The next afternoon, we were flying over an inlet covered with silvery pebbles.
I had woken up with a splitting headache, and everything I did seemed to make it drill harder into my brain so I just watched the land go by, trying to make sense of what had happened previously.

Benjamin was dead silent, pulling the loops so hard I thought they might break. He had a very determined look on his face, creased with worry. The lines on his forehead were like etchings in pinewood.

Benjamin turned around and saw me looking over the edge of the airship.

He tied the loops and levers together with more twine, before walking to me.
His walk was an angry staccato as he approached me.

The chin strap of his aviator goggles had come loose in the mad dash to the ship last night, so flapped like a dying black swan.

He was a Cumulonimbus cloud. His eyes were lightning, his brow was damp and thunderous. He grabbed my hand and I turned around to face him calmly.

"Care to tell me what happened last night?" He rumbled.

I told him about everything last night with no trace of fear in my voice. I didn't know why he was so angry; he was just my pilot.

This only made things worse.

"You mean to tell me, you met Leticia, the daughter of my enemy, outside at midnight? You went to her room when you didn't even know her. Then you were frogmarched to my enemy, Mr Aberdain, who was set to kidnap you! I had to rescue you! And then to finish it all off, your stupidity meant that my airship which I've had for 8 years was nearly destroyed by my worst enemy, and we were nearly killed!" Benjamin ranted in a vexed manner, throwing his arms in the air for emphasis.

My mouth hung open, my eyes wide. What had I done?

Benjamin yelled at me, wrathful:
"Just how naïve are you? Do you know nothing about the world, about life, Mila?"

I was stunned. He was right: I had been unbelievably stupid.

I stood up straight and stared him in the eye.
Benjamin still looked raging mad, so I waited a few minutes, still staring. Benjamin seemed to be calmer after a few minutes, so I put my hands together and answered him civilly,

"I've lived on a train for 15 years and never left it."

Benjamin stared at me and clenched his fist.
"What?" He shouted, but his brow wasn't as creased now. His eyes looked less thunderous.

"I've lived on a train for fifteen years and never left it." I repeated and then I went on to say, "And now I have been a complete, stupid idiot." Only I didn't say stupid.

Stoking with ruffians extends your vocabulary, in good and bad ways.

Benjamin was shocked at my language use. But in his eyes I noticed a sort of light dull for a minute and then appear again, as if he had figured something out.

Benjamin stamped over to the opposite end of the airship and punched the basket as hard as he could, gritting his teeth in frustration. He carried on doing that for several minutes, until he staggered backwards, his knuckles bearing beads of blood.

He lowered an iron shelf on one side of the ship and sat down, making it a chair. I copied him with the chair on the opposite side. The shelf-turned-chair didn't creak like I thought it would, instead moving steadily on its iron hinges.

"You are so naïve." Benjamin stated, resting his head in his hands, defeated.

"And you have anger issues." I answered back, smiling slightly.

Benjamin half-laughed. "Yes, yes I do." He told me.

I noticed his hand was still bleeding, so I took off my silk scarf. I tore off a piece of it and wrapped it round Benjamin's knuckles, making a bandage.

He thanked me, and resumed his defeated position.

"Why were you punching the basket?" I asked Benjamin, concerned.

Benjamin sighed.
"You've answered your own question - you told me I have anger issues." He looked up at me and continued, "I needed to get my anger out somehow, and I couldn't punch you. I despise any man who dares hit a girl."

I still had questions, so I decided to try and ask about last night again.
"How do you know Leticia and Mr. Aberdain?"

Benjamin sat up, knowing that he'd have to answer this at some point.

"Mr Aberdain used to be head engineer at the Averat Aeronaut Society. He knows airship locomotives inside out. My dad and I used to get along quite well with him, gaining enough advice from him to build this airship! But one month, my dad, an accountant, did some inside work at the Averat Aeronaut Society. He'd been very suspicious about the sudden funds coming into the club, which rarely recieved grants. He discovered Mr Aberdain was really a crook. It turned out Mr Aberdain had been doing 'white-collar crime'. Mr Aberdain was and is guilty of embezzlement, stealing money from the banks and building societies and creating false finance reports to cover up this fact."

"So this is why you farm chickens." I said.

"Yes." Benjamin replied. "He would never guess I'd stoop so low to get a job like that. I'm also not very wealthy."

I was amazed.
"So why then would he want to question and kidnap me?" I questioned.

"Because my father confronted him about this. Mr Aberdain asked to meet up with him later on to discuss this, at 10pm. But on that night, Mr Aberdain killed my father. No one else knows this, only myself and now you, Mila. Father told me Mr Aberdain's crimes before he met up with him that night. Mr Aberdain wants to remove all evidence of that ever happening, and all evidence of his crimes. That means he wants to kill me."

Benjamin continued, "He saw me travelling with you, and thanks to you going to Leticia's room, Mr Aberdain knows where you've come from and your name. You left your room unlocked so when you left your room, one of his cronies went into it. He found your booking papers for the hotel. That booking paper told them that our vehicle is an airship so it was easy to figure out you're travelling with me. It also shows your name and thanks to the newspapers he now knows you are Mila and were a stoker from the Crimson Comodo disaster."

