Winn writhed in place. This could only go on so long. At first, it seemed intentional on the witch's part, and was funny; when it became apparent she was not in on the joke, it became very unfunny.

"Look!" he suddenly blurted in desperation, hopping forth from the shadows of the conversation both figuratively and literally, and facing down the imp. "She's a witch! A witch! W-i-t-c-h witch! It's semantic ambiguity! Homophones!"

"We do speak the same language here, right?" he asked in a mock sob.

The imp opened her mouth. She shut it again.

“Oh,” she said.


“Well,” she said.


She shifted her weight back and forth on her feet, and stared at the ground, abashed.

“A witch, huh?”




“…That’s pretty neat, I guess."

Rhiannon frowned pointedly as she observed the rather callous treatment of what she perceived to be the imp's gentle giant. She'd get no chance to admonish the imp, however, as Winn at last saw fit to step in and end the folderol. If one was particularly astute, they might catch the subtly disappointed pout that flickered across her countenance before being replaced with an immaculately polite smile.

At the Sau girl's long overdue comprehension, the witch dipped along with her head in a gracious half-curtsey.

Still seeming to have found the current conversation somewhat hopeless, the pilot had turned back to his plane, retrieving a satchel from some compartment inside the cockpit. At the moment, he was rummaging through the bag almost aimlessly, eyes lighting with interest upon encountering things he must have not noticed that lay in its depths before, but whatever there was must have not been too great of importance, the boy remaining silent through his task.

As the confusion came to a conclusion between the imp and witch, the pilot glanced up, gazing between the entire group as if expecting something new to occur.

The sounds of a quiet scuffle could be heard in the silence immediately following the dawn of linguistic understanding. A few yards away, the imp was engaging in a heated discussion, sotto voce, with her companion.

“Then why didn’t you say something sooner,” the imp hissed at the white giant, who had gotten down on his hands and knees to face her.

“You did not!” she replied, hotly indignant at the giant’s inaudible reply.

The giant seemed to be shaking slightly, albeit on a much larger scale. He prodded her gently in the stomach with a finger, causing her to stumble back a few paces. She swatted the finger away, flailing at it with both hands.

“It's not funny! It’s—stop—stop it!” she pulled her face into a furious scowl, but it was obvious from the strained quaver in her voice that she was fighting a losing battle with a laugh. She crossed her arms to emphasize her hostility, in spite of the smile beginning to tug at her face.

Phantom cleared his throat, attempting to bring the attention back onto the man in the purple snake pajamas who is of course totally inconspicuous at all times. "Not to say I don't enjoy the odd bit of word play - and our friend getting flustered," he said, gesturing towards the Sau girl. "But I do have a man I need to see about something that belongs to me, and I would like to track him down before we go any further with this flying machine business. I might need to depart for the moment and come back later"

Plus, he figured that if he has to stab him several times, it would be better not to do so in mixed company. He likes these people.

Winn sighed in relief as the situation seemed to finally defuse and... diffuse, as it were, with at least one unknown party member skittering off, and all semblance of conversation coming to a sudden halt.

He thought of things he would later write.

This is all so weird. I can't be sure of whether or not I should be sticking with other people or going off on my own. Who can really be trusted right now? Then again, maybe we're the difficult ones to trust. Rhiannon seems more than happy to play along with mischief...

I'd rather think I'm not a troublemaker. I'm too bright for that. As I'm getting, well, "reacquainted" with myself, I am learning that I seem to get bored kind of easily, and, as they say, idle hands are the devil's playthings.

... Actually, who says that, again? This whole memory thing's beginning to really bug me.

His not-so-idle thoughts were interrupted when a gaping shadow fell over him and the party. It could have been mistaken for cloud cover if not for its suddenness. A glance skyward soon revealed an immense aerial structure—one could say an airship, but the word failed to describe its sheer enormity, which seemed to more accurately call for a term like "air landmass." The undulating, flexing mass of metal twirled and twisted with the spinning of thousands upon thousands of airfoils, flickering in a sunny backlit glow, streaming swallowtail banners of blue and white. It was hard to even comprehend the rumbling, groaning, whooshing construct's form from their perspective any more than one could grasp the shape of a battleship by standing with nose pressed firmly against the bow in drydock.

The ground resonated lightly under their feet. The machine passed overhead uneventfully. This was a process that took several minutes.



"That may be something to be concerned about," mused the brown-haired boy slowly and deliberately, as if knowingly stating an obvious truth.

The pilot gazed up now with a silent awe as the massive flying machine passed by above, forming its miniature eclipse upon the town. A look of wonder remained in his eyes the entire duration of the craft's passing, his head craning back to try to glimpse any possible detail available to him.

