‘Bring your wife to work day’ was what some of his co-workers would call it. The inexplicable frequency at which Elliot’s wife would show up to his workplace as if she belonged there baffled many of the unaware, which happened to be all of them. At first, they had all assumed it was a one-off event, yet after the tenth time that month, most had grown suspicious. After six months, they usually gave up trying to explain it.

Even if most of the personnel on the Steel Whale got more frequent visits home due to its proximity to the city, many were jealous of how often Elliot and Evalyn would meet. He was just glad they weren’t the type to salivate at the mere sight of a woman. They were not the Navy…

“Now I’d like to turn your attention to the difference in these two flight paths, which we’re assuming are the same two fighters in different situations. Now, see what happens when our man over here is placed in the defensive role and breaks too late. The bandit follows, they spiral, and our man over here isn’t very happy once the bandit is tailing him and hosing lead-”

He spotted a student at the back of the metal classroom of twenty recruits. A kid by the name of Marshall, if he could remember correctly. Blond boy, neat cut, young but chiselled and well-defined. He was probably everything Elliot wasn’t in high school.

“Oi, Marshall. I get this is basics, but your ass needed to learn how to talk to someone before you could flirt with them, so pay attention,” he scolded, sleep still in his voice, and not an ounce of disciplinary enthusiasm.

“Sir,” he said, still staring out the wall-spanning window, “there’s a civvy car on the main beltline.”

Elliot looked out the window to the class’s left. It opened towards the large cavern between the Steel Whale’s two interior walls. A mess of pipes, beltlines and rooms that would shift from place to place.

The main beltline usually carried supplies and aircraft to take off or maintenance. This time, there was, indeed, a non-military vehicle on one of the platforms.

“She’s kinda hot.”

“She’s my wife, and also a pain in the ass.”

“She’s your wife?!”

An uproar from the classroom broke the bored silence as the twenty recruits struggled to comprehend the fact that their bleary-eyed, unkempt flight instructor had indeed experienced a woman's touch.

He shushed the mob, and the noise disappeared. He could sense the anticipation for a possible insight into his private life, yet he held his ear up in anticipation of something else. Tense silence.

“Senior Captain Elliot Maxwell, please make your way to the bridge head office. I repeat, Senior Captain Elliot Maxwell-”

“Ah, for fuck’s sake. Welp! Class dismissed everyone!”

He dropped everything and left the room, pretending to be unaware of the jeering, disappointed gaggle stripped of their daily dose of gossip.

Elliot relished the chance to make a trip to the bridge. He had taken the path to becoming a flight instructor, but many of his old squadron were his seniors and had risen the ranks quickly, all the way to the bridge.

Anyone lieutenant colonel and higher lived up there, only thirty metres under the roof runways. Practically a penthouse. The steel walls and metal pipes had been hidden behind plaster facades, tasteful yet minimal decoration and mellow carpets of soothing colour. Even if the lack of natural lighting always irked him, it was a nice change of pace.

He headed straight through the lobby, much to the displeasure of the receptionist. He had given up after about the tenth time, much like all the other residents. He never came to the bridge uncalled for, yet when he did, he would not pay anyone much heed.

Much like a stray cat, they had all gotten used to seeing him every so often and treated his presence as a phenomenon of nature rather than one to greet and promptly kick back to the lobby.

Two lefts and a right later, he came across the door he was looking for. He knocked, then knocked again. He tried once more just to be certain.

“Oh Brigadier General Sir Francis Molaine? There’s a man here to see you,” he said.

“You know, when you talk like that, there is no point in bothering with the honorifics, you bastard.”

Elliot took the muttering from the other side of the doorway as his welcome and stepped inside. In the heavily decorated office, a lump of a man sat amidst a sea of documents, their colour not too dissimilar to sea foam. Each stack of misaligned paper created prickly columns that plucked at the man’s uniform like sea salt on an eyeball. Their contents, on the other hand, could not be described as colourfully.

