Drop [On hold]

Stolen

If he needed the boat finished to explain it to her, she would finish the boat.
Annavi had never been proud of her curiousity. She wasn't as bad as most people, granted. Some people didn't head warnings from the start and lost their lives to the fall. All her life she'd been warned by anyone she spoke to that the Drop was something nobody should ever see. The way they talked about it she had been lead to assume that it had to have spikes at the bottom and hands reaching up from below to drag you down. It didn't, however. It was just a clear sky, with clouds that twisted and contorted around its edge. Unless you weren't careful, it wasn't very harmful. In a way it was beautiful, and she found herself staring at it every time she went back.
Because she did go back. Every day for two weeks she went back to help Jacque with his boat. Supplies was always there and ready for her to start working with. She could only imagine the work it must have taken to cut all that wood, not to mention the finishing and coloring.
Despite all the work he did, he always turned down the food she offered. He also turned down the idea to remove his hood and scarf, even as the spring rainy season ended and the hot summer days approached. Annavi stopped asking after a while. He was definitely odd. He was also stubborn.
The building wasn't so hard after he taught her. At first she'd had to remove boards that were misplaced and redo them. Eventually, she got to a point where she could build without his supervision.
"You're actually better at this than me," he said one day. To her surprise, he didn't laugh after as if he were joking. He was serious. He had never complimented her. Annavi would have never imagined that it would be in a way that diminished his own abilities either.
From then on, each day he went inside to work on something or other in the interiors. She never snooped, out of fear he would disband her from the project and never show her how the boat could fly.
By the middle of the second week, the hole in the bow was filled as if it had never been an empty space. Her work was done, and she finally saw the finished product. She felt accomplished. She'd never built anything in her life, aside from her bow. That was just a matter of soaking a stick and bending it with string though. This was so much more impressive, so much more complex. So much more.
She heard Jacque come up behind her, and turned to look at him over her shoulder. She didn't say anything and continued admiring the massive vessel. In the summer light it gleamed with the same coppery color as when she first set eyes on it. Jacque stood beside her.
"So, you ready to see how we're going to make this fly?"
Annavi was taken aback by this. She hadn't expected it so soon. This was payoff for the work she'd done, but by now it wasn't work to her. She had genuinely enjoyed it. She was still ready. It was time.
There was one thing, though. We. How we're going to make this fly. He meant to imply she would join him. She eyed him suspiciously.
"You mean the first time you fly it, we're flying it together. As in you're flying it with me?"
He nodded. "Yeah. You cut my work time by who knows how much, and I figured just seeing how it will fly isn't enough for all you've done. You should be there. On the ship."
She felt her slight frown turn up. That definitely wasn't a bad offer. She nodded, and followed him up the ladder of the boat.
He stopped at the mast. "So obviously we steer this thing using wind, right? It goes forward with the wind, and steer it by using the sails and the wheel."
She nodded.
Jacque opened a hatch lead her down a set of stairs she had never been down. "We're going to use air to get us up."
"How?" she countered.
He opened the door at the bottom of the stairs. The room was huge with a low ceiling. Countless bronze pipes went out on each side and stopped at the walls. In the middle was an odd looking machine the connected to each pipe.
"Each of these pipes can provide a gust of wind out the side of the boat," he began. Annavi could tell he was going into an explanation mode. "This right here--" he gave a pat to the giant metal box in the middle-- "is connected to a control panel up by the wheel. It's not perfect yet, and nowhere near finished. But once I get these working well enough, one of us can take the wheel, while the other controls the wind quantity accordingly."
Annavi felt it was her place to point out the flaw she saw. "I doubt air alone is enough to lift something this huge off the ground."
Jacque had a light in his eyes. Annavi had always assumed he was grinning behind his scarf when he did that. It was easy to imagine a mischievous smirk on his face when his eyes lit up like that.
"That's why you and I are going to build wings."

......

If Jacque wanted wings, he would get them, right along with his boat.
They set to work the next day. By the end of that day plans were laid out and they had started cutting the wood for the frame of the four wings.
Hinging them was difficult, but they managed to make the framing bend in all sorts of ways that would be beneficial to the flight of the boat. As they did that, that also worked on the control panel together, and made hinged doors in the side of the boat so the pipes could come out and retract for practicality. With all the levers for moving the pipes, and activating the fans and moving the wings, all in the bottom half of the ️ship you could find networks of rope and rigging, all done up to make things work the way they were intended. The bottom wasn't really occupied, aside from the huge empty room that would serve for cargo. The work was getting them closer to the end goal. Annavi guessed it would take another week or so to finish off with the wings. Then it would be time to fly.
After days of testing the pipe functionality and getting the wings frames on the ship for testing, they decided they were ready.
"Come back tomorrow," Jacque instructed. "I'll have the material to finish the wings," he assured her.
Annavi nodded, and made her way out of the forest.
The next morning, she awoke with eagerness and left her sugarcane built shack to make her way around the murky pond her village was centered around. With her cloak wrapped tightly around her shoulders for the light wind, and her hood pulled up over her dark brown hair, she passed the various houses and simple buildings that made her home. Her bow and quiver were on her back, as usual. Today, she felt much more cheery, and took the time to enjoy her walk. She listened to the chatter of the people who had woken up, and the sound of the small boats and rafts on the pond. Sugarcane was being cut down with machetes, as well as being replanted along the water's edge. All the noise was nice to Annavi. She smiled to herself as she almost reached the forests entrance.
Then she heard it.
"Wood has been disappearing," someone was saying. She knew the voice, and the face as she saw it. She ducked behind the nearest tree, not wishing to experience any sort of encounter with him. It was one of the men who had been going after Jacque so long ago. She hadn't ever seen him apart from that, which she assumed was credit to him living on the other side of the pond somewhere.
Annavi took another peek, and saw that she needed to go around the tree to avoid being seen. He was walking out of woods, carrying chopped wood. A burly woman was with him, carrying nearly twice as much wood as him. She also had an ax under her arm. Annavi wasn't surprised, and continued listening.
"You haven't caught the thief yet?" she asked him.
"My buddy and I were close, but he got away. Some girl helped him get away. Haven't seen him since." Annavi heard him spit on the ground.
"You haven't seen her either?"
"If I did, I wouldn't know it. Her face was covered by a hood, see."
The woman hummed. That was all Annavi could hear as they went out of earshot. She felt like a hole had been ripped into her. Jacque hadn't done any woodwork at all. He'd stolen it, and she had helped him. She'd also helped him finish a project made out of it entirely.
The hole felt like it was searing with fire. He had left all of it out so she would help him. Rage built up within her. Her legs started moving, and she got faster. She was going at a full sprint now. She sped past the fence post without second thought. Nothing was stopping her. She didn't know what she would do when she got there, but that didn't matter. Once she got there, she knew she wouldn't stop herself from doing whatever she felt right in that moment.
She stopped. She took a deep breath. She started walking.
She wouldn't do anything rash. That wasn't her. She would definitely be confronting him. Talking had always been her strong suit, after all. Acting on anger wasn't.
Annavi continued her walk. Her mood was completely ruined.