City Sector Uplift part 4
#56 of The Life and Times of Jarzyl Mintaka (Slice of Life Stories)
Jarzyl's adventure continues
Lying on her side, Jarzyl lounged on a floor cushion. "...we wait?" she muttered.
Atlas was seated beside her on a floor cushion of his own. "Hmm? What?"
The cushions were luxuriously large, especially since Atlas and Jarzyl weren't as big as fully sized dragons. Jarzyl shimmied over to the side of her cushion and leaned towards Atlas. "I said, now I guess we wait?"
They had been teleported to a rooftop landing pad of a skyscraper in sector 48B, which was an outer sector forming up the edge of the city. Their invitation cards had been checked, and then they had been given access passes to clip to their flight harnesses. Then they were taken to a restaurant located one level below the roof, which had been booked out for the day and converted into a viewing gallery.
The restaurant tables had been shifted aside, and the floor cushions which would have been placed around those tables were instead moved towards the windows in a long row. Jarzyl's parents had been seated beside her, with Atlas on her other side, but then her parents had gone off to socialize and chat with some other clan members they knew, leaving the two fledglings alone together.
Atlas was seated properly on his floor cushion, whereas Jarzyl was sprawled out lazily with her tail half resting on Atlas's cushion. Although she otherwise appeared to be calmly relaxing, her tail tip flicked from side to side, giving away her restless impatience. "Hmm..."
Atlas held back a chuckle. He mentally guessed that Jarzyl would last no more than a few minutes before sitting still got too boring for her, and he was right. Not even one minute later, Jarzyl abruptly rolled to her feet and padded off her cushion.
Sector 48B was the last sector that had been constructed before sector forty-nine, and it was located right on the edge of the city. This building was one of those which had been constructed on the edge of the sector. Jarzyl stepped forward and peered through the large glass windows that stretched from floor to ceiling, giving a wide, panoramic view to the outside.
They were now waiting at the edge of Avaeria, looking out over open air to spectate the new sector launch. By the end of today, if everything went right, sector forty-nine would be joined with several existing sectors including 48B here, and the City of Wings would be one sector larger. But outside there was only the predawn darkness, and clouds were increasingly obscuring any view out of the city.
The restaurant turned viewing gallery had a quiet ambiance of modern elegance, with dim but warm lighting gently illuminating the space. Calming music was softly playing from echo boxes placed around the room. Atlas listening along to the gentle tune--he was learning the wingharp in music classes at school, and his wings twitched as he imagined playing the melody.
Jarzyl spent a few minutes staring out the windows and into the darkness, then she went back to sitting down on her floor cushion. Atlas didn't find it particularly interesting to just sit around doing nothing, yet the lack of stimulation got to Jarzyl first. The orange-scaled fledgling fidgeted impatiently on her cushion. She repeatedly extended and retracted her claws just for the sake of it, before staring intently at her own tail tip.
Finally Jarzyl partially opened her left wing and started licking at it--a dragon's flight surfaces were most effective when kept clean, though Jarzyl was rarely patient enough to bother preening and she seemed clearly inexperienced with it. Her style was not to keep her aerofoils in pristinely clean condition, and instead just power through any minor added drag by flapping harder. Atlas watched with faint amusement. "This is a rare sight. You must be really bored to resort to preening your scales."
"Oh! Oh! Excuuuse me! How dare you?!" Jarzyl put on a look of mock outrage, with her neck frill perking straight up from the back of her head. "Am I not allowed to self-groom? Do I need to seek permission from the authorities before cleaning my own scales? Grrr..." Jarzyl growled softly at Atlas, though any possible threatening effect was ruined because she was visibly holding back laughter. She extended her wing out towards him. "And you're right--I am bored, and there really is nothing better to do. So yes I was going to clean my scales, unless you are volunteering to preen my scales for me?"
Atlas blinked. He wouldn't have minded. "Do... you... want me to?"
For a moment Jarzyl glared at him with that confident, comfortable grin of hers that he was so familiar with--but then their casual playfulness abruptly crystallized into a shared intensity as they stared at each other. Jarzyl blinked, and suddenly she looked nervous. She furled her wing back up and glanced away sharply.
Atlas looked away too, and the odd energy of the moment faded. When he and Jarzyl next looked at each other, it was back to that comfortable comradery of close friendship.
"Atlas, I'm so bored," Jarzyl said to him after another few moments, as if this were something he could rectify.
"Find something to do, then." Atlas had come prepared, and in one of the pouches of his flight harness he'd brought a novel borrowed from the library, to read in any moments of dullness such as this one. To Jarzyl, he nodded his head in the direction of a bookshelf placed in another corner of the viewing gallery, which contained various magazines, news sheets, and other miscellaneous reading materials. One thing that the two fledglings had in common was a general fondness for reading. Atlas knew that Jarzyl liked adventure, crime mysteries, or other similarly exciting tales, and she had the ability to power through books with great speed when she was engaged by a story.
