Beneath the Blue I

The Kenichi Modern sat tilted just a few meters from a nearby stream, which flowed rapidly down an incline. While there being few trees helped them make a smooth emergency landing, that also meant that whatever struck them down in the first place still had a clear sight of them.

Haruki flashed a light at the plane’s left wing and saw the wooden tip gashed by something dangerously sharp. There was no serious damage now, but if that thing came back, forget the plane—Haruki and Anemone may not survive.

“That’s strange,” Anemone said, wondering.

“What is?”

“What attacked us was clearly a griffon,” she posited. “But griffons should be asleep at night. And there shouldn’t be any near the kingdom.”

“Maybe we bothered it in its nest? The plane isn’t exactly quiet.” Haruki ran his hands over the gash, gauging the damage.

“As I said, there shouldn’t be any. The Sky Legion made sure of that,” Anemone said, her face sunken.

“I see.” Whatever the Sky Legion was, it had decimated Ka’Ilyah to its last legs, even going so far as to wipe out any endemic life that could’ve helped the kingdom fight back. He looked back in the direction of the mountain and its shrouded shadow, and wondered if leaving was the correct choice. If it weren’t for him, Anemone and her kingdom might not even exist now.

Anemone watched Haruki inspect the plane’s left wing. “So how is it?” she asked.

“It’s nothing serious,” he said. “It’ll fly no problem. I don’t have the tools to even out the damage, so whatever problems come from it, I’ll deal with it.”

“So your plane really is a machine… like a siege engine. A flying ballista,” she said. “The Dragon Lord called you an artificer. I wonder if he knew what that thing actually is.”

“Doesn’t matter now,” Haruki neared Anemone and crossed his arms. “Let’s focus on finding a safe place to sleep through the night. Know any caves or hideaways around here we can settle in?”

Anemone shook her head. “I’m sorry... I’ve never been past this side of the mountains. Only deeper in Ka’Ilyah opposite our direction.”

Haruki sighed. “That’s fine. Let’s just look together.”

“Are we not gonna fly out?”

“It’s too dangerous. I can’t see well at night, and it being closer to dawn, means I can’t even count on the moon.” That, and I don’t know if I have enough fuel to make it all the way to the sea.

“Perhaps you’d be interested in some magelight?” Anemone said, conjuring a small orb of light above her open palm. She then tossed it against the wall, and it bounced once then floated gently in the air.

“Right. But the griffon outside might use that light to find us,” he said. “I don’t wanna risk it. And…”

Haruki scratched his head, thinking of a way to explain the fuel situation to her. He needs avgas. Aviation fuel. Petrol. Anything to make sure his engine keeps combusting—and he needed a lot of it.

“You don’t happen to have any fuel with you, do you?”

“Fuel? Like… wood? Charcoal? We can cut down some trees and make some firewood out of it.”

“You’d cut down a tree just like that? Aren’t elves against indiscriminate deforestation?”

Anemone giggled. “Our structures are made of the same trees, Sir Haruki. They’re resources. We may respect nature, but it doesn’t mean we don’t know a replenishable resource when we see it.”

“Oh, sorry. My bad.” Haruki smiled and shook the silliness out of himself. “Silly questions. Nevermind then.”

If she didn’t know, then there was no use telling her their time was limited. There was no way he’d find avgas in this faraway magical world.

Telling her would just give her more stress, and might actually convince her to go back to Ka-Ilyah. He couldn’t have that.

He decided it was best to see how far they could go. I’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

He continued. “Anywho, long story short, let’s keep our flights short and efficient. Can’t afford wandering around the dark all night.” He sighed again, heavier this time, as if the weight of past actions beared down on his voice. Geez, talk about not thinking things through…

If he stayed to fight in Ka’Ilyah, it would have happened anyway.

Anemone sniffed. She closed her eyes and pointed in a direction facing the moon. “There’s a cave nearby.”

“How can you tell?”

“There’s a draft coming from ground level.”

“Nice!” Haruki snapped. “Before we head there, mind giving me a hand with something?”

Taking out his knife again, Haruki began chopping at thick brushes and low-hanging leaves, then gathered them in a pile. He gestured to her to do the same. Anemone summoned blades of wind to cut similar greenery at a quarter of the time. Haruki couldn’t help but feel jealous—a little.

