The Mother of Plants let the young druid sleep for a while more as he didn't have much sleep the day before, even with his nap. But between the promise she had made and the fact that time was fleeting, Aloe begrudgingly left the room and asked about those structures soaring through the air.

  Called airships, they shared an equally originally named house called airport, and they were the so-called 'transport of the future'. This only meant that it was expensive to board them. It was not overly expensive – certainly not as much as her dress – as there were many tiers of pricing depending on the service one wanted to be provided with.

  In a way, those vehicles were just moving hotels.

  They were just doing it for the experience, not the comfort, so even if they placed them in a cabinet, that was fine with her. Heavens knew the child could sleep anywhere, and she didn't require such trivialities. But what mattered more to her was their departure schedule. There weren't many commercial airships in service, but they almost worked around the clock. The moment one would reach Sadina, it would depart an hour later after maintenance, and apparently, one was about to come in around two hours.

  Before Xochipilli woke up, Aloe also went to that curious washing shop to recover her lovely dress and Xochipilli's dapper suit. Service on both palaces she had been stationed in her life had been superb, yet this small shop had managed to return the clothes softer than she had brought them along with a pleasing lavender smell.

  If there was one thing this era was superior to hers, it was commodities. Everything was just so much easier and comfortable. But if that was the case for everyone, she couldn't tell. And she was biased to say that wasn't the case.

  "Wake up, sleepyhead~" Aloe hummed to Xochipilli once she had seen the boy writhe in bed.

  "Whuh?" The child gesticulated with overwhelming drowsiness and she booped him in the nose.

  "Are you hungry?" She asked after he had the time to rub his eyes.

  "No," he swayed his head. "I still feel the Radiating Undergrowth in my stomach."

  "How curious, I used only a mushroom for eight people, but I guess it hasn't been a day so far." The old druid murmured. "If you feel hungry, say so." The younger druid nodded, and she smiled at him. "Now get dressed, we have an airship to board."

  Instantly, all the drowsiness in Xochipilli's body dissipated and he jolted upwards on the bed, his body completely erect and his eyes glowing in childish glee.

  Xochipilli was skipping cobblestones on the pavement as they made their way to the airport. Just in case, Aloe had bought the tickets necessary to board the airship, and she was mighty thankful for her foresight, as it proved quite the tedious process and not as straightforward as buying tickets for a train ride. Who the hells put the ticket desk a neighborhood away from the destination?

  They didn't need directions to guess where the airport was located. Or rather, how high it was located. All the flying contraptions never touched the ground and instead kept themselves at a… sufficient altitude as they boarded Sadina's tallest building. And thickest. The airport struck like a sore thumb by virtue of being wide in a city of needles rather than an eyesore.

  Surprisingly, it was quite a charming view.

  As they reached the base of the colossal building – but a sapling compared to the World Tree – they found that the building didn't possess a set of elevators, but four of them! As tall as the building was, all the elevators moved asynchronously, allowing for a constant if meager flow of people. There weren't any airships in the vicinity of the city yet after all.

  The little druid had his fist pressed against his chest and he practically vibrated with giddiness as they slowly ascended on the first elevator they caught.

  "You know that the airship isn't still here, right?" She mused at the agitated child.

  "I know, I know!" His excitement made her think otherwise. "But the sheer thought of mounting a flying vessel is making me…"

  "Ecstatic?" Aloe completed his sentence.

  "Yesh!" Xochipilli responded with his thick Tecolatan accent. It didn't sound as strange as before after having heard him talk for a prolonged time yesterday.

  Truth be told, Aloe understood the boy's giddiness once they reached the summit of the building. There were a few railings here and there to keep people from falling to their deaths, but otherwise, the airport offered great vistas. Maybe not as exotic and glamorous as the canopy of the World Tree, but it had its charm.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Sadina was a beautiful city, especially when it was basked by the late morning sun; when the star was not quite at its zenith, and it still projected some shadows around on the city of needles and glass.

  How gorgeous those glints in the massive glass panels were.

  When she was young, Aloe had heard that Ydaz was the only country with glass, but right now, she could believe it by sheer virtue of this city hoarding it all. There was great expectation in her heart as her quest neared, but part of that expectation was none other than what awaited them in the capital.

  "If Sadina is this beautiful," she mussed as the soft breeze swayed her dress' skirt and her long hair, "I wonder how majestic Asina will be."

  Xochipilli waddled to her side and grabbed himself on the railings. The airport was way higher than the Highrise Hotel, and it showed as his knuckles were white from the strength he was applying to those poor metal bars.

