Tevun-Krus #10 - TKX: Best of 2014

Touch the Sky: Steampunk

Touch the Sky
A steampunk entry by @Alice_Iceflower. 

The prototype suspension engine exploded, spurting hot steam and dirty oil all over Miss Sally Price. She spluttered and wiped the sticky grease off with the back of her gloved hand, the blast resonating through her laboratory.

The door slammed open. “Sally?”

She took off her brass-rimmed safety goggles and wiped a blob of smelly goo from her eyebrow. “I’m fine, Timothy. Don’t fret.”

Her brother rounded the corner into the hangar, hands protectively on his expensive jacket as he scrunched his nose. He produced a handkerchief to cover the lower part of his face and waved the steam away from his face. “Really, Sally, you must stop this.”

“I won’t—not until I make my ship fly.” Sally wrenched a twisted brass rod back into place inside her small airship. “You may leave now.”

“That thing will never fly. When will you see that? Mankind is not made to fly above the Smoke.” He walked around a crate of components, careful not to get a smudge of stinking oil on his fine shoes. “Have you looked at yourself? You’ll never get anyone to marry you if you go around looking like some sort of sewer monster. You’ve ruined your dress.”

Sally patted the Eagle’s wooden hull and looked up at the little one-masted boat she had turned into her prototype airship. She would fly—as soon as the engines were fixed.

She pulled the damaged piston out of her engine and put it aside for repairs, pushing an oily strand of hair from her face. “If I cared for the dress, I wouldn’t have worn it today. Now, go and make a nuisance of yourself somewhere else.”

“Father told me he is going to cut your funds.”

She spun around, screwdriver in her hand. “What? Are you trying to be funny?”

“I do not waste my time on jokes, Sally. Go ask him yourself.”

“But he can’t do that. I’m almost there!”

Timothy dabbed his nose with the handkerchief and folded his hands behind his back. “He can and he will. You’re throwing away your life, and a lot of Father’s money with it.”

“This is my life.”

He snorted, a satisfied grin on his face. “Then maybe it’s finally time to change that.”

With a loud clang, Sally flung the screwdriver on the floor. “We’ll see about that.”

She stormed past him, but paused at the door. “If you dare touch anything under this roof, I will murder you and dump your body in Thames.”

*

Lord Anthony Price, Baron Price, didn’t look up from his correspondence when his daughter strode in, a trail of oil behind her.

“Is it true?”

He turned his letter over, reaching for a blank sheet and his ink vial. “Manners, Sally.”

She growled in frustration and stepped outside his study, rapping her knuckles on the hardwood door, not bothering to close it first.

“Come in.”

Sally entered again and shut the door behind her, more roughly than she should.

Her father smoothed his whiskers and looked up. He blinked several times as he took in the apron-shaped stains on her dress and the oil on her face and hair.