After rolling the plane closer to a small treeline, they took some time to drape the fallen leaves and shrubbery over the Kenichi Modern. This would prevent any flying creatures from tracing them, they hoped. Afterwards, Anemone led them into a nearby cave, its mouth big enough to fit a catapult, but not wide enough to fit the KM.

Water leaked from the roof of the cave, tapping both Haruki and Anemone’s heads at least once. Before anything else, they headed out and chopped up a fallen tree with razor wind to use as firewood. They also collected pinecones to use as fuel. There was enough cones and wood to last the night.

With their combined efforts, they ignited a small campfire, which illuminated them and the narrow dead-end further down the cave. Taking two blankets from the survival kit in the KM’s storage trunk, Haruki draped one over himself and offered one to Anemone.

She just stared at the drab, slightly ragged wool blanket.

“What?” they said at the same time.

Haruki raised an eyebrow. “It’s pretty cold at night. You might get sick.”

“Sick?”

“You know? Sick? A cold?” He shivered and sniveled, the cold already hammering his sinuses. “Like that.”

“...I’ve never experienced that.”

“Huh, really?” Haruki set down a folded blanket between them. “Elves don’t get sick?”

“Even if they do, I never have. I’ve never seen an elf ill.”

A chilly breeze rolled in from the cave’s mouth, biting at Anemone’s pristine skin. Her neck muscles tightened.

“You’re half one, right?” Haruki laughed and patted the folded blanket as if to coax her into using it. “You wanna take your chances? Colds are pretty dreadful, you know?”

“Hmm.” Anemone inched closer to the fire. “How does it feel to have this… ‘cold’? To be sick?”

“You start sniveling, like this,” he said as he snuffed mucus back up. “And it keeps happening even when you don’t want it. You might start sneezing. When you sneeze, it’s like you cough and scream at the same time and there’s almost no way to stop it.” He then smiled and winced. “When you lie down to sleep, you can’t, because one nostril keeps getting blocked by something. Then when you turn the other way, the blockage moves to the other nostril, so you’re just kinda annoyed for a few hours. If it gets bad enough, you might even feel hot and unpleasant enough that you’d think you’d rather die.”

Anemone’s face contorted, slowly and surely, into horror. The blood left her cheeks, a blue paleness rising in its place. She stared at the blanket under Haruki’s hand. Haruki counted. One. Two. Three.

She swiped the blanket and wrapped it around herself in a flash. She leaned on the cave wall and said, “Good night.”

Haruki could only laugh. He leaned on the wall opposite hers and watched her shadow dance to the flickering campfire. He didn’t know how old she was in half-elf years, but right now, she was not any better than a curious child entering the real world for the first time. It was charming, he thought.

He glanced at the cave’s mouth again, and wondered if they had intruded into an animal’s home. A bear, goblin, or whatever they had in this world. He thought of the thousand ways some wild creature could gut them in their sleep. He hoped that would keep him away.

But soon, fatigue would take him. As darkness pervaded his consciousness, he uttered one last phrase before sleep took him.

“Good night, Anemone.”

****

Marina leaned over a pond just outside of the castle walls, hidden away into a tiny grotto surrounded by a river and trees.

She closed her eyes and hummed, letting moonlight and silence wash over her.

A glob of water floated from the pond, drawing bubbles to itself, its size steadily growing bigger until it was bigger than half her body.

The reflection of a man—a Sapia like her—formed within the watery orb. The liquid rippled, making his features nigh-indecipherable except for his parted hair and thick, round glasses.

“For what reason have you contacted me at this hour, Marina?” the man on the other side said, his voice distorted like he was underwater.

Marina spoke in a whisper. “I’ve sent the princess your way.”

“Oh? That’s news. It’s been, what, years since we’ve begun this operation.”

“And I’ve done it, at last.” Marina sighed in relief, like a burden had been lifted from her chest. “And with that, our deal is finished. I will return home soon.”

The man on the other side laughed. “Heh. Aren’t you happy with your elven brethren? I trust you’ve made friends there.”

“The gap between someone who’s lived twenty-four and someone who’s done so for a few hundred has proved insurmountable,” Marina said. “So no, humans and elves just can’t be friends that way.”

“A shame. Though, I am curious—how did you send the princess of Ka-Ilyah to us?”

Marina closed her eyes, letting a beat pass before she spoke.

“She’s with a very interesting person,” she said. “Wonder if you’ve ever heard of a plane, o’ wise Commander of the Western Navies?”