  "How was Asina?" The boy inquired.

  "Beautiful," Aloe found herself looking back in time. That was the point where her life had gone downhill, but she was wise enough to separate the city and her ruler. "Not only it was massive, but it was colorful. Water was hard to come by in my epoch, but Asina was as verdant as the Evergreen. But she was no frail flower, but a mighty mistress of war, and she showed it with tall and thick walls of vibrant light blue. The history of war and violence of the nation of Ydaz almost felt justified when you looked at those walls."

  "Sounds mystical."

  "In a way it was." She rustled the child's hair. "Ydaz's religion may not have the concept of divinities as you may know them, but Asina was the closest it got as the seat of a goddess."

  "Do you think it will remain that way?" Xochipilli placed himself on his tiptoes as if to get closer to her palm.

  "No, I don't. Sadina has already changed too much, and I expect the capital of the Sulta… Caliphate," she corrected herself with a groan, "to have changed more drastically. Asina was a house of wisdom and innovation, it must have been struck by this architectural style of building to the heavens with even more force than Sadina."

  Aloe took one step backward from the rail and closed her umbrella, her eyes locked with the skies.

  "Alas, it serves no purpose to theorize when we have our answers at hand. Behold the heavens, child."

  Xochipilli also backstepped and followed her gaze, where it ended at a moving glint on the bright and clear skies.

  "The airship is here!" He shouted with all his might.

  The lazy breeze became a mighty tide as the airship approached, almost as if the airborne vehicle controlled the winds. Alas, Aloe knew that was not the case for the bulbous construct was well within the range of her senses now. Yes, she could hear the noise of machinery, specifically like the one on the train, but she knew such a machine didn't have enough power to create a current this powerful.

  What was happening here wasn't that the modern Ydazi had discovered how to wield wind with technology – or through evolved plants – but simple laws of nature. The airship was big and voluminous, and with its momentum, it was obvious that it would drag air alongside itself.

  But perhaps controlling the wind itself wasn't that wrongly thought…

  With outstanding precision, the massive vessel slowly descended next to the hanging platform that reminisced her of a real port where ships would typically dock. Only that now instead of water, the vessel floated in the air.

  As precise and clean as the driving of the aircraft had been, the docking was not yet complete. There was a solid chasm between the vessel and the hanging platform of five meters. In other words, it had yet to be anchored to the airport.

  And anchored they did.

  Airport workers, stout as sailors and looking quite like them, heaved anchors and threw them at the airship. Strength was to be expected of them, especially when they were obvious cultivators – even if they had meager Haya to their name – but Aloe was astounded by their precision. Their target was big, but so the distance once taken into account the weight and volume of their projectiles. Even with those handicaps, they managed to latch the anchors on the rails of the aircraft and then pulled the vessel toward them.

  "How are they that strong?" Xochipilli asked in awe as a handful of men pulled a construction as massive as a palace with only modest trouble.

  "Their strength is well within the realms of normal humans," the Mother of Plants explained. "It is the airship that defies your logic. For it must not weigh much. I am more interested in how they regulate the weight so the ship does not float away."

  And as soon as she gave voice to her doubts, Aloe got her answer. The airport workers placed a ramp for the passengers to remove themselves from the vessel. As the people walked down the plank and finally set foot on firm ground, the aircraft stumbled wobbly upward, no longer weighed down by the many passengers. To counter that effect, streams of cotton left a chimney, much like smoke did on a fireplace.

  "Ah, now I understand their imperious need for Cottonpull," Aloe commented as a column of cotton flowed into the heavens. She didn't fail to notice how slightly yellowish it was. "It seems a waste."

  They remained in their place until the passengers stopped unloading, alongside the streams of Cottonpull. The airship stopped heaving up and down once it no longer needed to expel evolved cotton to counteract the passenger's weight.

  More workers approached the aircraft now, though these ones had a more intellectual gait to them. The engineers she had heard about. Engineers in, servants out. The flow of workers could only be described as an organized mess. Everyone knew where they had to be, but that didn't mean it made things easy, especially as people gathered on the airport's rooftop ready to board the mighty aircraft themselves.

  But soon it was their time. Aloe closed her parasol and walked toward the runway with Xochipilli in hand. The child was almost bursting with giddiness. A young man asked them for their tickets, and like with the train, they had their tickets clipped.

  "Enjoy your voyage at the Northern Wind," the ticket reviser said with a half bow and promptly directed himself to the next would-be passengers.

  With a heavy but bouncy heart, the Mother of Plants and her disciple stepped foot on the mighty flying vessel that was the Northern Wind.

  Novus!