Young Writers Society

Upon stepping into the garage, a heat wave crashed into Abel’s face. It was quickly followed by the heavy, nose-scrunching smell of burning coal, glazed over with a greasy odor. Abel grimaced. He pitied the swaths of ground-workers toiling on and around the commercial airships like ants, heaving spare gears and carting wooden boxes around. Despite the garage’s breadth, enough so that the other three walls were lost behind half-inflated balloon heads, the stench and massive airships made it feel positively cramped. He was reminded of how lucky he was to be on the fast track to a job that let him fly through the skies, and not be preparing the machines.

He squinted through the dim lighting to see what companies the airships belonged to. An unknown blue logo. A vaguely familiar yellow logo, disgustingly bright against the dirty white canvas. Another unknown logo, this time of a cartoonish compass.

“Keep moving,” someone behind him hissed. It was almost buried underneath squeaking wheels and gruff shouts.

Abel hadn’t realized he was holding up the line. Sheepishly, he took two steps to close the gap and glanced at Cain. The Xingese pushed his hat further down so that his eyebrows disappeared underneath the fur, then looked away.

Suppressing his twinge of annoyance, Abel pressed his fingertips against the wall before immediately wrenching his hand back to his side, wiping it on his pants. Copper pipes snaked up the stone walls, and it seemed that grime liked to gather in the spaces between them. Then, he licked his lips. There were too many people in front of him to see where the exit was.

There was a flash of light visible between the students’ heads, and several gasps came from down the line. Abel scuffed the toe of his leather shoes against the floor. His palms felt sweaty. The line sped up, likely because people were pouring out into a freer space, and Abel found himself wincing into the sunlight before long.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. Rows of dark blobs quickly formed into rackety brown airships, the giant engines half sunk into the cabin. The front windows, which curved around to accommodate the ships’ noses, looked cloudy. Some had white markings on them­—scratches or the remnants of stickers, Abel couldn’t really tell. They were spaced apart enough so that there would be no takeoff incidents, but managed to take up the entire dirt field.

Thrills of excitement jolted through his body, making his heart flutter. Ever since he could read, he’d absorbed tales of the exotic, of prowling beasts as tall as oaks in the Farlands and of the endless silver deserts of Glycia, as still as any painting. Of the Iron Mountains that pierced through the clouds and guarded the frozen, undiscovered North. This was his opportunity to experience the same adventures. The first step to doing so, anyway. Abel hoped that he wouldn’t tear up, because that would be extremely embarrassing.

Someone jabbed his shoulder, rougher than strictly needed. “Don’t just stand there. They said they have our names plated to the ships already, if you were listening in the garage.” Of course it was Cain, who was staring at him, also with more contempt than strictly needed. “We have to go find ours. It’s in alphabetical order, going by the navigators, so it should be near the front.” He gestured to the left. That was, presumably, where the A’s were.

“It was super loud in there,” Abel muttered while following Cain. He was glad that it was cooler outside, because conversing with his partner was nerve-wracking at best. There went his giddiness.“I’m not sure how they expected everyone, especially those closer to the back like us, to hear. Should’ve made an announcement once we got outside.”

“Well, I heard, didn’t I?” Cain snidely replied, bending to check the plates. Abel frowned at his tone, but did the same to the airship next to them. Beatrice. Azura. It seemed like the pilot wasn’t done, however. “And I’m the one with the earflaps. For my sake, I hope your eyesight isn’t as bad as your hearing.”

“Excuse me,” Abel snapped, abruptly stopping his search. He glanced around. It seemed that Beatrice and Azura, whoever they were, were still hanging out elsewhere. “You don’t need to be a jerk about everything. I’m certainly not trying to be one. We’re partners for the next two years, and if you can’t suck it up and, you know, be a decent human being about it, then both of us are in for a damned time.”

“Damned time,” Cain snickered. He crossed his arms and offered Abel a twisted smirk, although the rest of his body was tense. “You must be real delusional if you think we can get along dandy.”

“Is this about your parents? Lineage?” Judging from how the pilot’s eyes narrowed, Abel hit the nail on the head. It was pretty obvious, anyway. “Look, I don’t hold it against you. You’re-“

“Yeah, no. Stop right there. Don’t play that merciful, understanding act with me when you wouldn’t do the same for my parents. Just… just you trying to be all good, and pitying, and ‘oh the poor kid with the savages for parents’, and…” Grounding his words to a halt, Cain gestured wildly, grasping for words to deliver his fury in a coherent manner.

All of a sudden, his arms fell to his sides. A deep breath. He rolled his head back and stared at the cerulean sky for a good, long time. So much so that Abel wondered if the pilot had hit himself in the head in his frenzy. “I need to control my temper better, don’t I? It doesn’t matter how much I rant. It’s not going to change anything. Let’s find our airship. We won’t be doing much else today; they’re just sending out people quickly show us the structure, and then we have to gather back at the front again.”

Abel opened his mouth, then closed it. The urge to run his fingers through his hair came up, but he squashed it. His hands were probably dirty. The other boy definitely loathed him, and while Abel could see why, he was too confused to really do anything about it. He wasn’t trying to be condescending to Cain. He honestly wasn’t. If their meeting was any indication, the pilot was a fun guy and Abel just wanted to deal with that better side of him again.

Despite that, there was a sense of indignation rooted in him. Wrong. All wrong, it told him. It resounded in his heart, that overwhelming sense of injustice, that Cain could not, would not, see things his way. That furious part of his screamed at his brain to conjure a response, one that would be so convincing that the boy would understand. His brain just felt numb. It was reeling from utter rejection, he dimly recognized. Correction. He was reeling from rejection. He’d lived his life trying to be friendly to everyone, to never act on the ugly thoughts he couldn’t stop himself from forming. And he had largely succeeded.

Even so, he couldn’t see a way to reconcile with Cain. The boy was basically asking him to accept the Farlanders, and was dead set on hating him no matter how amicable Abel acted outside of those matters. The nomads whom lived without a thought for the divinities, who sent their children off on their own without a care in the world for their well-being. Who attacked hopeful settlers and left lost, sobbing adventurers to succumb to nature. And then dared to call that the natural way of doing things and that it had ‘simply been their time’.

Abel clenched his fists. Glaring at Cain’s back as the pilot left to inspect more name plates, he dug his fingernails into his palms and bit his tongue.

Cain was wrong.