status Update

Just a quick message.

I have been working on an editing project, for several days.

I will release a new chapter for this story tomorrow,

but it may then be several more days before the next chapter and I resume my regular routine.

Here's a teaser since I need at least 500 words in order to make this notice.

Aoi had a very busy schedule. It was posted on floating alarm board. The first artifact she made when Deirdre built this city sized atelier. It was bigger than any building she’d ever see on NASA’s base. She remembered that trip, long ago. On another world. A world of science, but no magik.

Now, she was bringing science to a world of magik. And she had powerful magik. Now, the floating alarm was going off like a circus calliope. A schedule board made from a piece of white and black marble, and it made music like a calliope, because the idea of a floating piece of marble making circus noises was just hilarious. In her head.

An idea she needed to seriously revisit. But she needed this board right now. She had no time to trash it and remake a more sensible board. So the calliope stayed. She had the Sinestelos shipwrights coming in early. They were to teach her how to make truly seaworthy ships that could also fly. Later she’d have to deal with Rosie’s Dwarf artisans, they called themselves Children of Kvalinn. Kvalinn being the mother of the Dwarven race. The First dwarf. That was not common knowledge. But that’s not important now. She needed to make artifacts to tame the wild seas at the newly planned harbor city, and also for at least one new port in Sinestelos as well.

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After working on the airships and the designs for jetties to tame the wild seas to make usable safe harbor waters, she needed to work on finishing the Academy. She also still had to find time to make a decent carriage to distract resort guests over the more than two hour drive under the mountain and through the maze into Shangrí.

Aoi was standing at the rail of her first floor mezzanine drinking her first cup of tea, and picking at the muffin she was threatening to eat. The mezzanine overlooked her hangar, as she called it. The whole building opened like a hangar of a telescope observatory. It was open now. A floating island top on one side, being held aloft by one of her self-regenerating wind cushions. Anchored in position against a catastrophic failure.

On the other side was a partial skeleton of a galleon. On the ground floor in the middle was a pair of stone ashlars with runes against opposite inside walls of a giant pool of water. On a table in the corner was scale size model of a carriage. Scattered around were the benches and tables of apprentices, and journeyworkers, and her own tables and design boards, and half-completed small projects scattered around in the organized mess that was her atelier.

“Project alarm disable,” Aoi said. The calliope alarm quit playing, and the board crashed to the ground. The sound of clapping came from the desks of her apprentices and assistants. It was at this moment, Miadoro Ní Fíonnuala famed Shipwright of Sinestelos walked in with two assistants and an apprentice. A roll of blueprints under her arms. Her apprentice nervously carrying a scale ship model.

“You’re the one making these flying ships?” Miadoro said, stating a fact more than asking a question.