So last week you got a taste of Callan. A tiny little taste. And I was going to post the next snippet, BUT this song by Patrick Watson called Beijing caught my attention over the weekend. I've played it a TON of times. It had exactly what I needed to write a certain scene.
So, today you get to meet Piper Delaney. She has turned out to be TOTALLY different then I expected. And Callan just doesn't have a CLUE what to make of her. If you can, listen to the song while your're reading and let the wonderful sounds that Patrick creates whisk you away into Piper's world.
I sit rigid in the little cart thingy they call city transport. City. Transport. Streets. They are all new words and feel funny in my mouth. Like when Piper first said the word technology. But even worse feeling than the words, are the lights and smells raging past me.
We move down the…street. Bumping along on the path jarring my body. Noisy. Up above in the clouds swarms of contraptions. In front of us more contraptions. The dwellings raise into the sky. People scurry along the path. Heads down. Not talking.
The smell isn’t of fresh dirt or grass, but something other. We pass a man with a cart and spices swell and push into my nostrils making me need to sneeze.
Did I mention the lights? I’m used to flames. From wood. From dragons. But the light blares at me from the sticks they reside in on the corners of the…street.
“Callan, are you okay?” Piper breaths into my ear.
The transport thingy isn’t very big and it squashes us together at an unrespectable closeness. I would be thrilled if Haley were at my side. But she’s back in Drigaide. With Brant. And I sit next to this strange girl, in this strange place.
“It’s just, ugh, a lot.” I breathe in deep forgetting about the spicy air, sneezing again.
“I hate Vopenheim. It is big and noisy. But you would like Gilenheim, it’s more like your home. Well except it’s in the mountains. And you have to take a ship transport to get there.” She twists a lock of her dark curly hair around her finger, making the curl even tighter. “You’d like it.” She whispers the last few words and ducks her head.
I can’t figure this girl out. She is smarter than anyone I’ve ever met. Brilliant in fact. But she won’t look me in the eye.
“So where is your grandfather taking us?” The swish of the wheels distracts me momentarily. To think that our arms and legs are powering the transport we sit in. Taking us to our destination. Piper directs its course, but we propel the wheels. “Do the contraptions above work like this? Are men propelling them through the air with their bodies?”
Piper giggles. Her laugh is so much higher than Haley’s. Like a tinkling bell.
“No silly. They’re too big. These are only used for quick jaunts around the city. Air ships are propelled by something similar to what we use for our water ships.”
I stare at her. Waiting for her to expound on what keeps the ships moving. Her grandfather was very hush, hush about it before. He kept us away from what he called the engine room.
“And that would be,” I say when she doesn’t respond.
“Oh, that’s for Grandfather to explain.”
I would bet my last honey biscuit that she knew more about what was in the engine room than that old fool but he didn’t press her. “And where is he taking us?”
“We are here.”
I'm still figuring out exactly what Piper's world looks like, but I have this on my Pinterest board for inspiration.
Don't forget Sunday, April 1st that Falling for Fiction will launch. AND you can still enter to win a book in my contest. It's open until launch day.
