Pushing The Sky Away Part 4 , Final
Summer comes and goes. Autumn descends, the days grow shorter, the nights longer again.
The trees lose their leaves.
All is as should be.
Jackson Square hums with activity, the market stalls have descended upon the park.
When walking around here one can practically feel history vibrating in the air.
History was made here.
Louisiana was made here with the Louisiana purchase of 1803
Jackson Square is currently home to a replica of the great crystal palace,
A cast iron replica of the original, built in Hyde park for the 1851 world faire.
This has been a tradition, to build the replica for the autumn faire, for as long as Robin can remember.
It’s not just a covered market, though there is that but it’s also a place for people to gather and companies and inventors to showcase their wares.
The stalls are bigger and more extravagant.
About 7,000 stalls, stands, merchants and contributors, line the two floors of the crystal palace.
The interior of the palace is about 128 foot high and two floors. The upper floors are made from wrought iron and hardwood.
The replica is about half the size of the original Crystal Palace which still makes it enormous.
Entire trees are encased in the palace and made part of the exposition.
When it is all said and done half the city wil have passed through its doors.
Halloween comes but once as year
The entire city of new Orleans has been living towards this day only two events are even bigger.
Mardi Grass and Dia De los Muertos.
New Orleans is a city that know how to have a good time, even with death.
A big band orchestra is playing all the latest hits, and if not those they play the old favorites.
Fritters and doughboys are frying in the fat with french fries, that are accompanied with salt and sharp vinegar.
Hot dogs with sharp or mild mustard.
The ground floor is covered in sawdust.
In the middle of the palace a Hater stall is standing selling it iron toys that simulate killing fluffies, these are very popular with the kids.
Probably because it’s a robot, and robots are the new craze.
Especially the steam powered ones.
A large and extremely heavy replica of one of the robots is standing next to the stall where the brave can test their strength, by punching it in the chest.
If one punches it hard enough the dial will shoot all the way up to fluffy squasher and the robot will squeeze the two facsimile fluffies, till their eyes pop and fake guts spill out.
New stalls have also popped up to accompany the older stalls.
The candy king stand is now twice as big and has the latest Foxhoarder brand candies.
The fluffy balls, in multiple colors and a hard candy coating and a sticky gooey centre.
The A-S book stand now takes up two stands on the upper floor and is selling several rare first editions of The Sam Adams Guide by O culus
Children run to and fro from stand to stand, pulling their bemused parents along with them.
And the fluffies ?
New Orleans has not seen this many fluffies, since the great flood and most of those were dead.
A man in a farmer outfit is holding an extremely scarred looking fluffy on a short leash. She has scars all over the place and looks a bit like a squat dog.
Most fluffies back away from her in terror, and this seems to please her quite a bit.
A fake alicorn is walking around.
He has a fake horn strapped to his forehead and bouncy wings attached to his back.
He is black with toxic green tail and mane and stone grey hooves. He is telling several people that follow him with their fluffies on a leash, where they can find what.
He is wearing a a bright yellow vest, that reads staff fluffy.
A dark green alicorn with one wing a U shaped scar that loops around his throat ending in the back of his neck, and a muted brown mane is skittering around, seemingly alone until a man with a mechanical lower arm gesture for him to catch up.
Reluctantly the alicorn follows, leaving behind whatever he wanted to get his hooves on.
He was hanging around the stall, that calls itself for science and shows several fluffies in cages.
One of them is a fluffy with a row of sharp theeth in their mouth and it snarls growls and rears up at everybody that walks by or comes too close.
Another fluffy is a normal brown earthie, with a dark brown mane and tail, but it has a massive set of teeth and fangs set in a stomach maw.
A card in front of his cage claims his name is Sarlacc
A new stand has taken up residency as well the NekuChan toy store, they sell Pushka branded pony dolls.
All the way from Russia, imagine that.
The Krosh the Viking stall sells wares all the way from the Nordic countries including mead and handmade fox toys from Superweaner brand.
The Flying Fluffy Society fluffies are separated from the hustle and bustle of the autumn market, by several pull curtains.
The fluffy owners are doing some last minute checks to the rocket packs, and chat with their fluffies.
Robin adjust the fuel injector of the pack and checks the ignition plugs.
Everything checks out okay.
Frosty is sitting on the work bench, looking forlornly out at the sky.
She has goggles pushed on top of her head, to keep her mane out of her eyes.
She shivers.
“Daddeh,” she says “Why am Fwosty shakey ?”
“That just nerves,” Robin reassures her.
“Newves ?”
“You are just worried about flying in front of an audience.” Robin reassures her. “you wil be fine.
“Otay daddeh” says Frosty. She looks back at the overcast sky again, she is anything but reassured.
Show time comes both way too fast and far too slow.
Frosty’s shakes increase, as she hears the booming voice of Angus Deerborne crackling out of the PA system, strung all over the crystal palace.
As if he needs a tube amplifier to make himself heard.
He introduces the flying fluffies as the main attraction of the day, and first up are the twins Memphis and Belle.
Who take graciously to the air. Where they perform a complicated intricate routine that looks damn near impossible to follow, let alone replicate.
They stand out very starkly against the grey sky.
This doesn’t help with frosty’s nerves.
Next up is Concord, who flies solo.
He gives a magnificent show, while painting the sky with colored smoke.
It looks a bit like fireworks, only less noisy.
