is all about.”
Frosty in the mean time notices several fluffies, near the wooden pens.
They are all wearing strange looking apparatus on their backs, that look like heavy brass backpacks with rocket exhausts.
They also have folded wings. Some are made from canvas and brass, other look like more solid bat wings.
Some of them wear goggles, some of them wear flight caps with goggles or just the caps. Most don’t have any headgear at all.
Frosty tentatively walks up to them, putting up her bravest face.
“Hewwo nyu fwends ?”
Part 2 means more cameo’s
just less then before
Cameoi's
Disclaimer
This is just for fun, if you dont like your cameo please let me know and ill edit it out.