Addy

Now I'm not the sort to go running my lips off to a higher power, but on days like this it feels like someone out there is looking out for me. Coming up as a scrappy ankle-biter in the Heap, I've been on dozens turned hundreds of scrap runs gathering up all sorts of baubles to keep the steam pumping and gears whirring back home. Not one find in all those years has felt quite as special as the mundane little thing tucked squarely into my front apron pocket though. Not one. In a boiling hellscape of steam, waste, and brass, I've found the one thing out of place, the one thing that will find a new home in my grand designs - a solitary feather dropped off most generously by a carrion bird. Now I just have make my way back and to put it to use.

I have always held an odd reverence for the vultures that circle laps in the sky, choosing to spend many a lazy afternoon watching them glide. Although the morbid nature of hovering their may bode an ill omen in many eyes, I have always found their presence strangely empowering. Lacking the class and regalities of supposedly prettier birds, they are scavengers close to my heart and own struggles. They have the entire sky as their domain, and yet they choose to pick at the rubble for scraps instead of ascending to the lofty heights of Aetherius. I wonder if they too are barred from the utopic city.

"It won't be wasted, ya hear?" I shout into the sky, addressing a spanning silhouette I spot above me and patting my breast pocket for emphasis. "This is my golden ticket outta this dump!"

I don't actually know if my words are true or not, seeing as I've never even come close to making a flying machine, but I choose to hold out hope - perhaps ignorantly - that the delicate feather now carried on my person will provide some insight into how real birds fly while my mechanical ones drop like stones. After running and ruining several prototypes, I'm convinced there's more to it than weight alone. Even with sleeker framer and thinner gears implemented, I've never been able to see one of my pseudo-birds catch the wind, a necessary feat if I plan to fly myself one day.

But now's not the time to be dreaming. Focus. One foot in front of the other and make it back to my settlement first. There'll be time to think and tinker later. We scavengers may not be unified in purpose or even in fairness, but we are bound by necessity. It's hard enough to survive here without having to worry about a giant gear falling through your roof or burning your face off trying to get a drink from a steam geyser. Living communally helps us bounce back from disasters and keep invaluable trade routes to the Greenbelt clear, even if we aren't exactly a tightknit group of buddies.

Fortunately, my settlement isn't too hard to spot out of the piles of trash, a pillar of smoke rising into the sky and pinpointing the foundry I know is located at the township's center. It doesn't take long for me to hoof it back, upon arrival which I'm greeted by the placard above the gate reading 'Cogfoot' in poorly shaped metal pieces. It's an inglorious name for an inglorious group of people, but home nonetheless.

Pushing my way past the gates into Cogfoot, I'm met with the gag-inducing miasma of molten metal blended into subtler undertones of grease and B.O. It's a smell that made that makes it hard to miss home, one I'm sure I'm adding my own unique flavors of stench to just by being here. Inside, two major structures dominate our settlement, the foundry and the basin. The former is built over several deep slices into the earth with purpose in harvesting heat from its turbulent core and is the entire reason Cogfoot is where it is. The latter exists to try and cool the drinking water harvested from steam geysers from its standard of 'melt your insides' down to 'uncomfortably warm'. I'm not interested in visiting either presently, although I suppose I'll have to drop by the foundry later and see what they can do about specially shaped metal. Right now I'm more privy to getting home and examining my feather though.

Passing by a couple metal-wrought shacks, I soon reach my abode. The door's been taken off and several sections of walls have been removed in a effort to get some meager circulation and not slow roast myself overnight, but somehow it still manages to stay five degrees hotter than outside. Ugh. Maybe I should just consider relocating to live on someone else's lawn. It'd probably be more pleasant. It's not like I have anything worth stealing anyway. I doubt even the feather is considered a worthy prize by most scavengers here; they dream too damn small and think me more delusional than inspired. Doesn't matter. I'll show them yet.

I plop myself down at my work table and finally withdraw my treasured feather, setting it in front of me with a keen and studious eye, narrowed sharply in focus. Let me see here... Sleek. Black. Lightweight. Beautiful, if I'm being honest. There's a central stem in the middle that appears to be the supporting body while tiny hair-like fibers branch out from it. It doesn't make a lick of sense to me though. How can these micro-hairs catch the wind with out it blowing through? One would think I could let down my hair and achieve lift off at this rate. Clearly I'm missing some fundamental principle... Maybe something to do with quantity...? Or angle...?

As I try to reason it out, a sudden tremor in the ground below me sends my face careening into the desk, my nose smooshing against the flat surface with a painful jolt. My house rattles and clangs discordantly, sounding like a handful of marbles being shot through a lopsided metal pipe. The smell of cooper intensifies, and at once I feel a trickle start up that's too fast to be snot. Gingerly, I pry my face off the desk and pinch the tender flesh of my nostrils shut.

"Yahh! Damn earwhquakes can' leth up fer twuh minues..." I groan, butchering the pronunciations on nearly every word with my nose plugged. "Wait, whaersh duh feadur? Shith!"

A quick scan of my dome to make sure the feather isn't floating around inside and I've diving across my desk, sliding over it and out on of the many windows in a fashion that might look cool if I wasn't sweaty, panicked, and bleeding out my nose. My neck snaps around frantically as I search for my missing prize, but with heavy dust still in the air from the small tremor it's hard to see something as small as a feather floating in the wind. No, no, no! Shit! Screaming like a loon with my nose plugged probably won't help my already dubious reputation as a salvager, but I need help. Any help will do. I CANNOT lose that feather.

"Heeeeyyyy! Shumbudy! Anybudy!" I cry out frantically, panic rising in my unfortunately comical sounding voice. "I need helpuh! Duh feadur! Whaersh duh feadur?!"