Finally, as the ship went on to different skies, his eyes shot down back to his own aircraft, pathetic in size compared to the one that just passed above. His hands twitched at his sides as peered at his vehicle, his gaze shooting between it and the direction the other had flown off to, as if contemplating how to react to such an enormous craft's passing.

"Quick!" he suddenly exclaimed with great urgency, whipping around and pointing a finger at Winn. "Where or how can I find the proper materials to fix my machine?" He considered something else for a brief beat of a second. "And is it possible you could forge them into the right part?"

Overall, the pilot seemed a bit energized, more than likely to do with the airship.

Winn's mouth stayed shut for a moment, but the corners of his lips pulled back tight, and he gave the pilot a hard, rapid-blinking look, head at a cant—the kind of look that said, now you want my help?

Sharp inhale. Sharp exhale. He relaxed and shrugged.

"I think I could fix it," he confirmed confidently enough. "But why the sudden rush?" he asked with a shift to a skeptical leer. "Something interesting about that... flying fortress?"

"Of course!" replied the pilot, now hurriedly digging through the satchel that hung from his shoulder. "Its not even supposed to exist! That sort of size has never been achieved with an airship before... well, I think so anyway! Blasted memory and what have you. But—!"

He whipped out a worn out book from the depths of the bag, presenting it with a flourish to Winn.

"This makes a mention of possible designs for such a craft, but at the time of writing, the idea of doing so seemed like a waste of effort and resources, not to mention the lack of the needed technology."

The title of the book read History of Aeronautics in a faded gold script, but as soon as it was shown, it was stored back into the satchel. The boy's hands were already shoveling through again, trying to find another source amongst whatever mess happened to be in the bag's depths.

"However, there was a more... ah, recent material stating that with today's advances, achieving such a feat would only be a question of funding and time." His search was frantic, but he didn't seem to have the patience to prevail, shutting the flap of the satchel in a hasty manner. "I must have a closer look, however. Of course, one can't do that properly from the ground, eh?"

Winn frowned and stared at the pilot, deadpan.

"So, in a fit of purely academic curiosity, you find yourself wanting your plane to be repaired so that you may fly it directly at the bristling guns of the world's biggest and most powerful airship at a time when the collective consciousness of the entire world has been plunged into a murk of amnesiatic uncertainty and no longer knows enemy from ally."

Insert a nearly-audible blink.

"Okay," he then agreed amiably but flatly. "We find some rubedo somewhere, I'll make you your part."

Now it was Rhiannon's turn to observe in reticence. Much less with wonder than the other standers-by, she watched the aptly dubbed flying fortress laze along the clouds with a sort of expression perfectly suited to being mildly sedated, somewhat lacking in lucidity. Rather, she looked much as one might look at a purple bear when entirely disinclined to care about the proper color bears ought to be. It was the impertinent pilot's sudden zeal, however, that drew a raised brow from the witch, and Winn's unexpectedly charitable nature that elevated the other.

"How very kind of you," mused the girl in a clearly enunciated tone. She inclined her head toward the mussy-haired fabricator, and smiled earnestly. "To go out of your way to assist a complete stranger while already erstwhile engaged in the search for your love, I mean to say."

"It's quite unusual."

For a second, Winn couldn't tell if Rhiannon was making fun of him for his reluctance to help, trying to remind him that they already had a quest, making light of the pilot's plight, or just plain being honest and complimenting him in an odd way. Or maybe all of the above. Whatever the case, trying to divine the true meaning of it all left all of the boy's logic circuits indefinitely preoccupied and allowed no brainpower for appropriate reaction or response other than a vague, stupor-filled nod of what he probably intended to at least look like gracious appreciation. (Hopefully, the gap would be filled by someone else speaking, and become less conspicuous.)

The gap was filled by the imp, staring very close behind Winn and staring at the boy like he was something swirling at the bottom of a jar of formaldehyde. Whatever awe she had experienced at the ship’s passing (she had spent half the time staring up at the ship as it drifted past, and the other half of the time jumping up and down and yelling something in a foreign language) was temporarily put on hold as she scrutinized Winn.

Finally she spoke.

“What are you such a weenie for?” she asked, accusatorially. “Just don’t make him the stupid thing."

"You can't tell me what to do," retorted Winn quickly to the imp, turning away with a huff. "Maybe I will, maybe I won't. Depends on if he finds what I need to make— ... it."

He stopped suddenly, and turned and looked back at the imp again, this time with a completely quizzical expression.

"Why've we even been having this crappy conversation? Who are you people, anyway?" He looked between all parties present (except Rhiannon, who he was beginning to think was the only sane person in the world, even if she was peculiar). "I really do have things to do!"

It seemed like it was a genuine realization that... maybe the imp was right after all, in some weird way.