With one brave leap Ingrid boarded the trolley as it groaned along on steel rails. The trolley was a recent addition to the seaside town of Wave Crest. The cobblestone streets had first been cut with the help of Stone Elementals, and then raw ingots had been shaped into tracks by Metal Elementals. At the time, Ingrid could not imagine the wealth required to bring those Elementals to her town. She had been a fool.

She grabbed onto an empty pole and stood, hanging half over the edge of the trolley, and peered out on the festivities. At that moment the trolley was crossing a bridge, and below the bridge a steam engine roared, blocking the view with acrid smoke. Ingrid coughed and covered her eyes.

In the center of the town square a live band played military songs while an Air Elemental amplified the sound across the entire town. Even as the steam engine clanked through the concrete channel below the bridge Ingrid could hear the tune clearly. As the trolley rounded the corner and began to follow the train tracks, soldiers with neat uniforms and rifles marched in lockstep through the streets. The homes on this side of town were tall and packed together. Painted white with brown trimming and pointy roofs, they were broken only by the occasional round turret at the top. Each home had a flagpole near the window to the attic, and the stripped blue-green-white flag of Taisia fluttered from each. Blue, green, and white confetti fell from the rooftops as children hurled handfuls down into the street.

The trolley passed a beer garden, where soldiers and women with fashionable hats danced together under colorful umbrellas. The older gentlemen drank great tankards of bitter ale, and the older ladies drank grape wine as red as blood, imported from the Heylin Empire. Ingrid looked upon them with wonder. She had grown up in an orphanage, and more recently she lived in, and worked at, a bakery. She had never left Wave Crest, and the town had never hosted such a jubilee.

Her astonishment was shattered in an instant as cute little airplanes, towing great Taisian flags, flew low over the town, carefully avoiding the billowing smokestacks to the north. The trolley was following them to the south, to the green pastures in the highlands across the river. There, below the towering white peaks, the farmers had been evicted and the land had been transformed into a military base for the Taisian Air Navy.

The trolley reached the outskirts of town where it crossed one last bridge over a river and began to ascend into the pasturelands. An enormous airship, with great helium tanks in its core, and propellers spinning in all twelve quadrants, rumbled overhead. Far above the airship loomed two black storm clouds with a chasm of pure blue sky between.

It was at that moment that Ingrid heard something impossible. Something that quenched the music of the bands in the town square, something that dominated the whirling propellers of the great airship. It sounded like a snake's hiss, except the snake stood a hundred feet tall. A low-high rush, a dry wind through a narrow tube, the sound of the sea cut only by the crackle of a campfire. Far above, in the blue skies beyond the dark storm clouds, a tiny fleck of shining silver light glistened unseen by everyone on the trolley save for Ingrid. It vanished beyond the dark bluffs and went away for a time. The sound faded slowly.

The trolley halted in a flat field filled with people. Ingrid needed to shove her way through to reach the rope barrier. One airship had landed across the field, and the grass had been painted with long white stripes in a line parallel to the airship. Tents had been placed all along this line, at some distance. Near the barrier there were mostly men. Plump men at that, with great bellies fashionably hidden under ornate vests. Many wore spectacles but all wore dark hats.

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Suddenly there was a great cry and an even greater noise. So great that Ingrid dropped to her knees in front of the ropes and covered her ears. A swift white tube with stubby wings and a pointy nose flew overhead. It had a black tail fin and the likeness of some bird was painted in white on that black tail. The thing flew just a few house-heights above the crowd. It flipped over and spun playfully and then rocketed vertically into the dark clouds, vanishing from sight. The air was filled with the sound of torrent and fire.

As the smaller airplanes landed in the field, Ingrid was sure to pay close attention to the sound of the white tube, and she was always the first to cry out as it approached, pointing her finger in the direction of its approach so that the others around her might see. Finally, after it had passed over many times, it crept down from the storm clouds one final time with smaller surfaces on the back of the wings pitched down, like a bird intending to strike prey.

The belly of the bird opened up in three places, and long, silvery struts extended below the openings, ending in black wheels. The front strut was equipped with a brilliant light, probably a gas lamp. The struts gently compressed as the thing landed and skipped, like a stone on water, a few times before coming to a rest up on the grass field. There, it slowed and was met by a crowd of men who deftly dodged its approach but managed to seize the wings and halt its advance. Young children clambered over it and hugged the landing struts, fearful, just as Ingrid was, that its flight might have been a dream.

When the glass canopy to the tube opened Ingrid was astonished, not for the first time that day, to find that the pilot of the machine was a tall woman with dark hair and a cacophony of gems in a golden lattice upon her chest. She also wore a leather helmet complete with brass-framed safety goggles. She waved to the crowd as often as she plucked children off the ground and kissed them. As she passed by, a great voice boomed across the empty field: "Hail Princess Natasha of the Heylin Empire! Commander of the White Ravens!"

"The White Ravens," the woman said next, "are the demonstration squadron for the Imperial Air Navy. We will be performing our airshow acts in your city in just a few days!"

The crowd began to cheer. Ingrid was stricken. She never thought that the pilot of that ivory bullet would have been a woman, let alone a foreign princess. But before her reason returned to her, the man's voice continued: "Come, come! Join us! If you wish to fly like the Princess, come to join the Taisian Air Navy!"

Ingrid followed the voice, as did many others. Armed soldiers vetted them, allowing Ingrid to pass. She presented herself before the recruitment officer, not a stone's throw from the Imperial Princess, and declared her intentions.

"I want to be like her!" Ingrid said, pointing to the Princess. "Can I fly too?"

A graying man in a neat white uniform sat behind a fragile table in a wooden chair. He looked her over, estimating. "Ah," he said. "I only have a few questions."

Behind him, a woman in a dark uniform held up a rectangular board covered in text. The recruiter pointed to it.

"Please read to me the smallest text you can read on that board," the recruiter said.

"Thus each Elemental Queen has a sister-self," Ingrid said.

"Oh my, the smallest text. Ho Ho! And one more question, do you have any history of epilepsy?"

Ingrid shook her head vigorously. "No, sir, I can't say that I do."

The recruiter nodded, then gestured to her to carry on past him. "Excellent! Welcome to the Air Navy!"