And then, and then it’s Frosty’s turn. Her heart leaps in to her throat.
Off course she is paired up with Ace, who is still contemptuous off her.
The fuel lines are opened, the spark plugs ignite, there is a rush in her back and Frosty can feel how her hoofsies are lifted off the ground.
Normally right about now she would lose control and crash face first in the ground.
But somehow, things for the first time start to click in her head.
Maybe it’s because of the expectations.
Because she has an audience or because she is tired of Ace sneering at her.
Whatever it is things seemed to have finally clicked in her head,
Frosty is flying !
Really flying, without an air ship.
She can feel the wind whoosh through her fluff.
She can’t help but smile, a big honest to goodness goofy smile, that she can’t hide she is actually flying.
And it’s all she ever imagined it to be, and more.
So off course Ace has to ruin things.
She rushes past Frosty, making it look effortless and taps Frosty on the head with the tip of her wing.
“Owwie !” exclaims Frosty.
“Ou dummeh we am just fwying we am having a show ! fowwow Ace if ou can !”
Ace peels away in a controlled spin and then shoots straight up.
Frosty grumbles to herself and tries to do at least something equally impressive.
She peels away to the other side and does a barrel roll twice over
The entire world spins before her eyes, when she regains her bearings, she finds Ace way way above her and starts to pull up in a hard 90 degrees angle.
Ace says something, Frosty can’t hear what it is over the distance and the roaring wind in her ears, which are lying flat against her head.
She has streaming tears in her eyes.
Frosty isn’t sure if those are from the biting wind or from her anger.
Ace kicks off and effortlessly performs a complicated flying move, just as Frosty catches up to her.
But Frosty seems to be getting the hang of flying.
Maybe because she is a natural after all, maybe all she needed was a push.
Maybe because she wants it badly, maybe because she wants to show up and shut up Ace, but somehow she manages to keep up with Ace.
Not only that, she actually starts to gain on the black and red alicorn.
So off course it can’t last.
Despite being checked and rechecked over and over.
Despite being taken apart countless times, something in the rocket pack can’t deal with the strain of the G forces Frosty is subjecting it too.
Maybe it’s a microscopic crack.
Maybe it’s metal fatigue.
Maybe it’s a flaw that was always there.
Maybe the last rebuild wasn’t properly done.
The result is the same
Something breaks in the rocket pack.
The rocket stalls and then turns off completely.
The gravity that Frosty finally was able to defy, rises up to meet her.
“Frosty !” Robin’s cry carries over the square.
The orchestra stops playing while everybody looks up as the sky, as a small multicolored meteor falls down, down to earth.
Robin can feel his blood turn to ice water, as he watches her fall and there is nothing he can do.
Nothing at all.
Frosty disappears behind the trees of Jackson Square and the paralysis that has descended on everybody present is broken, along with the hush.
“Come on,” booms Mr Deerborne. “She landed behind the St Louis Catherdral !”
A group of people surge forward with Robin and Mr Deerborne at the front,
Robin fervently hopes against hope that Frosty is alright that she isn’t too badly injured.
Its Mr Greenshaw, Ace’s owner who finds Frosty paradoxically enough.
She bounced off the spire and roof from St Lousis cathedral, which broke her fall a bit.
It also broke her back and lower legs.
She lies in a crumpled heap, in the ruins of her rocket pack.
Her legs bend and sticking out in odd angles, with sharp shards of metal pushed right through her body, puncturing her liver, her lungs.
One of them nicked her heart.
Blood seeps from countless injuries, it bubbles up from between her lips.
“Oh god Frosty.” Robin drops to his knees beside her, his voice on the edge of breaking.
“Mr Deerborne and the other members of the society keep people and other fluffies at a respectable distance. While holding their hats and caps in their hands.
The staff fake alicorn and other staff fluffies do the same for the fluffies, who want to surge forward to give huggies, because huggies make everything better.
Frosty’s eyes flutter and then open slightly, she hovers on the edge.
Her body is nothing but aches and pain, a wave of sharp agony.
Her dying eyes roll up to Robin.
“…Nu…nu hab sadsies daddeh,” she manages to say with a grim effort of sheer will keep to the darkness at bay.
A bubble of blood bursts between her lips.
Robin gasps, he can’t believe she is still alive and several emotions fight in him for control. But before any of them get the overhand Frosty speaks again.
“Fwosty…fwy…Fwosty ,push da sky away.”
She manages to smile, the most beautiful, brittle, terrible smile Robin has ever seen.
She exhales, her eyes roll further and she is gone.
Her soul whispers on the tide of eternity, gravity has no hold on her anymore.
All that is left behind is a broken mortal shell and young man, who wil never stop blaming himself.
Final part of Pushing The Sky Away.
Poor Frosty
The story came together for me as I was listening to this.
Push The Sky Away Nick Cave
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - Push The Sky Away (Live with The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra) - YouTube
This being part 4 there are lots more cameo’s
In no particular order
Cameo's
@Reddit-Word_H83r
@Foxhoarder
@KingLuke
@A-S
@Oculusfluffy
@TheLittle_Stonerboy
@Pushka
@FederalChemical1728
@NekuChan
@creeper
Part 1 Pushing The Sky Away Part 1 ( AMDk7)
Part 2 Pushing The Sky Away Part 2 (AMDk7)
Part 3 Pushing The Sky Away Part 3 (AMDk7)
