The little airship was mended at last. We called it a test flight. After dark we cast off and steered out over the sea of cloud.
The sail I had patched with water-silk caught the wind far more willingly than I expected. Turn the wheel a little, and the ship answers at once. …It really is fixed, I thought, for the first time.
The night sky up here is quieter than Star-Flow Night, the summer festival of Naias. Tens of thousands of real stars shine cold and bright as diamonds.
At some point Pyxis had climbed high onto the rigging, balancing neatly as he looked up at the sky. A shooting star went by, trailing its tail. There was no time to make a wish.
Daphne stood at the bow, starlight soft on her face. She held her listening horn to her ear and said nothing for a long while. There is no sound of water up here. Only the wind, and the sail.
“Elios, look…” Daphne pointed down into the depths of the clouds.
Through a single break in the endless dark sea of cloud, very, very far below, there was a faint glow of emerald green — a tiny, tiny glass sphere.
“That is where I grew up. Naias…”
The magic dome that had once seemed so vast looked, from up here above the wide world, like one small drop fallen into an ocean of cloud, shining small and fragile.
We sat side by side on the deck, wrapped in blankets, and neither of us said much until the sky lost its blackness. Then the edges of the clouds turned gold, and the little airship sailed on into the dawn.