"Hmm." Jarzyl strolled off and went to peer at some of the news sheets. But none of them appeared to catch her eye. Instead of choosing something to read, she then went over towards the other side of the room where there was a refreshments counter serving snacks and drinks.
Carrying a chocolate bar in her mouth, Jarzyl trotted back and sat down next to Atlas again. She extended her claws and smoothly cut away the candy's packaging foil, before snapping the bar in two and offering half to him.
"Thanks." Atlas took the chocolate with a nod.
Jarzyl made a slight flick of her neck frill, as if it were obvious and unquestionable that she would share. She sat down again, but instead of sitting on her own floor cushion, she went over to Atlas's cushion and squeezed on beside him. The next couple of minutes were spent in comfortable silence, with both fledglings leaning against each other and eating the sugary treat.
Not for too long, however. When Jarzyl had finished her half of the chocolate, she wiped her paw clean against the cushion, then pushed back up to her feet and scampered across the restaurant again. This time she went towards her parents, who had been conversing with a group of other dragons, and some words were exchanged between the family.
Then with an impatience skip in her stride, almost a trot, Jarzyl came back towards Atlas and nudged his side with her paw. "Ok, sitting around is boring. Let's go look around."
Atlas was comfortable on his floor cushion, and he had been doubly comfortable when Jarzyl was sitting with him, but he didn't object to a walk. "I... uh... alright." He slipped a bookmark into his library novel and kept it in his flight harness. Then standing up on his three legs, he followed his friend.
There wasn't much to see around the viewing gallery. It was just a restaurant that happened to be in a good location to observe the sector launch. After strolling around didn't turn up anything interesting, the two fledglings went over to the stairwell and then climbed back up to the rooftop. Jarzyl led the way, eagerly trotting forward and looking around while Atlas calmly followed behind.
"Where are we going?" Atlas asked.
"My father said that there several other viewing spots being coordinated for today." Pausing, Jarzyl sat back on her haunches and tapped the access pass clipped onto her harness's shoulder strap. "These are all-access VIP passes, so we should be able to get into any of the places that my clan is running things."
"We're right next to where the new sector is going to attach. I don't think there's going to be a better view than this," Atlas pointed out.
"I heard that there are also doing some tours down at sector forty-nine, while it's still on the ground. That sounds fun, doesn't it?" Jarzyl replied.
At the rooftop, dragons occasionally landed, carrying appropriate access passes or invitation cards to the event. Flashes of colourful magic also lit up the rooftop every few minutes, as displacers teleported back and forth between various locations, bringing more Mintaka clan members and other spectators.
Almost everyone was arriving, not leaving, but Jarzyl bucked the trend. After another pair of displacers had brought in a group of dragons, Jarzyl waited until the crowd had left the rooftop, then she trotted over. "Hello!"
"Greetings." The displacer who replied was an impressively large, bulky drake with a long neck crest, and a waist that seemed noticeably round. If it had been a drakka Atlas might have suspected she was gravid, but a drake obviously couldn't be laden with an egg. It was rare for dragons to be able to get fat, since being overweight made flying exponentially difficult, which then turned flying into good enough exercise to lose weight--but then again, if you happened to have teleportation magic, then you didn't actually need to fly anywhere. The drake's displacer harness was extra-large, but it still fit him well. "Two little dragons with seven legs in total..."
With a warm, easy grin, the drake glanced over the two fledglings, noting the passes they were carrying, and the wing pennants Jarzyl was wearing. As an experienced displacer, he certainly knew why random strangers would approach. "Wherever you want to go, little orange one, I am not for hire--your clan has already paid me, and my routes are fixed today. Unless you're headed for Mintaka headquarters, I cannot help you."
"You're going to HQ?" Jarzyl nodded. "Yeah, can we go there? Can you take us there? Please?"
"This is allowed. Your pass permits you to proceed to whichever viewing location you prefer. But..." The drake made a dramatic, showy toss of his head which made his neck crest flick. "...of all the viewing spots for today's special event, this one has the best view in the city--it is superior. You can see all the way down to the mountains where the sector will take off, and you will see when it comes to the city. Your headquarters only has views sent through light field projectors--a mere simulacrum shown on the sand pit."
Jarzyl's tail swished from side to side, bumping against Atlas's. "Uhh, but I heard they were doing tours of the new sector from the airship docks next to headquarters?"
"Yes, true. There are some airship tours running. But why would ride an airship down to observe the new sector, when you could simply wait till later today when it is joined to the city, and then walk among the streets as you wish?"
Jarzyl shrugged. "We could do both!"
"This is allowed." The displacer nodded solemnly. He turned his gaze towards Atlas. "And you? Where do you wish to go?"
Atlas nodded towards Jarzyl. "Wherever she's going, I suppose."
"I guessed as much. Very well, then. Sector one, airship docks, right next to Mintaka Tower Two." The displacer gestured with his wings, and the world folded around them all.