Schedules, permission slips, promotion applications, reports, a buffet of different flavoured paperwork, and he was utterly full. Every page of word soup had filled his head with white noise, yet it was not as pleasant as rolling waves and more like radio static.

His office reeked of someone holding onto the past. Framed photographs of himself with his old squadrons dotted the room, to the point Elliot could find himself in at least six different places. Models of the aircraft he had flown over the years lined his desk, everything from the current Aether-condenser aircraft to old piston biplanes. Cut-outs of every insignia he had ever worn and newspaper clippings of every battle he had been a part of.

To the uninitiated, it looked like an impressive display of personal achievement. Yet Elliot knew Francis was the last person to relish the past, he was simply holding onto it, rueing the day he took the promotion.

“Don’t even ask,” he mumbled, defeated.

“How’ve you been?” Elliot asked anyway, resting against the doorway.

“You know how I’d joke about flying being our nine-to-five?”

“Sure.”

“I take that back. Those brave office workers on the front lines have it way worse than we ever did.”

“You’d better get down on your hands and knees for that one. They’re a vicious bunch.”

“Gladly. How’re things?”

“Not too bad, you must’ve heard already.”

“Taking care of a kid? Yeah, Elvera didn’t shut up about it the first week. Every single time there was a gap in conversation, she’d fill it with Iris this and Iris that.”

“And yet she refuses to be called grandma.”

“That sounds like her,” he chuckled, straightening himself up in his chair and unwrinkling his uniform. It shared more in common with Elvera’s now than Elliot’s. The only difference was that he rolled his sleeves halfway up, showing off the impressive amount of arm hair rivalled only by the manliest of lumber-jacks.

“I’d like to meet her one day. She must be about the same age as Violet.”

“We think. Not sure of her actual age, yet.”

“Sounds like a legal quagmire. Kids at that age are strange. Vaundry had no clue what to do when Violet started to talk back at him,” he said, mentioning one of the pilots in the various photos. He was pictured next to Elliot in a nearby photo. Slim, yet rough around the edges, with round glasses. Had been a family man since day one.

“Knowing him, I bet he cried.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that.”

“Why?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Because it’s true.”

They both scoffed. The conversation made Elliot feel aged. Perhaps his fate lay in preparing lunches and gossiping with other househusbands. As far as he knew, Francis’s interest in women wasn’t all that strong, Elvera being the only one he talked to consistently. The skies had been his one true love, and now even that relationship had been strained.

“How’re things apart from work? Do you get home often?”

“Not this week, I’ve been too caught up in work.”

“How much paid leave do you have?!”

The man thought for a moment.

“Has to be about a year’s worth now.”

Elliot sighed with his entire body.

“Get a girlfriend,” he said. “I can’t believe I beat you in that category.”

The old man chuckled, the ash grey of his hair not taking kindly to years of fighting with his helmet for space on his scalp. It made Elliot feel weary, as most grey things did. He looked at a friend, of course, but the other half of his brain could not help but prod him with the notion that this was his future.

He would no longer be the best one day, yet he did not want to see himself go out in a blaze of glory. He could not afford such childish notions of heroism.

“I’m glad you did, Elliot. To be honest, I didn’t take you as that type of man when I first met you.”

“What type of man?”

“Family man. Actually, I didn’t take you for being very compassionate at all.”

“My wording back then was definitely...spicier.”

“Spicy? My boy, spitting razors didn’t begin to cut it.”

Elliot fumbled awkwardly, his gaze falling on the photograph of him and his squadron. The black and white did not even begin to unearth the layers of his character, and seeing it frozen in time was sobering, to say the least. What would it feel like to look at the Sidosian squadron he flew with all those years ago?

“What was it you said back then? Something about flying because you were the best, and someone, somewhere would always need that.”

“Still got those same rules, Sir,” Elliot replied.

“Ah, no. That’s all well and good. It’s why we keep you on our payroll.”

Elliot felt his back instinctively straighten as Francis stepped closer in an awkward stroll, unsure of how to word things. The words weren’t making it past his throat, let alone his moustache.

