The Wind Eater has always been my home. I was born in the sun room below the first deck and since then I’ve always lived and slept in its three decks, fourteen rooms, five masts and hundreds of lengths of rope and tethers.

Nevermind what people in the suburbs of cloud city might say, the Wind Eater isn’t the decrepit old ship they think it is. It is a beauty and a proud float-ship, that has sailed further away than they can ever imagine in en entire life.

I am sure that when we set sail sunwards, they look up at the thin shadow passing over their head and hope they could board the ship too.

But they’re not sailors. I am a sailor.

I am a sailor just like my father and mother are, like my mother’s father was and like his own father was.

Even when these people I never met were alive, they had forgotten for how long their family had been sailors.

The fundamentalist sage that we took on our last trip says that the word sailor has been the same for almost an eternity. He says that a long time ago the floatships were called boatships or something and used to roam large expanses of downward water. It makes no sense.

He also says that the sun used to constantly move around the world. This is stupid, because if the sun did that, we would have no use for the rooms below the first deck. The sun room is to get light when we sail moonwards, and the moon room is for darkness when we go sunwards.

Even the people from the city of Night, who are used to the darkness of being moonwards use sunrooms once a day.

That fundamentalist sage was a weirdo.

He said he studied in the Cloud-City Academy, though, which even I know is impressive. Only the best fundamentalist sages come from there. My father says they study the world we live in and they understand it better than most, but that doesn’t make sense to me. How could they understand the world without ever having set sail in a float-ship to see it?

When I asked the sage about it, he just laughed and said I should go to the Academy to tell the sages that.

I thought he was making fun of me, but in the end he was a good person who told me a lot of great stories. Now that he isn’t traveling with my family anymore, I consider him like a friend and a teacher, even though he has only ever taught me one thing.

After countless stories he told, the sage taught me that stories are the best way to learn.

After that I got confused. Did he teach me one thing? Or a lot of things. I don’t know. Most of the stories were strange but in my head I kinda want some of them to be true.

Then, as we departed the floating port of Cloud City, having returned him to the docks, the fundamentalist sage asked me once more to seek him at the academy in the future. This time he looked serious. I haven’t talked to my parents about it, I don’t know what I will do.

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He must have been a good sage because he recognized that the Wind Eater was the best float-ship in port. The fastest ship, and the one who could go downwards the most, because it’s a relatively small float-ship.

When we go downwards, the ship slows down because the temperature drops a lot.

One thing I never understood is why we sweat so much when it’s so cold. Drops of water get everywhere on my skin and I don’t like that.

At these times, when my mother sailed the ship and my father made sure we could see amidst the large clouds, the sage would always attach himself to the low mast and observe the surroundings.

Maybe he was looking for traces of the Iron Giant.

From all the stories he told me, the one about the giant called Iron and his sister was always my favorite.

I can’t use words as good as he did but I’m gonna try to tell the story.

A long long time ago, an eternity before our time, there was a giant called Iron who lived in the center of the world. He lived in the very center with his sister called Gravity. He was always sleeping under a large blanket of water so big it covered the entire world. This is during the time when floatships were called boatships and could not go down or up. The boatship sailors, my ancestors, used hair from Iron’s head to direct themselves on the water. It was said that Iron’s hair always wanted to go back to Iron’s head, which was a place called North.

Only one day, the Iron Giant left, convincing his sister to leave with him.

I think the sage wanted to find traces of the Giant to understand where he went and why the world changed since he left.

It is said that when he left is when the water stopped defining up and down, when the sun stopped roaming around the world, and when the numerous floating cities were born, like Night, or Cloud City, or Hanging Town.

I really like this story. I wish I could tell it with the same words as he did.

The fundamentalist sage said that stories are knowledge and teaching lessons disguised but I really can’t believe this one. Only, if I had to choose one story to believe, it would be this one. It seems like a nice story, one that makes me want to look for the Giant called Iron too.

Maybe this is also why my parents agreed to take him with us on the Wind Eater just so he could look. Maybe they too want it to be real. Or maybe this is due to the large pouch of leather that sounded like wooden coins clinking together. It’s probably that.

The academy sure pays well their sages. Or at least him, since he seemed to be a good fundamentalist sage. I hope he found at least part of what he was looking for.

During our third sailing downwards, he once became really excited, to the point that father hurried his tether up to the main deck, only to hear his disappointment and asking to be let down again.

After that the sage stayed in his room for five entire cycles. His excitement must have died then, when he studied his results, because he seemed a bit sad when he finally got out.

I tried to ask him what had happened, but the sage simply shrugged and gave me a dark pebble the size of a coin, telling me to chuck if off the floatship if I felt like it.

I didn’t.

I kept the material, which seemed dense and strong. It also felt strangely cold to the touch, unlike the wood all around me.

I spent my next entire cycle in the moon room just holding it close to me, feeling its surface warm up against my skin, until I left it alone long enough.

It was only when the fundamentalist sage left us, on the docks of Cloud City, that I saw a similar pebble attached to a chain on his neck. As he asked me to find him at the academy, I could swear I saw him point to the pebble, right as my own hand gripped the similar one in my pocket.

I had so many questions that day. And yet I know the only way to find answers would be to find the sage in the academy. Maybe next time the Wind Eater rests in Cloud City I can talk to my parents and find the time to meet him again.

Maybe this way I can learn more about why the giant iron and his sister gravity left