The restaurant turned viewing gallery in sector 48B had possessed stylish furniture, fashionable decorations, dim lighting, slow music, and an overall quiet, elegant atmosphere with a smooth mood. The airship docks were the exact opposite in every way. This was a bright, practical place, and it was very busy.
Located in sector one, right beside the Mintaka Headquarters, the airship docks were a vast complex sprawling out over the surface, interior, and even underside of the City of Wings. On the surface the airship docks merely resembled a large area of concrete and metal, with landing pads marked out in paint at regular intervals--but immense elevators could bring airships and crew down to the interior, where the true extent of the docks was located.
The interior of the airship docks was comprised of huge rooms made from metal, forming interconnected hangar bays like a vast artificial cave network. This was where airships were constructed, stored, repaired, loaded, unloaded, and otherwise prepared for their flights.
Jarzyl and Atlas stepped out into a scene of controlled chaos. They were in one of the largest hangar bays, and the centrepiece was a huge passenger transport that could carry hundreds of dragons onboard. The airship was shaped like a pointed ovoid, and its metallic hull looked angular and sharp. Bright lights harshly illuminated the entire hangar, especially shining right on the airship to light it up from all angles.
And to the sides of this hangar there were other hangar bays stretching out in a grid--some were occupied with other airships of various models and sizes, while others were empty and dark. All of the airships that had activity were owned by Clan Mintaka or Clan Taslin, for use in the sector lift today, but there were numerous other airships belonging to other apex clans or smaller clans as well. The airship docks were busy, though not overly crowded just by their sheer size--crew and staff wearing various colour-coded flight harnesses were bustling about the docks, pushing cargo or spare parts, directing passengers about, and generally looking like they had lots of work to do.
In this hangar in particular, there was a crowd forming a snaking queue to board the airship. Jarzyl took one look at the queue and her neck frill drooped. "Uggh, that's the line to go for a tour of the new sector?"
Atlas glanced over the signage. "Looks like it. Should we join the queue?"
Jarzyl bounced between her feet impatiently, then she let out a disdainful grunt. "Grrnahh... Just standing around for another hour is boring. I hate queues. We could fly down to sector forty-nine on our own wings faster than waiting an hour."
Atlas assessed the queue. "I don't think it would be an hour in queue. Maybe just a third of that. Also, I don't think we're allowed to just fly into sector forty-nine?"
"Probably not. The airspace has got to be all restricted for the launch operation today. But queuing is still boring." Jarzyl turned her head and looked at the adjacent hangar bay, where there was a similar passenger transport waiting. "That's also for the sector tour, right?"
The other passenger transport didn't have a queue to board, but almost immediately they saw why--it was already loaded up and ready to depart. Red rotating lights flashed around the sides of the hangar, and a warning bell rang. Then the metal floor of that hangar cleaved in two and started to slowly fold downwards, as the hangar doors opened up to reveal the dark skies over which Avaeria was flying.
"Oh, wow!" Jarzyl excitedly ran over to watch, though she slowed down to make sure Atlas was following her. Only a central portion of the hangar's floor was opening up, with an outer portion remaining where the groundcrew had moved all their tools and equipment and were now coordinating the airship's departure. A drakka was standing in front of the airship and signalling with her wings held high, while another drakka was at the side of the hangar and pulling levers on a control console.
The two fledglings stood at the side of the hangar and watched. Dark skies were visible through the open doors in the floor--Atlas craned his neck to see if he could spot the new sector in the mountains far below, but all he saw were thick grey clouds illuminated by the city lights. Flashes of lightning flickered from within some of the larger clouds. Wind spilled into the hangar, feeling pleasantly cool and humid against his scales.
As the hangar doors opened fully, the airship remained supported by four huge clamps that held it up. But then came a deep resonating rumble and the airship lifted away from its supports, pushing up into the air in a manner entirely unlike how a dragon would fly.
Atlas turned away from watching the airship to instead watch his friend--Jarzyl had a rapt, intense gaze as she saw the airship moving, and her tail swished excitedly from side to side. When Atlas looked back at the airship, the support clamps had already folded out of the way and with a slow, gradual pace the airship delicately lowered itself out of the hangar and into the dark skies.
"Huuh..." Jarzyl sighed wistfully. "Airships are so interesting."
"They're just machines," Atlas replied.
"They're the most advanced machines. The most expensive ones. What power." Jarzyl watched as the airship continued to descend away from the city, until it was enveloped in clouds and suddenly gone from view. Seconds later, another airship that had been hovering nearby started to move in towards the hangar in preparation to dock--it was another passenger transport that had just finished bringing a different group of passengers to tour the new sector.
Atlas jerked his head towards the first hangar they had been in. "Now shall we go join the queue to go for a tour of the new sector?"
Jarzyl looked thoughtful. "Let's... let's keep looking around first!" Her gaze turned elsewhere in the airship docks, where instead of huge passenger transports there were smaller, leaner cargo craft.
TO BE CONTINUED