Between the photographs and Francis’s grey hair, Elliot felt the origin of his disdain for the colour grey on the tip of his tongue, as the guilt danced from tastebud to tastebud. He wanted to wash his mouth of the feeling, reset his mind-workings and forget he ever thought the thought.

“But I was relieved when you found somewhere to settle down so early. Even more so, now that you have Iris. When you’re old and grey, and the delusions of fighting for your country wear off completely, it’s those people that come to cradle you when you’re feeling alone. Your military...hell your country isn’t going to give you a hug. Just medals...and welfare if you’re lucky.”

Old and grey. Elliot did not disdain what was already old, he disdained watching things become old. The ceaseless flow of time roared with all the might of a trickle, the sound of a faucet left half running. Forgotten, unnoticed, yet ever-present.

Unnoticed until the aircraft landing would hurt his back, unnoticed until a manoeuvre’s pressure forced him to lessen his aggressive habits, unnoticed until one day, he’d be sitting at his office desk, churning away at paperwork.

His wife was super-human, and he often forgot that he wasn’t. They had promised to protect each other, but what would happen when the old and grey ash cloud soured his lips and filled his joints with gunk?

Careful. You might just lose yourself again. You don’t want that happening, do you?

He felt a calloused hand come down hard on his shoulder, jolting him out of it like a flash of divine lightning in a sea of grey clouds. Ash clouds. Grey clouds.

“You heard what I said, didn’t you?”

“Yes sir, I did.”

“Make sure they never want to leave you. No matter what.”

“Yes sir. They can’t survive a day without my cooking.”

The hallways were sickly antithetical to those that burrowed through Iris’s mind, making her wary of every step she took. Her feet weren’t bare, yet the carpet still felt soft. The lighting was artificial, yet it didn’t illuminate every ugly detail. There were doors, but they wouldn’t send whispers into the gaps between her skin and muscle.

It almost felt like a sick joke, aimed solely at her. Perhaps that was another sense of humour.

The last time she had entered Elvera’s office, it had been up and over, stopping by at the watch tower overlooking the air deck. She hoped future visits would take a similar route.

Her office was one floor above and relished the sudden return to an industrial aesthetic. The walls were riveted, and pipes running from one end to another were humbling. The separation between the leader and her soldiers existed, yet in that separation existed solidarity.

Evalyn grabbed the large knock-ring welded to the steel door, using minimal effort to create a sound reverberating throughout the space.

“Yep,” Elvera called from the other side.

Evalyn pressed the door open, swinging it aside with an accidental excess of force. Iris walked through the gap and found herself in the familiar arrangement.

An ‘out of order work in progress’ was what her office felt like. The room had decided to be furnished when the scaffolding had only just been completed. Yet the polished desks, tables and shelves all seemed to relish the out-of-the-box design principles. Or rather, thinking in a box with no walls.

“You’re early, I’ll ask for that announcement now,” she said, picking up a pond green phone on her desk and dialling three numbers. Iris looked at the object, and a blank space in her knowledge became prevalent.

“Is that phone using magic?”

“Uh...I think I remember hearing that the ones on the ship are. They wanted something more private than wireless radio signals, but if the ship gets damaged, regular phone lines might be cut, and there goes precious battle communication. So, these use Aether, the same as ours. We didn’t want a phone line leading people directly to our home.”

“What about the ones in the city?”

“The city uses regular phone lines. They used to be on forms of Aether communication, but it wasn’t widely available. Telepathic Spirits aren’t exactly common, and by the time synthetically reproducing a Spirit’s magic was available, they’d already gotten schematics for phone lines from us. Sidos, I mean.”

“Synthetically?”

Evalyn stretched her arms above her head and strolled to the closest chair, tucked under a round coffee table for two.

“Just means that Aetherologists could take the way a certain Spirit used Aether to create magic and replicate it. Then, all you needed was a patent to infuse that magic into things like Elliot’s beloved stove or our FrostBox. Made things...industrial.”

A drone sounded over the speakers, followed by an equally enthusiastic voice.

