The sails of the Gaping Maw twisted far beyond their usual angles until they aligned with the length of the ship. Iris blipped to the starboard railing and looked down to see three enormous canvas wings ribbed with spines and stretched out along long, curved frames. Each wing twisted as they raised and lowered in a wave-like pattern.

"No fucking way," she whispered to herself, and then blipped to the port side just to confirm what she was seeing -- the same arrangement of wings were swimming through the air on that side as well. Abandoning any sense of decorum, she called back to the captain at the helm, "how is this happening?"

"You think this ship sails without a little magic?" he called out, "throw in some wings, and you've got a sky ship."

Iris blipped up beside him, causing him to recoil ever-so-slightly at her sudden appearance, "what about the big barrels of oil down there? What are they for?"

A gleeful smile snapped across the Shark Titan's face as he removed a different chain from a small hook on the helm and prepared to pull it, "that's my favor--"

Meredith quickly pulled the chain from his hand and wrapped it back around its hook, "emergencies only, captain."

"Just a little test fire--"

"Absolutely not, you'll panic the whole crew."

The Shark Titan sighed, and then seemed surprised to look over and still see Iris standing there, "well, get to work!"

Iris nodded dutifully and blipped off to join the crew managing the sails. It didn't seem smart to argue with the captain about how she technically works the day shift, but she didn't particularly care to anyway. She was far too excited to even consider sleep now, and quite eager to learn how to work the sails in their new configuration.

She found her boss, Nelson the Boatswain, leading the crew in their operations of the sails and blipped beside him.

"How can I help?"

"AAH!--" he screamed curtly, then placed a tired hand on his head, "dammit, Iris."

"Sorry, I really gotta start saying blip," she said.

"What? Nevermind," he pointed about half way up the nearest mast, "we had to untie all sorts of knots to reorient the sails, get up there and tie them back."

Iris groaned, "I'm volunteering for overtime here, can I at least learn something new?"

Nelson turned a shocked and critical glare in her direction, causing her to abruptly straighten her demeanor.

"Right away, boss."

"Yeah," Nelson said cautiously, as if still deliberating whether or not to reprimand her.

Having grown quite adept at blipping her way up and down the masts, Iris soon appeared on the first major cross beam of the mizzenmast, where she surveyed the truly pathetic state of affairs. Ropes hung loose and fluttered in the wind, the cross beam was off center from the mast, and the sails were flapping wildly. It was also quite disorienting to be up there with the sails turned to such a degree -- she was, of course, used to working on them as they twisted in various ways to catch the wind, but the new orientation had them completely in line with the ship as if to slice through the air rather than catch it. Iris didn't know much about flight -- or sailing, for that matter -- so she decided to just assume it made sense to do it that way.

As her gaze wandered beyond the flapping sails and dangling ropes, her thoughts faded away into a mesmerized stare. The lands below stretched out further than she had ever seen before. Large swaths were cast in the shadows of clouds, while isolated rays of purple and orange moonlight danced across tree tops. At this height, it was impossible to discern anything about the land other than it was densely wooded and infinitely vast, like an ocean of trees.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

With the sails in line with the ship, only a slight lean allowed Iris to look straight past them all towards the bow of the ship and beyond. The wooden ocean continued beyond the horizon, but something even more incredible caught her attention. Spaced throughout the lands were enormous towering trees with long, winding branches that supported crowns almost as wide as the trees were tall.

Even at great distance, it was clear these trees were wholly unlike the redwoods of the Great Forest, which had stood like posts as crowded together as resources allowed. Instead, each of these enormous trees stood alone and spread themselves wide, and they reminded Iris more of the tall plateaus which jutted up out of the trees along the northern edge of the Great Forest. From the best that she could tell, they were comparable in size to the plateaus as well. The Gaping Maw now soared at a height far above even the tallest of the redwoods Iris had seen, yet the trees in the distance appeared to extend even higher than the ship's masts.

"Stop gawking and get to work!" Nelson called out from below.

"Yes sir!" she called back, snapping her eyes towards the many tasks that awaited her.

Hours later, the morning sun peeked over the horizon of the now distant cliff face behind them. Warm light was cast across the lands below, glinting off pockets of water now visible through gaps in the canopy that revealed the trees didn't belong to a forest, but a vast swamp. The ship was approaching the first of the enormous trees, and the sails had been ever-so-slightly angled to steer them just north of it. As they approached, Iris saw that the tree was draped in vines and moss that hung what must have been hundreds of feet below the branches they grew from. What's more, she saw movement within the branches -- what looked like a cross between a lion-sized squirrel and an actual lion was climbing and sprinting through the crown in pursuit of a bird nearly equal in size as it twisted and winded through the leaves.

Having finished the duties assigned to her, and finding herself quite exhausted, Iris retired to the deck below where she found the boatswain and requested a break to sleep. He agreed, but insisted she be back in a few hours for the last half of her normal shift. Iris was too tired to argue, so she simply nodded and blipped below deck. Her first stop was the galley, where she hoped to find breakfast while she could still keep her eyes open.

She found Autumn dutifully frying thin strips of meat, which she left cooking as she crossed the galley to remove several loaves of bread from an oven, before making a quick stop to stir the big cooking pot on her way back to flip the frying meat strips.

"Where's your help?" Iris asked.

"They went up to the main deck to see something," Autumn answered without interrupting her work.

"Oh! You should go look too! You won't believe it, the ship is fly--"

"Nope!" Autumn dropped her spatula onto the grill to cover her ears, "no it isn't, shut up!"

"I'm pretty sure it--"

"Get out of my kitchen!" Autumn shouted.

Iris paused for a moment to consider her next move, and then quickly reached out with both her hands. She blipped a fresh loaf of bread into one, and several strips of cooked meat from a plate beside the grill into the other.

"Hey!" Autumn yelled, but Iris was already gone.

______

A few moments after Iris had disappeared from the main deck, most of her party emerged from the stairs to get their first look at the ship in flight. Killup was extremely excited to for them to see it, and led the way with a bounding charge up the steps.

"Look how high!" he exclaimed, "better than flying with my own wings!"

"I've seen sky ships before," Victoria said as she moved to the railing, "but never a sea ship that can fly."

"Yes! Gargoyles only!" Killup was actually jumping up and down with glee, "no one else can make!"

Eli cautiously peered over the railing, "those wings don't look like enough to keep this thing in the air."

"They probably aren't!" Killup said gleefully.

"Then how are we flying?" Titus asked.

"No one knows, it just works!"

The party exchanged concerned glances.

"Is like the boomrock thing?" Cameron asked, "just trying shit until something works, and not even figuring out how?"

"Yes," Killup nodded, "science."

Cameron moved through a rapid series of facial expressions as he nearly stammered from the sheer incorrectness of Killup’s statement, "that's not at all what science is."

"Then how are we flying?" Killup countered.

"Well, if you knew, that would be science."

Killup waved a dismissive hand, "extra steps. Unnecessary."

"It's really actually very necessary--" Cameron went on, trying his best to remain civil while growing increasingly flustered at what was apparently the prevailing approach to discovery for gargoyles.

Eli ignored the argument, instead turning his eyes towards the crow's nest high above and letting out a small sigh, "that climb's going to feel ever taller, now."