Crow

Brangwen

Sage jumped from the top of the balloon of Stardancer to the upper deck of Moonlighter and slid her goggles off.

"Ya got any extra bowlines?" she asked Hugo, her best friend besides Briar. Briar was a good friend, but their docking islands were very far apart, and Stardancer and Goddess only came close during the grounding festival.

"We have to dock to the Mainship soon." The Mainship was where all the Gliders fueled up twice a month. The grounding festival only came every half year.

"Nah", he answered.

"But do you wanna Fall?" Sage grimaced. Falling was a dangerous practice that Hugo had invented, one that both their parents didn't know about. Sage had idolized Ada Lovelace, and designed a crow-flying machine for two people. This was mainly to secretly see Briar on nights when Goddess and Stardancer were near. Her parents knew about Brangwen (the machine) all right, but the Mainships didn't want to copy her design and sell them because there were no seatbelts. Sage was working on making some until Hugo came up with Falling. Falling was where you went out on Brangwen and jumped out of the passenger seat. Then the driver would dive, hard. Keep in mind that you couldn't Fall with a parachute or rope attached to your Homeship. That was "wimpy". The driver would throw a rope to you and you would attach it to a waist harness. Then they would pull Brangwen up and you would feel weightless for a second before being pulled back up, and eventually landed on Stardancer or Moonlighter. It got adrenaline racing through you like poison, but it soon stopped.

"Sure!" Sage said. When she jumped with her harness, she instantly knew something was wrong. Or she thought she did. Brangwen was just flying in circles. Suddenly it landed on Moonlighter and Hugo jumped out with a harness belt, grinning down at Sage as they fell.

"Are you INSANE?" she yelled.

"WE. ARE. GOING. TO. DIE. because of your STUPIDNESS!" Hugo just smiled.

"We're gonna hit the ground floor, Sage." he said.

"UH, YEAH, and DIE!" Sage yelled up to him above the rush of the wind screaming past her ears. Sage screwed her eyes shut as she saw the ground rushing up, waiting for impact.

"Sage, press the little blue button on your harness!" Hugo shouted.

"It's extremely important! Like, really!"

Sage glared up at him. "REAL important, huh? Like when I'm about a minute away from being squished like a bug! Sounds great!"

"Just DO it, Sage!", Hugo pleaded. And so, reluctantly, she did.