“Senior Captain Elliot Maxwell, please make your way to the bridge head office. I repeat, Senior Captain Elliot Maxwell-”

Elvera put the phone back in its cradle and got up, her figure silhouetted against the backdrop of the blue sky behind her. If there was one thing Iris could appreciate, it was the wall-wide window behind her desk. Often, she would stand in front of it, staring out for miles. Everything from the ground beneath her to the clouds above was visible.

“Why are we calling for Elliot?” Evayln asked as the Lieutenant General waltzed over, sliding into the adjacent chair.

“I need to speak to all three of you about this. The case you’ve been working on since a month ago.”

“The Farehn case?”

“Yes, that. This has got to do with the missing hostages in general.”

“You’ve found them?!”

Iris noted the break in composure. A rare sight from Evalyn when something regarded work.

“Not exactly found. S.H.I.A’s political representative only knew so much about the dealings in that organisation, but we’ve been able to narrow down their likely location to one area.”

Elvera stood up once more and headed towards her bookcase. Her speech then became directed towards Iris, instead.

“The Giant’s Shadow is split into two rough countries. Prestia to the east and Drakaq to the west. Their funny naming is because they’re mainly Spirit-dominated, especially Drakaq. It’s less of a country, more of a land denoted by its neighbours as...how do I say this...crazy barren Spirit land that will probably get you killed”

“Smooth,” Evalyn scoffed.

Elvera came back with a map she carefully selected out of several, laying it flat across the coffee table and using Evalyn’s elbows as paperweights.

“And we think that the hostages are in there, mainly because we can find one pro-human militia there that may be in the market for Higher Order Armour.”

“Are they trying to fight the Spirits in the desert?” Iris asked, feeling as though she was catching on. Elvera winced and tilted her head left and right in a gesture that denoted a strong sense of maybe.

“Most of their forces are escapees from Fadaak, the city-state at the edge of Drakaq. They’re probably using the desert as their home away from home. Wherever that may be, is what we don’t know.”

Evalyn looked increasingly uncomfortable with the prospect, although Iris didn’t know why.

“In return for allowing us to investigate their city for clues that would save us surveying the desert, they’ve asked for military aid and training to combat the increasing effectiveness of said militia, which is where Elliot comes in. It’s only a week before he gets rotated out, however.”

“I don’t like this,” Evalyn finally spoke out.

“I know, me neither,” Elvera agreed, much to Iris’s confusion. Up until this point, the plan had sounded entirely reasonable. However, their concerns didn’t lay on the map, their adversaries or the desert. Their concerns and their focus lay squarely on her.

“What?” Iris asked.

“I don’t want you going here, Iris,” Evalyn said, matter-of-factly. “Sidos was bad enough and you’re a citizen.

“Fadaak isn’t exactly a kid-friendly destination, nor is the bloody desert.”

Two of her guardians were unconvinced, and the third one wasn’t present to counteract them.

“But I’ve been training!” she said, knowing it would do little to sway their favour. Their unconvinced faces and awkward stares began to pour their disappointment into the cavity in Iris’s chest. Staying here. No. That couldn’t happen.

They were both going. Evalyn would go there, and she’d get in trouble again like she always did. It didn’t matter if she called it work, she’d...she’d die! She’d die! That’s why Iris had to come. She can’t take care of herself without Iris there to stop her from doing anything rash.

What would Elliot be doing? He’d be forced to work for people he didn’t know while Evalyn was off by herself, how would that make him feel?

Think, think, think! Somehow, someway to make sure she came back with no parts sewn back onto her breakable body. To find out the reason why the back of her mind would see her tearing apart while she wasn’t looking.

Wait? Why couldn’t she just go with him, Elliot? Why couldn’t she just...

That didn’t feel right. Why didn’t that feel right? It didn’t feel right...

Guilt. A pang of guilt and the feeling latched on.

The cat-tongue carpet.

The white-washed walls.

The small thing in the corner. Hair shorter, blacker, physique boxier, as far as the darkness would let on.

'Why would you reject me?' said the thing, so ingrained in her mind the words couldn’t even come across as speaking to her.