Benjamin concluded: "More importantly, Mr Aberdain knows I like you enough to let you travel with me. If he kidnaps you, I will have to rescue you. That would make a trap for me to fall into, and inevitably, die in."

I hung my head, ashamed. I'd got myself and Benjamin into a massive hurricane of a mess. All because of last night's disaster. All because of it!

It was all my fault.

This time though, Benjamin took my hand.
"Don't agonise over it. You had no idea and no experience. But next time, use a bit of common sense. Trust takes time, it isn't instant."

"Okay." I answered affirmatively.

Benjamin turned around and walked to the levers of the ship, and seeing there was just empty air ahead of us, turned around again, striding over to me.
He sat down on his shelf-turned-chair again, having not put it back up.

He said curiously to me:
"We'll be arriving in Welhae in less than a day." He said with a sad sigh. It was as if he knew that right now, this farewell didn't feel right to me.

He did not seem relieved to leave an ignoramus like me in Averat, which is what I thought he'd be itching to do. I wondered why.

"Ah well, I'll sort out Mr Aberdain someday." He continued. He shrugged like it was nothing, though it clearly was a huge problem in his life. I felt uneasy and unsure.

Benjamin changed the subject swiftly:

"I have told you quite a bit about myself. It's only fair that you tell me about yourself. Besides, I need to know! If Mr Aberdain kidnaps you, a vital thing about your past may help me get you away from him."

"I kicked him in the shin and he collapsed. I'm more than capable of fighting him." I announced, annoyed Benjamin had said he would rescue me.

I'd read the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen collection of stories on the train, Crimson Comodo, as a five year old and was always annoyed at the pathetic princesses who had to be rescued by handsome men.

"There's a difference between knowing criminals exist and knowing how to deal with them. If he and his henchmen got you first, you'd be luncheonmeat." Benjamin told me.

I sighed, rolling my eyes.
"Alright." I answered. Benjamin smirked victoriously. Quickly I moved onto to telling him about my life.

When I was a baby, I had been abandoned on top of a train. The train was about to move off, but just in time, a man - I don't know who that man was - had noticed me and stopped the driver. He'd climbed onto the roof of the train and got me down, and since then I had been brought up on the train.

Benjamin listened intently, and I kept on telling him about my time on Crimson Comodo.

When I was 8 I started doing little jobs, and with each year, my responsibilities increased. I was very happy Stoking with the ruffians and making minor repairs to machines onboard. I would sleep in my cabin at night, and when I got free time, I would climb on top of the moving train. (Benjamin opened his mouth in shock when I told him that!)

Either that, or I would freely chatter to people in second class. I would avoid Mr Olton when I could, because he was my boss and was always grumpy with me, or worse, irritable. I had fixed many boiler problems before, and knew how to repair ovens and pipes too. I had a lot of knowledge about machinery.

Every month I was paid money, but I never spent it because I never left the train at all. I had only worn a dress once, a present from a second class passenger feeling sorry for me. It had been a simple blue dress; I had taken it off soon afterwards.
I had been educated on board by Angie and Gareth, so I could read. They would buy me books when they left and returned to the train. However learning whilst doing jobs meant my education was a bit erratic and cumbersome, like a badly fitted pipe, so I couldn't write at all well.

Benjamin sat there and was silent. He was pretty amazed.
Then he pointed at my hair.
"One side is a lot shorter than the other. How did that happen?"

"I was making repairs to the music machine in first class. It uses all sorts of spinning gears and moves string backwards and forwards to make the mechanical music go high pitch and low pitch. I had turned it off to work on it but suddenly, the machine started up again. It caught my hair in it and I got one end out but had to scream for help. The other bit of my hair was cut away to save myself from further damage. Ever since, it's grown that way, one side shorter than the other."

Benjamin also noticed my hair was now blonde. I hadn't been working with coal for 3 days:
"I liked it better when your hair was black with coal. Machines are what you were born for." Benjamin stated surprisingly.

Just then, I saw a cluster of buildings in the distance, rapidly approaching us. They were red brick and white stone houses and ginormous chimneys on factories, puffing out black and beige smoke. Benjamin leapt up and untied the levers and ropes, steering the airship downwards gracefully. We ducked under the clouds and continued to drive onwards, passing people in the streets below.

Unlike Averat, this city had mostly curved streets and ginormous park with a sky-blue lake. Benjamin's airship sailed downwards, before hovering above a black iron pole, next to other airships. I threw down the mooring rope and shuffled down it like a monkey, tying the rope.
I then put my feet onto the ground and pulled in the ship.
Benjamin stopped the airships propellers and engine, before getting out too.

Benjamin gave me a thumbs up and gestured to the surroundings with his arm.
"Well, Mila. Welcome to Welhae." He said, smiling.

*****

Here we go! Another door in the plot has opened :)
Keep reading to find out more, and thanks for voting, whether now or later. I appreciate it!